Author Stan Tucker encourages Cross Creek students to share their story

Published 9:45 am Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Last Tuesday, Cross Creek Elementary invited Stan Tucker, founder of Leap for Literacy and author of “Stan and the Man,” to speak to their students about kindness, loss and telling their own stories. 

Standing in front of 3rd graders in the Cross Creek auditorium, Tucker spoke about writing his first book, “Stan and the Man,” which dealt with the loss of his father when he was the same age as the students were and the steps he’s taken to make his dad proud today.

“This story is the first story I’ve ever written,” he said. “It’s the most important story that I’ve ever written. It’s about my dad, who was the most important person in my life.”

Reading his book to the audience, Tucker said that he wrote his book to inspire children to honor their parents and take control in order to tell their own stories. 

“That’s the whole reason that I write my stories, to inspire students,” Tucker said. 

Speaking about parental love and the sacrifices all parents make, Tucker said to his audience that they should never let a day go by without expressing their gratitude for their parents.

“The cost of true love is no charge,” he said. “So never let a day go by without letting your parents know how great they are for all the sacrifices they’ve made for you, never let a day go by without telling your parents how much you love them.”

Playing games with the students that encouraged generosity and giving away books, Tucker later visited classrooms of Cross Creek Elementary students to talk about his experience with helping kids get their own stories published and the Very Airy Library, his children’s program. 

“I said to myself, ‘how cool would it be to have a section of the Read ’n Roller (Mobile Library) of books that were just by kids,’ so I decided to come up with a writing program that is called Share Your Story and I help guide kids through the process of writing a book and at the end we choose some of those books to get professional published.”

Having helped 80+ children get their writing professionally illustrated and published through his literacy program, Tucker said that they shouldn’t be intimidated by the process and encouraged them to share their story.

“If I can do it, you can do it,” he said. 

He said a process is how anything great ever happens, taking time and persistence and hard work to achieve, whether its writing a book or pursuing your dream.

“Anything we do in life there is a process to completing it,” he said. “Writing your book is a process, just like becoming a doctor is process, just like becoming a teacher is a process. You’ve got to be ready to treat people right, you’ve got to be ready to work hard, work harder than everybody else, and you’ve got to do that every single day, copy and repeat.”

After the day was over, Tucker said that the day spent at Cross Creek Elementary was a magical one and that he couldn’t ask for anything better. 

“It was a magical day,” he said. “It was amazing, I couldn’t ask for a better day. My reasoning for doing these school visits is to inspire kids, right?”

Tucker said that each student has a story that is unique to them and needs to be heard and, along with inspiring them to honor their parents, he feels like he has accomplished his task of making them realize that.

“Their stories need to be heard,” he said. “I know I have kids that are telling me they want to write books, so I accomplished what I set out to do.”

Tucker said that he hopes that Cross Creek Elementary will get involved with his Share Your Story program and that he can help students with each step of the process