Behind the scenes of "The Pi Day Pirates"

The Warrior Math Team, comprised of students from 6th-8th grade Shirland School students, took a moment during the week of Pi Day to celebrate the publication of their book, "The Pi Day Pirates." The team shared their experience writing this children's book with WIFR, the crowd at the Pi Day Ice Hogs game, and with Rockton-Roscoe News.

This book, written and illustrated by the Warrior math team, invites readers to follow the adventures of twin pirates Rad and Dia ("radius" and "diameter") on their treasure hunt to find an island full of pie. The way to the prize is marked by "pi, puns, and pirates."

Throughout the half hour of my interview, a few things became deeply clear about the math team's goals in writing this book. First, it was that every book has a moral to its story. The moral to this one was that children should enjoy math and not give up on it. While the book has lots of riddles, the authors noted when people sometimes give up on riddles at the first attempt, they "should keep trying to figure it out and stick it out."

Then, during the back half of the interview, the students made it very clear why the proceeds from this book would benefit St. Jude's Research Hospital.

"They are trying to cure cancer," one student said. "There are a lot of kids with cancer that are our age area."

Jordan Paul, 7th grade math team member, said, "I also do want to add on that when, like, people have cancer obviously most of the time they are hospitalized at some point and if they are hospitalized they aren't really able to, like, go to school and actually learn from school during that time. So, it's really nice to be able to make a book that they are able to read while in the hospital that can sometimes teach them a little bit."

Another math team member said that when kids are hospitalized, "they might not get much enjoyment or entertainment from being there. So with that extra money, you can help get crafts or activities that the kids can actually do to make it more fun or entertained while they're in the hospital."

The students shared multiple details about the process of writing "The Pi Day Pirates," from creation to putting it on the page and publishing it. Why pirates, for example? The Warrior Math Team shirt has Captain Jack Sparrow on it, and, as far as they could tell, there were no pirate books about math. They figure that this is the first pirate book about math.

When it came to writing the book, the students noticed that they eventually organically settled into roles that best suited their strengths. "Who's the best at editing? Writing? Not great at writing. Illustrations!" It looked like whoever started a task was the one to take it on. With one person starting to write, "that settled it" for the math team.

Their advisor, Ms. Hannah Pals, teacher and math team coach at Shirland, arranged the book's publishing on Amazon but truly took on the role of advisor for the writing process by helping students work through and solve issues related to writing and illustrations. Ms. Pals shared that she "checked over the book once or twice. The kids did everything else. All the writing, coloring, drawing."

She then encouraged students to ask other teachers for help with writing, with a little self-deprecation that demonstrated she knew exactly what she was doing. "Why would you ask me ask me to check it over? That's why I teach math!" She has also coached the robotics team and even helped with the school play.

This is the first book to be published by the math team. When asked how much they would like to write and publish another book, hands went up. Students shared that this first time really helped them empathize with what other children's book authors went through and that they are better equipped to do this again. "You can tell that, even when they are 20-30 pages, it must have taken a while. Art. Making sure words make sense to kids." Being mindful about the message.

One younger member of the team shared that if they, or any other curious potential children's author, were writing another book, it "would be very smart to have a team and someone to help you like Ms. Pals." Students agreed that she watched over and helped find a happy medium of "not making it too simple or too complicated." Furthermore, "Ms. Pals made it a fun process that was achievable."

The students celebrated and somewhat capped this experience with a cross-promotion at a Rockford Ice Hogs on, of all days, Pi Day. The math team how this event was in the planning stage for a while. Shortly after they began writing and illustrating the book, members of the math team attended a career day where the Ice Hogs had a booth. A few of the students figured there was potential for branding with the Ice Hogs, but needed to persuade the front office to give them an audience. So they set out drafting, revising, and presenting a speech. Ms. Pals had them practice, but they completely wrote it. And that led to the picture you see at the top of the article.

Towards the end of our hour together, Jordan Paul stated that it was interesting that one of the smallest schools in the area was doing something so big. Many would agree with that. Your humble author thinks one reason for this is that amazing things can happen in the classroom when students take the lead and a teacher coaches, rather than instructs, them along the way.

Softcover and digital copies of "The Pi Day Pirates" are currently available at Amazon via the following link: https://tinyurl.com/zhs3wawz. All proceeds benefit St. Judes Research Hospital.