Author! Author! Charisma loves school so much she wrote a book about it

SANFORD, Florida – Charisma Lowery loves fractions, which is not something you hear every day from a third-grader, but she does.

Mixed fractions, improper fractions – bring ’em on.

Charisma, 7, loves fractions so much that one morning while in the second grade, she jumped out of her mom’s car during drop-off and ran to the front door of her school because she knew fractions were on the menu during math class.

That’s how Charisma began the book she wrote during the 2023-24 school year as part of a schoolwide project at Prodigy Academy Advance Learning Center, the K-8 private school in Sanford that she attends with the help of a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

The scholarship is funded by corporate donations to Step Up For Students, which manages education choice scholarships for K-12 schoolchildren in Florida.

Megan Allen, Prodigy’s CEO and founder, had each student write a book about a topic of their choice. The books were printed and are available on Amazon.

“Charisma Goes to School” is about a day when Charisma’s class is learning about and being quizzed on fractions.

Spoiler alert: She aced the quiz.

“It's me going to school and how it feels and telling people how cool school feels like to me,” Charisma said.

What’s so cool about it?

“I get to learn stuff,” she said.

Math, science and social studies are her favorite classes. History, not so much.

Allen called Charisma the “ideal student” for her work ethic and her ability to learn the material. Charisma arrived in kindergarten with reading and math skills above her grade level. So, she skipped the first grade.

“Charisma is super, super, super smart, almost too smart,” joked her mom, Kim. “She uses words like ‘inappropriate’ instead of ‘bad’.”

Charisma said she’d like to be a teacher or a gymnast. Maybe an author.

“Charisma has told me since she was 2 that when she turned 34 she will be on the moon, and she has stuck to it,” Kim said. “That is a statement she makes frequently. ‘When I'm 34, I'll be on the moon.’ So, I see her in a science career, maybe teaching science, but I definitely see her in science.”

Kim wanted Charisma to attend a private school to learn in a small environment with more one-on-one attention from teachers and staff. Kim worried Charisma would get lost in a large educational setting.

Kim toured Prodigy Academy and said she felt comfortable with the setting and with Allen and her staff. And if she felt comfortable, she knew Charisma would, too.

“The fact that she gets to be here in a small environment with people that actually care about her and her future has definitely made her blossom into the child that she is right now,” Kim said.

Their future was one of the reasons Allen had the students write books.

“I love giving the kids skills where they can take into their adulthood,” Allen said. “It was a way to start developing different skills and allow each kid to see this is something possible. A lot of times we don't do things because we don't know it's possible. So, the earlier we can expose them to things, to know these things are possible, the more they are more likely to continue doing it.”

The fledgling authors produced works that included superheroes, magic pets, a meteor that gives a boy wolf-like powers, and a menacing sea monster. They spent a month writing. The books were published last spring.

Charisma and her classmates not only wrote the stories, they also picked the art and saw the books through nearly all phases of production. They even kept the profit from the Amazon sales.

“When the book came out with my daughter's name on it, I was super, super proud. Proud is an understatement,” Kim said.

Kim owns a full-service saloon. On the front desk just above a candy dish is a picture of Charisma and the cover of “Charisma Goes to School.”

“My clients come in and say, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s so cool!’ I say, ‘Yeah that’s cool. It’s even cooler when you buy it,’” Kim said.

This year, Allen is teaching the students how to market their books with T-shirts and mugs. The students are also designing Christmas wrapping paper they can sell. So, marketing and finance are on tap this school year.

And more writing and publishing.

At the end of each school year, Allen asks her students for feedback on what they liked and didn’t like. Overwhelmingly, the students said they loved writing books and wanted to do it again this year.

“Some even started over the summer,” Allen said. “Some of the older ones want to write chapter books. I said sure, give it a try.”

Charisma is going to continue with her story, though it takes place a few years in the future.

“Teenage Charisma,” she said.

Teenage Charisma is going to protect her classmates from bullies.

“That’s Charisma,” Kim said. “She’s a defender.”

And a published author.

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].