11-year-old author hosts CWD storytime

YOUNG AUTHOR:
At right, Carley DeMarr, 11, of Cottonwood is a fifth-grader who enjoys writing, illustrating and reading her own stories to younger children and their parents during the Cottonwood Community Library’s preschool story time.

Last week at its preschool story time, Cottonwood Community Library again hosted 11-year-old Carley DeMarr, now a Cottonwood fifth grader and story writer.

"She's really something," said Kenny Howard, Carley's very proud step-dad of the last three years.

It was Carley's second time to read her own illustrated stories to the younger children, said Elaine Lowell, the library's publicist.

Carley has been writing and illustrating stories since she was 5 years old. She has between 35-40 stories to her credit, according to her mother, Dione Howard.

"Once she picks a topic to write about, she can whip an eight-page book out pretty quickly, including all of the drawings. She has been drawing animals since she was 4," Mrs. Howard explained.

Carley told the Valley Post that she enjoys writing stories about dogs and horses the most.

"Some of my stories have people in them," she quickly added.

"Thinking of an idea for a story is pretty hard sometimes," the young author admitted freely.

In her spare time, Carley enjoys reading books written by adult authors. She has read most of the American and Michigan chillers, a book series favored by pre-teens. She is also reading the fourth or fifth book in the "Black Stallion" series, and recently completed reading "Twilight," a thriller about a vampire.

"I like to be scared a little bit in my reading," Carley said.

Carley was among the library's first group of preschool age children that participated in the library's traveling story time when Lowell first started that program in 2002. Carley was not yet 3 years old at the time.

She continued in the traveling story time program until she started attending kindergarten, her mother said.

During the recent library visit, Carley read four stories to the children and shared her illustrating abilities with them, too.

The other children were able to take home copies of Carley's drawings, Lowell said.