Ant in the Cellar

Danielle Rosenblatt is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English and Creative Writing. Ms. Rosenblatt runs a literacy program at Penn¿s Kelly Writers House where she teaches Creative Writing to adolescents. She started writing her children¿s book, The Ant in the Cellar, in the summer of 2004. She had just finished her sophomore year in college and was working at the Sayre Beacon, an inner city summer camp in West Philadelphia, as the Literacy and Creative Writing teacher teaching twenty children, ages five to fourteen year olds. Her job was to come up with a lesson plan that would engage them all at the same time! So she went home and wrote her own poem and told the students that she was the ¿mystery author.¿ They loved it¿and they wanted more. So she went home and wrote more. She learned exactly what would make them laugh, as well as keep their attention. It was then that it occurred to her that this was the book she had always wanted to write¿the book that she needed to write. A book that could transcend age, race, and demographics; a book that could be read and understood on different levels; a book that could speak to children and their parents; a book that encouraged curiosity, dialogue and learning; a book that could give children from all over a poem to take home. In the end, their world at the Sayre Beacon¿where five year olds and fourteen year olds could learn together; and where she, a college student from Penn could learn to fit in among them, became the fantastical world of her story, where a child¿s imagination is the only limit: The Ant in the Cellar.Rosenblatt, Danielle is the author of 'Ant in the Cellar', published 2007 under ISBN 9780978898533 and ISBN 0978898532.