Rumford Elementary School kindergarten teacher Jessica Curato opens the book “Building Dreams as a Team” to the story of “The Missing Kitten” on Aug. 12 at the Rumford Public Library. The story was was written by kindergartner Ariel Whittemore. (Bruce Farrin/Staff Writer)

RUMFORD — A newly published book featuring a collection of stories penned by a dozen kindergarten students fulfills a yearslong desire for a local librarian.

“Building Dreams as a Team” is a collaboration between Rumford Public Library and Rumford Elementary School.

The authors are students of Jessica Curato, who taught them about writing stories the past school year.

The effort began as an idea in March when Children’s Librarian Sarah Cotnoir came to Curato’s class for story time during Read Across America. During class time, they discussed a book project.

“I had been wanting to do this book publishing project with kids for a couple years, and thought Jessica would be perfect for a pilot program,” Cotnoir said. “We had a great class of little writers.”

“They did a great job,” she said. “They were amazing… We chose teamwork as a theme. A dozen kids, over a period of six weeks. The kids did the illustration work as well.”

Cotnoir continued, “So we taught in a couple of sessions. What is a story? What are the elements of a story? Who are the characters? What is the setting and the plot? And we worked through writing a short story with the class. The class wrote a short story altogether and we used that as an example. Then we gave them sheets to write their own short story. Then we did an illustrating class.”

Over a period of six weeks, it became a fun project, although Curato noted, “Writing is hard to do in kindergarten.”

“The kids did a rough draft of their stories,” she said, “then we sat with them, one on one, read through their stories or some of them dictated their stories to us. They seemed to be really excited about the creative process, and then seeing a story develop with a moral and a theme, and a resolution to a conflict.

She added, “We did a lot of writing — beginning, middle and end. And I guess we don’t talk about the elements quite as much as we did this time. Less about problem and solution, and more about diary and history, which is kind of how they write. But they latched right on to it.”

Cotnoir said, “We got them to look at the different pieces to a story and how those pieces fit together to make a full, complete puzzle which would be the book.”

Ariel Whittemore wrote one of the 12 stories. “The Missing Kitten,” is about Ariel and her cousin finding a lost kitten that was under a tree on a rainy day. She illustrated it with a picture of the kitten under the tree.

“Building Dreams as a Team” will be available at the town library, as well as at the school library, Cotnoir said.

She will also have books in her classroom to show the incoming kindergarten class.

Cotnoir and Curato said they’d love to this project again.

Mary Malchiskey, fifth grade teacher at Rumford Elementary School, reads Aug. 12 with her daughter, Ariel Whittemore, 6, at the Rumford Public Library. Whittemore wrote one of the 12 stories in the book. (Bruce Farrin/Staff Writer)