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Book Writing Binds Family Together

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By MEGAN HUSSEY

Tribune correspondent

Published: February 1, 2009

WESLEY CHAPEL - When your mom is a published children's author, maybe it's a given that you'll try your hand at writing someday.

Colby and Catherine Tomasello are getting started early. Colby, 7, and 5-year-old Catherine recently claimed top honors in the Book Arts Bash, the national writing contest for home-schooled students and their parents. Colby won in the K-2 division with "Baseball ABCs," while Catherine and mom Heather Tomasello collaborated on "Red Riding Hood and the Missing Muffins," which won the College-Adult Fractured Fairy Tale category. Tomasello wrote and illustrated "What in the World?" which also won in its category.

"It's always cool when you and your kids share the same interests," said Tomasello, who also has a 3-year-old son, Zachary." I'm very proud and very pleased."

Tomasello, the author of "So You Have to Do a Science Fair Project," "Strategies for Winning Science Fair Projects" and the upcoming "Hello Florida," has home-schooled the children for a year and supervises their journal-writing exercises.

Catherine sometimes writes plays for the family to perform.

"I like writing because I get stories in my mind," she said.

Tomasello started reading to her kids when they were still in the womb, and it seems to have carried over.

"I always leave the library with a lot of books," Colby said.

Colby is an avid baseball fan. He plays on two Wesley Chapel Athletic Association baseball teams and goes with his dad, Jerel, to Tampa Bay Rays games.

"Baseball ABCs" is intended to teach people about the basics of the game.

Illustrated with watercolor pencils, the book uses the alphabet to present basic baseball concepts. The letter "B" stands for "base," for example, and is accompanied by an illustration of a base on a baseball diamond. The book hits on team names, too - "R" is for "Rays."

Colby struggled with the letter "Z." Eventually, he decided that "Z" was for "Zachary," the little brother who accompanies him and his dad to ballgames.

The mother-daughter book, "Red Riding Hood and the Missing Muffins," is an easy-reader mystery. Catherine did the illustrations.

"Little Red Riding Hood has her breakfast of muffins stolen," Catherine said. "Then she goes to a Laundromat and sees the big bad wolf washing a blueberry stain from his shirt."

Catherine wrote and illustrated two additional submissions, "Princess Arania's Trip" and "Lizzy and the Snowman," for the Book Arts Bash. The family designed covers for and bound all their books before entering them in the contest.

"This way my children get to experience the magic of creating a book," Tomasello said.

The Book Arts Bash contest rewards include feedback from industry leaders. Judge Emily Griffin, an editor at Grand Central Press in New York, described "Baseball ABCs" as "a sweetly illustrated book. ... The author mixes well-known and more obscure terms. Sure to be a hit with sports fans learning the alphabet!"

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