Ellen Javernick was 9 years old when she first published an article in a children\u2019s magazine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I would grow up to be a writer,\u201d Javernick said.<\/p>\n
She did just that, and now the 87-year-old schoolteacher and children\u2019s book author has written another book, \u201cAwesome of the Day,\u201d which encourages young people to find something each day that makes it good, even if the rest has been bad.<\/p>\n
She still teaches kindergarten at Garfield Elementary in Loveland, and has taught either preschool or kindergarten since the 1960s, in addition to being a prolific children\u2019s author.<\/p>\n
Maintaining her ability to work a full-time teaching job, an exhausting prospect for someone even a third her age, while also publishing best-selling children\u2019s fiction, curriculum materials and other written work, simply requires that she stay active, Javernick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go to the rec center a lot,\u201d she said. \u201cYesterday I played tennis. I\u2019m taking pickleball lessons. I think if you want to be active, you\u2019re active. If you want to be out and around people, you\u2019re out and around people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAwesome of the Day\u201d is far from Javernick\u2019s first published children\u2019s book. \u201cWhat If Everybody Did That?\u201d was her first effort, published over 40 years ago, has seen two editions and sold over a million copies.<\/p>\n
The book has become a staple in classrooms across the country for its lessons about prosocial behavior, asking young people \u201cwhat would happen if everybody did what you are doing right now?\u201d about a variety of topics from littering to whispering in class to leaving coats on the floor.<\/p>\n
Javernick has an eager childlike enthusiasm about her, something that she made explicit when discussing the process of writing for an audience of young people, as opposed to adults.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you have to think like a child first,\u201d she said. \u201cThink about what\u2019s funny to children.\u201d<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t illustrate her own books, nor can she always work with her preferred illustrators, so an added layer of depth to her craft is anticipating how her words will be interpreted by an artist.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the time, I\u2019m thinking, how would that look?\u201d she said. \u201cThe illustrator is part of the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou basically have to think like a child,\u201d she continued. \u201cNot a lot of adverbs, not a lot of adjectives. Basically just subject-verb. You have to learn that those extra words don\u2019t help. You don\u2019t say \u2018the fuzzy cat.\u2019 The illustrator will show you that the cat is fuzzy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of Javernick\u2019s ideas come from the quiet and often overlooked moments in our own lives.<\/p>\n
The premise for her favorite book came from a situation she found herself in when she was caring your her infant grandchild outside Washington, D.C., where her son was living at the time. She would often take her granddaughter for walks in a stroller, and routinely encounter a young boy chasing after a loose dog. Each time, she would help him catch the animal and return him home. After one such incident, the boy turned to her, exhausted, and said, \u2018I wish I\u2019d just gotten a turtle.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That story turned into \u201cThe Birthday Pet,\u201d a story about a boy who receives a variety of pets, ranging from dogs to rats, before finally finding satisfaction with a turtle.<\/p>\n
The same principle applied to her latest book, \u201cAwesome of the Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea for all of us, not just for kids, is to think of the best thing that happened that day,\u201d she said. \u201cThere always is a good thing. I started writing them down myself. I have a notebook where I write down \u2018what was my good thing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: August 3, 2025 at 8:50 AM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellen Javernick was 9 years old when she first published an article in a children\u2019s magazine. \u201cI thought…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":117371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,73411,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-117370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-garfield-elementary-school-ellen-javernick-teacher-87-year-old-awesome-of-the-day","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114968761728446131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}