Try to improve just a tiny bit today.
That’s the lesson authors Chad Morris and Shelly Brown brought to Iola students and others this week.
The authors came to Iola on Thursday to talk about their book, “Squint,” which was selected as the Iola Reads Young Adult Selection for 2021.
They met with Iola Middle School students in the morning, and Lincoln students in the afternoon ahead of a community presentation at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center that evening.
Morris and Brown, who are married with five children, talked about the three books they’ve written together.
Each one has a lesson:
— A little kindness can go a long way.
— See the awesome.
— Be brave and talk.
The authors encouraged students to pick at least one of the three lessons and practice working on it.
Mustaches for Maddie
Their first book was inspired by their daughter, Maddie, who had a brain tumor.
Brown told the story of discovering something was wrong with Maddie. When she was 9 years old, Brown and Maddie were making guacamole. Brown tossed an avocado to her daughter, but she didn’t catch it.
Sometimes, her hands didn’t work, she told her mom.
That led to a quest to find out what was wrong and brain surgery to remove a tumor the size of two golf balls.
“Sometimes, people are going through hard times, and we just don’t know what to do,” Brown said.
As Maddie was recovering from surgery, a cousin decided to post a picture of herself wearing a silly blue fake mustache. She encouraged friends and family to post pictures of themselves on social media wearing mustaches, with the #mustachesformaddie hashtag.
“She thought, when Maddie comes out of surgery, she’ll know we were thinking of her. And she’ll laugh because we look ridiculous,” Brown said.
It worked.
In fact, it went viral.
Soon, hundreds of people across the country were taking pictures of themselves wearing fake mustaches and tagging it for Maddie.
“Sometimes, little things we do can make a really big difference,” Brown said.
