Clara Oliver Elementary School fifth grader Elijah Robertson loves reading, but says he was growing tired of reading the same types of books. "I love chapter books. I love horror, and sci-fi and fiction," he tells NBC DFW.
Tired of the limited options he was experiencing in the school library, Robertson decided to do some writing. He says, "I wrote three books in one weekend. It's online so my friends can read them virtually. I looked at this fiction book once and saw that it wasn't many pages and it wasn't interesting. So I wrote my own."
Robertson plans on sharing the books with other classmates with the hope of showing them that reading and writing are "fun and essential."
Elizabeth-Reed Smith, the library specialist at Clara Oliver Elementary School says kids like Robertson make her job worth it. She says, "It is my purpose for being here. It motivates me and makes my day. It lets me know that I have a purpose and I am fulfilling it. He even inspires me to do more. He is even writing in a genre where there aren't many authors who look like him. So it's just really cool."
Robertson is also in the African American Success Initiative in the Dallas ISD, a program that the district says was devised to "boost self-esteem in students and give them the tools they need to be successful in and out of the classroom."
