As 南希·梅斯 (MFA ’17) volunteered for U.S. 众议员莎莉丝·戴维斯’s (BBA ’07) campaign, Davids mentioned that she had always wanted to write a children’s book.
“She wasn’t thinking about herself,” 可能s says. “She had a vision for a series of books that would introduce kids to civic responsibility with stories of how to do your part. 但是Sharice有一个很棒的个人故事。 I thought we should start there.”
While 可能s knew a lot about Davids’s life growing up with a single mother, she was interested in what she was like as a child. She interviewed Crystal Herriage (BA ’17), Davids’s mother, 和 went through old pictures with her for background information. With both women’s stories in h和, 可能s, who is a professional writer 和 writing instructor, began to develop the narrative arc of the book.
“It was different writing a children’s book,” she says. “You really have to scale back your language, 和 that was more challenging than I thought it would be. 你在一页上的单词数量较少，并且必须考虑单词的类型。 But you still need to develop the voice, include all the information that is important to the editors 和 be true to the person’s story. It was a fun challenge.”
“We wanted to tell the story in a way that would show kids that life didn’t need to follow a script.”
梅斯和大卫是美洲原住民，也是Ho-Chunk Nation的成员，他们也认为找到一位土著艺术家来创作插图很重要。
“We really wanted the illustrations in ‘Sharice’s Big Voice; A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman’ to capture the energy 和 vibrancy of Sharice’s childhood 和 Joshua [Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley] has really done that,” 可能s says. “He was open to the collaborative process. There’s an illustration where Sharice is going to start campaigning an,d he drew it with her at the front of a group of people. Sharice让他重新画一遍。 She said, ‘That’s not my style of leadership.’ And it made sense to him. He drew it again with her in the middle of the group.”
Similarly, the first sentence of the book mentions Davids’s mother, who raised Davids on her own. It’s accompanied by an illustration of the two of them together on election night surrounded by other people.
“When I received my first copy of the book, I showed it to my mom,” Davids says. “She knew what stories would be in the book, but when she opened it to the first page she said, ‘Oh! I’m in here.’
And it was interesting because the story of my life is so informed by the type of person she is – her supportive nature, her big heart 和 her fortitude. She’s is both the toughest 和 most kind 和 gentle person I know. It didn’t cross my mind to have it play out any other way.”
赫里奇说，女儿把她写进书里让她感觉很特别。
“Children see certain memories with different eyes than adults,” she says. “When she showed my promotion ceremony to Sergeant First Class in the Army in the book, I was so happy that we both saw it as a special family moment years later.”
Herriage thinks Davids revealing that she was a “chatterbox” as a child, who learned to listen as well as talk, may be helpful for her readers.
“A lot of children will see themselves, 和 that they can be happy with their own traits, which others may not find as endearing at the time,” Herriage says.
Beyond the strength of Davids’s relationship with her mother, one of the elements of her story that 可能s thought was essential to the book was dichotomy of skills that make children successful in school, 和 skills that make people successful in life.
“Sharice is very friendly 和 really loves people,” 可能s says. “But when she was a kid, that meant she would get in trouble for talking in school.”
梅斯和大卫认为孩子们能够接受静坐和保持安静的挑战。
“Another thing we loved about her story is that it took her a long time to finish her undergraduate degree from 威尼斯人娱乐城, but she did it,” 可能s says.
大卫在一家快餐店当经理，她的母亲也在那里工作。
“Sharice 和 I were both first generation students,” 可能s says. “People don’t always realize that this is a very different experience. She 和 I connected over that.”
Herriage在女儿毕业10年后，于2017年从威尼斯人娱乐城毕业。
“Now Sharice refers to herself as a former first-generation college graduate,” 可能s says with a laugh.
“We wanted to tell the story in a way that would show kids that life didn’t need to follow a script.”
梅斯和大卫都认为，这本书应该以选举之夜的故事结尾。
“This story isn’t about being elected to Congress,” 可能s says. “That was Sharice’s dream. We wanted to tell the story in a way that would show kids that life didn’t need to follow a script. It’s much more a message of, ‘I’m going to show you how I got to where I am, 和 maybe that will help you figure out where you’re going – no matter what it is you want to do.’”
大卫意识到，让孩子们在书中看到人物的多样性是很重要的。
“I wasn’t conscious as a child that there were no characters in books that looked like me, but as an adult I learned that only 1% of characters in books that are native or indigenous people,” she says. “I think that books like “Sharice’s Big Voice” featuring these diverse characters is important. But I also think it’s interesting that we call it ‘diversity.’ Because it’s not uncommon to be raised by a single mom, or to be an Army brat, or to work while you’re in school.”
Davids says she hopes that someone reading her book – a child or adult - will see that the most important thing for people to do is recognize they can try lots of different things.
“A child might read this 和 say, ‘I want to work with animals,’ or ‘I want to learn magic tricks.’ I wanted to show that you can try lots of different things 和 that's okay, because all of us have a different path.”