SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Charlotte McAllister Attenborough made a longtime dream come true this year when she wrote her first book. A product of a class she took at the South Orange–Maplewood Adult School on children’s writing, “Zakir, Get Outta the Street!” tells the story of a young boy who has to walk home from school by himself and is learning how to cross the street. His imagination runs wild as cars turn into beasts he must conquer, and he has to learn how to overcome his fear.
“This was something I always wanted to do,” Attenborough said in a phone interview with the News-Record on Nov. 11. “Between COVID and taking the class, I was able to do it. I wasn’t thinking about publishing it, but at the end of the six weeks I had it.”
Course instructor Duncan Ewald encouraged Attenborough to self-publish, and Attenborough found an illustrator to bring her basic sketches to life. Ben McKenna drew the pictures, and before long the 38-page book was available at Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart and Amazon. In addition to learning how to write a story targeted at young children in the class, Attenborough had learned the business side of publishing.
“You never think about children’s books as a business, but it is,” she said. “There are trends, and there are a lot of how-to books right now.”
In “Zakir, Get Outta the Street!” the character is learning how to look both ways before crossing the street and be safe while walking home from school by himself — an activity he used to do with his older brother. Now that his brother is taking the bus to middle school, Zakir has to make the journey home on his own and is a little scared. As the main character learns how to be a safe pedestrian, so too does the reader.
“The parent also has to like the book,” Attenborough said, mentioning another often overlooked element of children’s literature that she learned. “Even if it’s mostly pictures, the parents have to like the pictures, because they’re reading it just as much. I didn’t think that much about the parents,” she said of her early forays into children’s book writing.
Attenborough admits she’s not an artist, but she did have some ideas about what she wanted the illustrations to look like. She sent her rough sketches to McKenna, and he took over from there.
“I went to Arts High School, but I never practiced,” Attenborough joked. “All these years later they were just abhorrent. So I found an artist to do it and sent him the sketches, and that helped him. I had one vision and he was able to pick up on that.”
Aliens are one type of creature that comes out of Zakir’s imagination while he is walking home from school, and McKenna brought them to life.
“He took the aliens to another level,” Attenborough said.
It had been a while since Attenborough had read a children’s book; her own children are adults now. While writing her own children’s book, she decided not to read any others.
“I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t,” Attenborough said. “In some ways it would have helped, but then I was able to start fresh. I haven’t read a lot (of children’s books). I read them to my children, but they’re adults now and they’ve changed so much since then.”
Attenborough teaches adult literacy, so the world of books and reading is already familiar. But she is planning on staying in children’s literature for a little while longer: a second book featuring the same characters — called “Zakir, Get on the Bus!” — is in the works.
“There’s a feeling that you want to write another one and get it out there.” she said.
Not originally planning to publish, Attenborough credits Ewald and the adult school for giving her that extra push.
“The adult school really is a jewel,” she said. “There’s so much there. It’s really incredible, because in this case it made a lifelong dream come true, and now it’s out there everywhere.”
“Zakir, Get Outta the Street!” can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/bx7eb9ej.
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