Melody Devenney, AIU English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, wrote a children’s book that spent a week as an Amazon No. 1 New Release in the ESL category – "Filled Perfectly and Wrapped in Culture, A Story of Family, Food and Friends." Melody has worked with the AIU for four years and currently teaches in the West Jefferson Hills School District with the book's illustrator, art teacher Alexandra (Aly) Crouse Bowser.

Publishing "Filled Perfectly and Wrapped in Culture" is the realization of Melody’s childhood dream to write a book and the catalyst for a new scholarship that will help others pursue dreams of higher education. (More on that later.)

The book is centered around an ESL classroom in which a teacher invites her students of varying international backgrounds to prepare and share food from their respective cultures. The teacher is the main character and based on Melody’s mother, who passed away two years ago, and one of the students is based on her niece.

Melody was inspired to write while standing in front of a display of books by Latina women in Target during Hispanic Heritage Month.

“I grabbed some of the books and decided that I want to do this,” she says. “I went home that night and I wrote it.”

Melody’s mother, the daughter of a first-generation Puerto Rican immigrant, learned Spanish as her first language. “[My mom and her siblings] learned Spanish at home because my grandmother didn’t speak English well,” says Melody. “My mom really didn’t learn English until she started kindergarten.”

Like characters in her book, Melody’s family celebrates Puerto Rico’s rich culture. “My whole family speaks Spanish, eats Puerto Rican food and listens to salsa music,” she says. “We try to keep that alive.”

After finishing the first draft, she shared it with her elementary and high school students. Melody’s second graders read the story aloud while she noted words they couldn’t read or understand – and made changes as necessary. Some words, like the names of the international foods or what people from other countries call their parents, will still be unfamiliar to some readers, but the context is there, she says.

She also got feedback from students about their respective cultures. “If they read something about their country and said, ‘No, it’s not exactly like that’ – or ‘No, we don’t call our family members that,’ I changed it accordingly.”

She started meeting with different illustrators this past fall but couldn’t find the right fit. When she mentioned her dilemma to a coworker in Gill Hall Elementary, she was pleasantly surprised to learn that the school’s art teacher illustrates books.

Because it was Melody’s first year teaching in Gill Hall, she hadn’t yet met many other teachers there. She emailed Aly, and the rest is history.

“Once [Aly] came aboard, we had several meetings about which characters were most important to me.” Melody wanted the characters based on her mom and niece to look like their real-life counterparts.

The illustration process spanned October through January, during which Melody approved sketches before Aly added color.

Melody learned to navigate the self-publishing process by watching videos and reading articles online. In January, she received approval from Amazon and Barnes and Noble to sell the book as a print-on-demand paperback through their retail platforms. The book went on sale January 22, and just six days later, it became the No. 1 new release in Amazon’s ESL category.

Melody was in class when she received an email from Amazon about what it means when your book goes to No. 1. At first, she thought it was just a general email explaining the criteria. “And then I went to the Amazon page, just to look and see, and it said No. 1. And I literally cried,” she says with a laugh. “My students were looking at me like… ‘What’s going on?’ I took a screenshot and sent it to the illustrator and after that, the whole school knew.”

To celebrate that exciting milestone, the principals of Gill Hall Elementary and McClellan Elementary, where Aly also teaches, bought a copy for each of their teachers – more than 40 copies total.

The book has been purchased by people in three other countries and has sold more than 300 copies in the first four months. At the time of this writing, the book had earned 11 Amazon ratings, all five out of five stars.

Melody says neither she nor the illustrator know all the people who wrote reviews. “It’s a really great feeling to know that it’s getting out there to people we don’t know, and they are actually enjoying it.”

In years past, Melody had taught a lot of high school seniors, who often asked her about scholarship opportunities. Wanting to give back, Melody is donating her portion of the book’s proceeds to create Devenney's Cultural Awareness Fund for English Language Learners, a scholarship that will be annually awarded to at least one ESL student.

What’s next for Melody as a published author? “I think I would try to make a series, not necessarily from this book, but about ESL students in general. So I think there will be more in the future.”

Filled Perfectly and Wrapped in Culture: A Story of Family, Food and Friends, by Melody Devenney, is available for $14.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article was originally published in April 2022.