Rising senior Emily Moran found a way to blend her artistic talent, fascination with ancient mythology and love of animals with her desire to help individuals with disabilities: She’s writing and illustrating a fantasy book to help young readers improve literacy. The project — funded by a UVM Humanities Center Undergraduate Summer Fellows grant — will propel Moran’s understanding of speech-language pathology and her skills in digital illustration.
Readers will encounter magical creatures, ancient castles and rugged landscapes. They will see ginger-hair cows, a unicorn, an evil knight and a protagonist on a mission.
“It’s a hero-on-a-quest story, about a girl who has animal friends that disappear. As she searches for them, she crosses over into a mythical world where she can speak to the animals,” said Moran. Ultimately, “the girl learns that friendship goes beyond conversation, and true friends can understand each other without using words.”
The fellowship will allow Moran, who majors in communication sciences and disorders with a minor in applied design, to travel abroad for research and provide support as she plans, writes and illustrates the book.
“I am putting together my story board, fine tuning and adjusting it. I’m planning to visit Scotland – if not this summer then perhaps later — to explore the mythology, tour castles and take photographs,” said Moran. She is collaborating with a tour company to design a personalized itinerary focused on the sites, animals and legends she wants to tie into the story. “I love the medieval, picturesque natural beauty of Scotland, with its castles and animals, especially the Scottish Highland cows.”
For the text portion, Moran works with professor Shelley Velleman, an expert on children’s speech development and phonetics — the study and classification of speech sounds. Moran’s story will use homonyms, homophones and alliteration to improve 7- to 10-year old children’s literacy skills.
To create the illustrations, Moran takes photographs, makes watercolor paintings of them and uses a computer to enhance them. In the fall, she will fold the project into an independent study on graphic design. “I’ll explore mood lighting, color schemes and fine details to make it exactly what I want it to be,” she said.
From Prologue to Passion
Moran’s devotion to helping people with literacy stems from her experience helping in her mother’s classroom in an inner-city middle school.
“My mom is an art teacher in an area where a lot of kids are at low socio-economic status and their reading skills are poor. They come to school with so many issues that they have no control over. They say they don’t want to read, but a lot of it comes down to motivation and interest in the topic,” she said. “A book with a mythological angle can engage students, take them out of their current situation and into an alternate world.”
Moran earned a Teaching English as a Second Language certificate through UVM and she volunteers at a Burlington, Vt., school in the English as a Second Language classroom. “I’ve had the opportunity to observe and interact with individuals where literacy is incredibly difficult and frustrating. Literacy is a powerful tool that many of us take for granted,” she said. “Support and engaging content can inspire an individual to experience the world in a multidimensional way.”
Moran is developing a website to document her project, outlining her book-writing process and incorporating testimonials from speech-language pathologists and teachers about how they will use the book in their classrooms. The website will provide the basis for Moran to present the project at the UVM Student Research Conference next spring and will serve as a platform to promote and sell the book.