"I was staring at this red bird on my white screen and I was like, 'You're going to change my life.'"
7 years ago as I was sitting in my loft when this idea flew into my head, I wonder if I can make a bird out of a comma? I ran to the computer, and within five minutes I had made Red Fred. I thought to myself, What if this bird could mean something more? I deconstructed him. Pulled him apart. Looked at his huge comma body, his two exclamation mark legs...comma; to pause, exclamation; to rejoice.
Pause and rejoice. What a wonderful way to stop and punctuate each splendid day. But there was even more that this symbolic character wanted to do. To be utilized as a magic tool to help children in extraordinary circumstances create stories and characters of their own...thus began, The Red Fred Project.
"He is the most perfect child that could've done this. Dazzling, blazing, sunlight child."
The first book: Nathan Glad, 7, uses a wheelchair and has osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, which makes him unable to do many things. However, his imagination and creativity are thriving and the story in his head was bursting to come out and be shared.
The main character of Nathan's book is a bird who was too afraid to fly. It took a troop of other birds to convince him to leave the nest, and in the end the tiny bird bests a dragon, is healed by a magical tiger and becomes one of the fastest-flying birds in the sky. Click or scan QR code to buy his book.
His book, which holds a place in the U.S. Library of Congress, also helps Nathan connect with his peers. Kids can check out the book at the school library or read it with their parents and "see that he's more than just a little, tiny kid in a wheelchair. He has the ability to tell stories and play and have fun, and he has the imagination that they all have."
Meet Dallas Graham
"My hopes are that the future collection of 50 books will one day grace hospital and school libraries nationwide, teaching lessons that can only be learned from the experiences of the uniquely challenged kids who created them."
---Dallas Graham
Lifestyle/cover feature
14 THEBEAUTYBATTALION.COM