Boy smuggles self-written book into the library
What a sweet story for a gray winter day! The Christmas Adventures of Dillon Helbig. The book was written by an eight year old boy. He wrote it, smuggled it into the local library display, and now several publishers have even expressed interest in his work.
Dillon Helbig lives in Boise, the capital of the state of Idaho, in the United States. He’s in second grade there. The now eight-year-old has been writing his own stories with passion for over three years. And so he dreamed of one day being able to borrow his books from a library.
Dillon wrote the Christmas adventure story in four days in a hardcover diary, complete with illustrations. When his grandmother took him to the Boise branch of the Lake Hazel Ada Community Library in December, the shrewd junior author saw a golden opportunity that couldn’t be missed. And so he apparently skilfully slipped past the employees into the fiction department. There he deposited his work unnoticed among all the other loan books.
That same evening, Dillon told his mother about his “adventure” at the library. She really wanted the book back. So they soon went in search of the “lost book” in the library in vain.
So, a little sheepishly, you asked the staff about it, explained the situation, and certainly hoped that there wouldn’t be any major trouble. However, the response to her request was very different from what might have been expected, Alex Hartman, branch manager at Lake Hazel Library, told the Guardian.
It turns out that Hartman and his colleagues had discovered Dillon’s book at some point. It was then read to Hartman’s six-year-old son, among others. The book has been described as exceptional. It would have met all the important requirements for a book to be included in a library directory. And that’s what happened after the official permission of the eight-year-old author.
We hope that children will find inspiration to write their own stories and share them with other people.
said Hartman of the Washington Post.
Incidentally, the story is about a boy named Dillon who is thrown back in time after the twinkling star on his Christmas tree explodes. All very exciting and a little crazy, as the author confidently admits.
By the way, Dillon’s book currently has a proud waiting list of over 50 readers. With a maximum loan period of just under a month, the last person on the list would have to wait almost 4 years. The library management is therefore considering making various digital copies of the work in order to appease all fans as quickly as possible.
In addition, there are probably serious offers from various publishers. By then, Dillon Helbig is already the proud recipient of the Whoodini Award for Best Young Author. This category was created especially for little writers. Congratulation! 😍🤗
Wouldn’t it be a great idea if all libraries provided their own shelves for books written by children and young people? What do you think?
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