CLEVELAND — Gabrielle Vaughn and Chelbi Graham teach third and first grade, respectively.
For two years, their classrooms were next door to each other, but these neighbors had no idea they’d become partners in publishing. It started at a business meeting where Vaughn told Graham about a book she was writing, but she was stuck.
“It’s an alphabet book,” Vaughn said. “I was going through each letter and I think I was stuck on maybe J and we were talking and she was like, ‘J could be Juneteenth.'”
Then the creative wheels began to turn in Graham’s head.
“I was lying awake like finding more and more ideas texting her like, ‘Oh, you can do G is this and H is this and I is this,” Graham said.
But it didn’t stop there. Vaugh asked Graham to co-write the book with her.
For seven months, the two worked tirelessly to bring their ideas to life.
“We broke our pieces up,” Graham said. “I did A to M and she did N to Z, and then we met every week to like peer edit each other’s half.”
The book is called “A is for Africa.”
The inspiration came during the social unrest of 2020 when some called for people to do more to educate themselves.
“So our idea was that if we catch them young enough that you know we won’t get to this point again,” Graham said. “Like the new generation will be set up a little bit better than we are right now.”
You can contact the authors at: gandcedu@gmail.com.
