Phillips resident publishes children's book about service
A children’s book that has been 11 years in the making is being sent to schools and libraries all across Nebraska with a singular mission in mind. Mary Ingram of Phillips, author of the illustrated picture book “Sidney and Cleveland Save the World” says she hopes her book will inspire children to become everyday heroes by volunteering to serve others.
As a former juvenile court diversion officer for Merrick County and the founder and executive director of Volunteer Nebraska, Ingram has many thoughts about the importance of young people being exposed to the world of volunteering at an early age. She said the idea for the book – her second published work – came to her in 2009 and that’s when she sat down and wrote the approximately 300-word manuscript. She has had it pinned to her vision board ever since while she sought for someone to draw the pictures.
The main character of the 18-page, full-color book is Sidney, who Ingram says is loosely based on her now-adult son, Eric. In the book, Sidney and his friend Cleveland create a homemade grappling hook which they use to rescue a hamster. They also save a neighbor lady from a “man-eating snake” and eventually call 911 after Grandma Hartley falls in her house and is unable to get up. Throughout their adventures the boys wear superhero capes, which is a detail inspired by Eric’s childhood.
“He was definitely an interesting child,” said Ingram of her son who now works in Kearney as a motorcycle mechanic. “
“When Eric was, you know, like a year and a half old, we had to have a little Superman cape because he loves Superman stuff, and Spiderman, you know, all the Kung Fu stuff,” Ingram said. “And he was literally jumping off the sofa and doing a head flip into a beanbag chair. And I’m like, ‘we’re gonna have to get him into gymnastics,’ so at three years old we entered him into a gymnastics class to hopefully train him on what’s safe and what you should do. But he just continued to do that. He had four broken arms from the age of four to about eight, so I went and got my EMT certification, because I was afraid that it might be needed somewhere in the midst of all of this.”
Another plot device in the book coming from Ingram’s experience raising Eric was the grappling hook.
“He disappeared one afternoon and I couldn’t find him,” recalled Ingram, “and he was out in the shop, welding and making this grappling hook. He was about eight, I think, at the time.”
While the book is dedicated to her son, Ingram says, however, it is intended to help all children understand that they can be heroes like Sidney and Cleveland just by engaging in small acts of kindness and being attentive to the needs of others. That’s why she includes scenarios like courageously rescuing the neighbor from the snake which is also something that grew out of her own experience.
“I have neighborhood kids who are snake charmers,” Ingram said. “I have a whole collection of neighbor kids who come over and they hunt in the garden for snakes. Once I see them there, okay. It’s having them jump out that’s scary for me. And I had one little boy who said, ‘Mary, if you ever find a snake and you need help, you come and get me and I will take care of you!’ That’s what he told me. He was like six at the time... I wanted those kids to see that they’re heroes. You know, they look after me. And I wanted them acknowledged for that.”
Ingram said she also wants kids to know that it doesn’t take feats of superhuman strength to be a hero.
“You can do the simplest things and make a difference,” Ingram said, “and that’s what I want, to open up that conversation with our kids. The younger, the better.”
Ingram said several experiences opened up her eyes years ago to the importance of early exposure of the concept of service to others for children. One of those experiences was being a diversion officer, helping first-time non-violent juvenile offenders to perform their community service and thus divert them away from the criminal justice system.
“The first thing that I saw in that experience was that the kids saw it as a punishment,” Ingram said. “It was embarrassing to be seen doing it. We had such negative vibes with these kids. And I’m like, that’s not what this is. It was like a wake up call for me to say we’ve got to change this. So I did some research and I did a TED talk on this experience.” (Ingram’s 2021 speech entitled “3 Simple Questions to Empower Our Kids” can still be viewed on YouTube)
Out of that experience, Ingram was inspired to start Volunteer Nebraska, an organization dedicated to empowering youth to make a difference in their communities and their world through volunteerism.
Ingram says the scientific basis for both the talk and the organization came from research done by the Minnesota-based Search Institute which has identified a list of 40 developmental assets for children.
