Moore Elementary School Student Publishes First Book After Winning Contest

A 12-year-old girl from Moore is now being celebrated as a published author. Erica Frass won a contest last year to turn a one-page idea into a full-fledged book, and her story aims to educate and inspire her peers. 

The Heritage Trails Elementary School library is home to plenty of books that teach students about animals, but only one of them was written by one of their own.

When children's author Stephen Kozan visited Oklahoma for his first round of the Ready Aim Write challenge last year, he was not expecting to read about the vivid tale taking shape in Erica Frass's mind.

“I think something stuck out in a sentence that grabbed me,” he recalls.

Kozan helped to professionally publish and illustrate ‘The Northern Lights’ over the course of ten months.

“When I found out that I had won, I started crying,” Erica says. “I was so excited.”

Now the sixth-grader is being celebrated as the star of ‘The Northern Lights’, with Heritage Trails transforming to reflect her book's theme. Kozan also came back looking for ideas from the next storytelling prodigy.

He says, “They’re organic and everything that, let’s say goes into Erica’s book, is her idea 100%. We just steer the ship.”

An aspiring veterinarian, Erica's story was inspired by her own passion. She says, “I don’t think that a lot of people know a lot about animals in the Arctic.”

‘The Northern Lights’ brings together three unlikely friends, Aubrey the Fox, Olive the Rabbit and Dustin the Bear, who go on a quest to find their missing parents. Erica identifies most with Olive, the brains of the bunch.

“She’s scared by him (Dustin) because he’s much bigger than her, but they soon become great friends.”

The journey is not easy, though, as the animals start to lose the trail they are following.

“But then they see the Northern lights and they gain hope that they will find their family,” Erica explains.

You have to read it for yourself to see if the trio succeeds, but the friendship that develops between Erica's animals is a lesson we could all stand to learn.

“I wanted to show that even though they’re different, they can all come together,” she says.

‘The Northern Lights’ is on sale now. To purchase a copy of her book and other winners of the Ready Aim Write challenge, click here.