Stephen Nesser stands out among Professor Julie Schumacher’s “Writing Young Adult Fiction” students this fall. First off, he’s about 40 years older than most of his undergraduate classmates; he's already earned a BA degree. Second, he’s the only one whose notes on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are organized as a Chutes & Ladders game board.
When Professor Schumacher asked students to respond to required reading, Nesser began playing with format. “Julie said you can do drawings in your work journal,” says Nesser. “And it just started building.
Nesser retired two years ago from a career as family court evaluator and mediator, but that’s not the whole story. He also has an MFA in conceptual art, and his paintings are in museums in Europe, Australia, and the US, including the Smithsonian. For decades, he’s been entranced by children’s books. This fall he illustrated his first picture book, Child of Wonder, adapted from a song by Marty Haugen (GIA Publications).
Besides the board game, Nesser's course journal now features author portraits, a two-page Nancy Drew comic, and a illustrated booklet inside a fancy envelope. It also includes notes on a recent field trip to the U’s Kerlan Collection, where he found correspondence between an editor and author Christopher Paul Curtis (Bud, Not Buddy) that transformed how Nesser critiques his classmates’ work, and his own.