“These were 40 experiences, practices, things that when introduced to a child they’re more likely to be kind, caring and responsible as they grow up,” Ingram said. “I wanted something that was evidence-based... I wanted to have a program that I knew was going to work. And three of those 40 talked about service and getting the kids involved in the community and feeling valued by the community and I thought, okay, community service is a key thing for us... And then I saw that the kids didn’t have the same feelings about it, and so I started to do the service projects with them. Like, we’d go out and clean up the park or we’d go sand a bunch of the picnic tables, or we’d go do something, and they’re asking, ‘why are you doing our service projects with us?’ And I’m like, because this is an honorable thing. We’re helping the community. And when they began to see that, suddenly it was a whole different thing. And one thing I was witnessing is that the kids were coming back and continuing to do the service projects with us after they were done with them.”
But perhaps the most profound lesson for Ingram on the vital nature of getting children started serving others early, happened with her youngest daughter, Emily when she was only 6 weeks old.
“I was invited to bring her into the nursing home in Franklin, where we lived at the time,” Ingram recalled. “Oh, those old people, they’d love to see a baby coming in on a regular basis. So once a month I brought Emily in and they would just hold her, they would pass her around and they would ask me, like, what is she learning to do? What are her first words? And then they would tell me stories about their families, and it was a great, like an hour a month that we did. And every time Emily went in they would take pictures of her being held by the residents and it would go in the newspaper. And I look back at that experience and that was Emily’s recognition. She didn’t get a certificate but she got recognized by the community for her service. She was actually named the youngest volunteer in the history of the nursing home because of what she did.”
Ingram says those regular visits to the nursing home continued throughout Emily’s younger childhood. As a toddler, the girl would run down the hall to shouts of “There’s Baby Emily!” She would go into the residents’ rooms and give them a high five and play balloon volleyball with them.
“I did not realize at the time,” Ingram said. “I wasn’t seeing it for the value that she was gaining from that experience until she became much older. I think that was so valuable for Emily. She became so confident and social. She lives in New York City today and she actually went into journalism. She was working at the Washington Post, and she just lives her life in a very independent, wonderful way. And I think a lot of that came because of the way she developed as a very, very young child.”
“So now part of what we do through Volunteer Nebraska is I’m really encouraging preschools to adopt nursing homes,” Ingram explained. “I realized during COVID you might be sending artwork in, you might not be making the visits, but you’re still connecting those intergenerational groups.”
The decade-long search for an artist to illustrate the book finally ended at a federal prison. Through her life coaching work with inmates, Ingram met Aaron Burkholder who agreed to draw and color the more than two dozen illustrations in the book.
“So I gave him the manuscript, and my manuscript actually had a little description of what I saw in the picture, because I knew that the story was not in the words, necessarily,” Ingram said. “It’s in the pictures. And he just followed everything. I didn’t have to really say anything. He took it ran with it, and this was his creative genius and he had so much fun doing it.”
Ingram says this is Burkholder’s first book but he has since said he wants to do more book illustrations and is currently working on his own book.
“He wants to help kids who have been bullied,” Ingram said. “That’s kind of the lesson behind his story.”
With regard to the distribution of the book, Ingram said, “Well, right now I am sharing it with preschools, schools, libraries in the state of Nebraska. That’s who I’ve pretty much sent books out to, and I’m going to try to put it into the hands of as many preschool organizations as I can. And just hope that the kids enjoy it. That’s really my wish.”
The book is available locally at Susan’s Books & Gifts and can also be purchased worldwide through the publisher (Amazon) or through Barnes & Noble.
“But to me it’s not the numbers,” Ingram said. “You know, if I found out that one kid loved the book, or likes to have it read to him every night. That to me is more satisfying than selling a million copies.”
“I really truly believe that’s probably my mission in life,” Ingram continued, “which is introducing service to kids and serving others. I think that’s all of our callings. How you do it or how you choose to do it is totally up to you.”