12-year-old on literary adventure

WHITEFISH, Mont. – Baxter Owen Graham couldn’t help himself.

“The truth of the matter is,” the young Whitefish author’s dad, Bob Graham, had just said, “that when Baxter gets involved, people buy books. He walks into a store and they sell.”

“It’s my 12-year-old charm,” Baxter nodded confidently.

In April, Baxter came out with his inaugural children’s book, “Old King Stinky Toes.”

“Stinky Toes” is a medieval tale of a kind-hearted but smelly-toed king who saved his subjects from a fearsome dragon, despite their continual ridicule of the monarch.

The book has been five years in the making, born when Baxter was 7 and his dad challenged him to create a story to finish the prompt, “Old King Stinky Toes was a very stinky man …”

The tale flowed in minutes from the young boy’s fertile imagination. He memorized and repeated the lines so often that, in sheer self-defense, his father typed it into his computer so Baxter could give it a rest.

There it lay until a year or so ago, when Bob rediscovered it as he swapped computers. Together they dusted it off, realized what a good story Baxter had, then set about learning what it takes to publish a book. In the process, they enlisted the artistic help of Baxter’s former fourth-grade teacher and mentor, James Martin.

Today, the locally famous author has been meeting some measure of success in his newfound career.

The Grahams shared one secret to that 12-year-old panache.

At book signings – he’s held four at bookstores and another in the Whitefish public library so far, and is planning a summer tour schedule to Spokane, Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver and Chicago (where he has family, too) – he doesn’t wait for browsers to come to him.

He walks up to them, holds out a colorful copy of the slim, hard-bound volume and asks, “Would you like to see my book?”

He nearly always gets an open reception, his dad said.

Sometimes shoppers just take a bookmark, sometimes they buy the book then and there, sometimes they return later for a copy. But they always stop and take a look.

At the University Book Store in Missoula, he sold 13 books during the two-hour book signing.

Now, a couple of “major book publishers” – Bob declined to elaborate – have been in touch regarding their interest in distributing “Old King Stinky Toes.”

“It seems to have a little momentum so far,” he said. “We don’t know where this will go.”

“I’m really excited about it. Any kid wants to make money,” the young Graham said, grinning. But immediately he ducked and confessed “that’s not the real reason.” He likes traveling and seeing people.

“There’s a lot of these books out there,” brewing in children’s imaginations across the country, Bob said. It’s only that parents, teachers and publishers need to get involved in that process.

In the Grahams’ case, that involvement became a family education.

Not long after the story came back to light, they realized its medieval tone lent itself to verse and set about converting Baxter’s prose into iambic pentameter.

It wasn’t easy. Under the tutelage of Baxter’s former English teacher, Bruce Guthrie, they learned the cadence of Shakespeare, Chaucer and Marlowe. Baxter’s mom, Jackie, pooled brain power with them as they worked four months retrofitting Baxter’s story to iambic pentameter without losing the story’s flair.

By then Martin, Baxter’s fourth-grade teacher at Cross Currents Christian School, had become an integral member of the team.

The Grahams invited Martin to illustrate the book but, too busy teaching then, he let the idea percolate until signing on with the project last year.

They learned a few things, too, as they looked into publishers. The book needed to be 32 pages; it took some artistic wrangling, but they did it.

To stay true to their vision and retain creative control, they had to forgo traditional publishing conventions and produce their own illustrations and page design.

“Part of the whole process was where do we draw the line?” Martin said. “The pictures support the story, the story supports the pictures. You can’t skimp in any area.”

And there was more – much more.

“The whole thing took six months to learn the publishing process,” Bob said.

“And remember,” Baxter piped in, “I’m a kid. Time doesn’t fly for me.”

But when he saw his first book, it all snapped into place.

“My eyes burned,” as he opened the freshly delivered carton and lifted out the first volume, Baxter said. “That was actually my book. It was done.”

He wasted no time in hawking a few copies at Montana Coffee Traders. They hit up some of the local bookstores. But Baxter took a purely practical point of view and headed for the toy store.

“It’s in Imagination Station now,” he said. “No offense, but kids go into toy stores more than they go into bookstores.”

Baxter – repeating his mantra, “I’m just a kid having fun” – is spreading the word that other kids can have that same self-assurance without losing their “kid-ness.”

At local schools and the public library this spring, he let them see he’s pretty normal. And if he can do it, he told them, they can, too.

Generally, he has them prove it to themselves by making their own books before he leaves.

That focus was not lost on Baxter’s dad.

“It’s more important to get the ideas and creativity down on paper than to get the comma in the right place,” Bob said. “When you stop him in midstream to put in the comma, you destroy his creativity.”

The finished book, arising from the team’s synergy, is half drawings and half story line.

“But it’s the ideas” that can’t be found in the common marketplace, Bob said. “You can get draw-ers a dime a dozen, but you can’t buy the words.”

After “Stinky Toes” is duly promoted and running under its own power, Baxter is poised to launch his next book.

“Bawks – Got a Problem” is a compilation of his cartooned and slightly black humor. Ostensibly, it is based on his pet rooster Bawks. In reality, it’s a thinly veiled take on life through Baxter’s experiences – a chicken next to a chopping block, in translation, is Baxter awaiting his math lesson.

Leafing through his portfolio of slightly bizarre cartoons featuring birds in all phases of conversation that really should be psychoanalyzed, Baxter grins and Bob shakes his head.

“He’s a little bit out there,” he said with a wry smile. “Kind of on the dark side with his humor.”

Waiting in the wings is “The Nine Orbs,” another book that he expects to publish just as soon as he can finish it.

And then “Attitude Monsters,” written in response to his dad’s directive one day to write about anger instead of indulging a bad attitude, could be next.

The book business can be work, Baxter admitted, but he doesn’t let that rule him.

“I’m the kid,” he defined his role on the team. Yes, he conceded his dad’s point that he has a constant flow of ideas. “But I do play.”