Award-winning Nebraska author and illustrator Bruce Arant captured the attention of young students in Alliance last Thursday while reading his books “Simpson’s Sheep Won’t Go To Sleep!” and “Simpson’s Sheep Just Want To Sleep!”.
“The most fulfilling part of my job has become doing school visits,” Arant said. “I didn’t even know school visits existed. I’d never been exposed to this whole thing.”
Arant still works on illustrating projects, which he did primarily before writing his two novels. He has illustrated more than 20 books.
“I was designing a blanket for a blanket company and they just made wool blankets,” Arant said.
He said while working on that project he was inspired while thinking about how sheep go to sleep and wrote his first children’s book.
Alliance 2 Head Start Head Teacher Erica Haskell said, “The children loved trying to guess what Mr. Arant was drawing, learning to talk just like Farmer Simpson from the books and discussing what was happening in the pictures. The schools filled with joyful giggles and excitement, which is exactly what we wanted.”
Arant visited Honey Bear Preschool, St. John’s Preschool, Kiddie Kampus, Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran School, Head Start and St. Agnes Academy.
The author was brought to local schools to celebrate the Week of the Young Child.
“In November, the Early Childhood Education Committee met to discuss plans for the Week of the Young Child,” Haskell said. “Usually we try to have a field day with all the other schools, and decorate windows of businesses downtown. But this year being the 50th Anniversary of WOTYC we wanted to do something special. We decided to focus on early literacy and thought that having an author reading to our ECE students would be an amazing experience for them. I reached out to my friend with Humanities of Nebraska and she gave me Bruce Arant’s email.”
Haskell said once she learned more about Arant she decided he would be the right author to interact with local students.
“After looking him up and reading his book, I reached out to him to see if he would be interested in doing something for our students,” Haskell said. “Within hours, he had called me personally to express his excitement. After talking with him, I knew we had to get him to come to Alliance. He was so kind and eager to work with us. Through donations from each center and a generous donation from a St. Agnes parent, we were able to secure payment to make his visit possible. Bruce graciously agreed to visit each school sharing his talents as an author/illustrator. Each presentation, at each school was absolutely amazing.”
Students from Head Start received a donation from the Fraternal Order of Police, which was used to purchase a copy of “Simpson’s Sheep Won’t Go To Sleep!” for each student.