Stories

Did you know that we have a published author at Charlotte Prep? And she’s only in 4th grade! In fact, Brooke White has just published her second book, ​​Cookie Cat & The Tagalongs, which is over 70 pages long. She wrote her first book, Cupcake the Lying Unicorn, when she was only six years old! 

Brooke was kind enough to sit down with me this week to answer some of the many questions I had for this bright young girl.

What do you like about writing? 

I think it’s really cool that if you just put your words out there they can be read by the whole world. I know people have ordered my books from multiple places across the world, like India.

What was your process when you wrote your first book?

I actually wrote it with a yellow gel pen at my grandma’s house in just one day. Then there were multiple stages of editing. I learned that it’s very important to make sure you're writing something that people will want to read. So my mom and the other editors helped me to do that. At the same time, I worked on my illustrations to go along with the story. After that, a different group of people helped publish the book on Amazon. The whole thing took about a year.

What is your second book about?

It’s about a cookie heist! The title comes from my Girl Scout troop because one of the cookies we sell is called Tagalong. In the book there are five cats, and they are based on my friends and me. They live in Cookietown, a place where only cats live, and since all cats like to take naps, it was easy to steal the cookies while they were all napping. So the five cats have to get the 759,000 boxes of cookies back but to find out who took them, you’ll just have to read the book!

And why is the cover of the book blank? 

So I wanted the cover to be blank to remind everyone they should never judge a book by its cover. I want my books to have a message, like my first book was about what happens when you lie because I was inspired to write it after I told a lie.

Do you have any advice for other students who want to start writing their own books? 

My advice is to make sure it’s meaningful to you. And if you do get it published, you should definitely feel proud even if you don’t think you're the best. In first grade when I published my first book I know I was not the best illustrator in my class, so you shouldn't let that stop you from being proud. And the nice thing about having your book published is that you’ll always be a published author, even if you don’t write any more books after it.

At Charlotte Prep, our students write their own stories — but Brooke is taking that to a new level and we're excited to see what she writes next! If you can’t wait to read her latest book, order your copy on Amazon today.