Renton High School students in teacher Jessica DiAsio’s leadership classes recently created illustrated children’s books which they delivered and read to the Rise and Shine Preschool in Renton.

DiAsio’s classes are heavily involved in community service and this was a way for students to get involved in their community and encourage literacy, the teacher said.

“The idea came from when I was actually in high school,” said DiAsio. “I was in a creative writing class, which I absolutely loved and my teacher had us create our own stories.”

It took her 50 students about two weeks to create the story books, which they also combined with a book drive to collect children’s books. The student-created books all follow a “fortunately, unfortunately” pattern to tell their morals.

Student Tai Anthony McMillan’s book dealt with a young boy who develops a desire to eat vegetables.

“When I went over there to the preschool, it was pretty cool because my brother he went to that preschool, when he was little and so did my cousin,” said McMillan. “It was a nice little thing to do to give back to the preschool.”

The Renton students learned the power they have to influence the younger generation in their community with the project.

“I learned that it’s very valuable for bigger kids like us to go and visit younger students because we could like influence them,” said Andrew Galapon.

Students collected a number childrens’ books for the project.

“They’re all just do adorable and so nice,” said student Ledashia Orndorff, of the preschoolers. “They wanted us to keep reading to them even though we had to leave. So that was cool.”

DiAsio loved the experience and looked at it as a way for her students to inspire a younger generation.

“Yeah it was pretty cute seeing them all cuddled up next to leadership students,” she said. “Their wide-eyes – you could just see their imaginations going. It was a really neat thing to see them all together bonding and impacting the little kiddos.”