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Mother, son co-write creation tale. (Family Life).

Article Excerpt
Usually, when kids are sick and have to stay home from school, they watch TV. Or maybe read books.

Not Morgan Martindell. When this 11-year-old recently came down with Lyme disease, he spent the week helping his mother, Jennifer Morgan, write her new book. Correction--their new book. For the past several years, Morgan and Jennifer have been collaborating on a children's version of the story of our universe. Morgan has served as his mom's co-author and official, pre-publication editorial advisor.

Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story, the first of their planned three-part series, was published last spring by Dawn Publications, a small Nevada City, Calif., company. Based on the 1992 book, The Universe Story, co-authored by Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry, environmentalist and cultural historian, and Brian Swimme, mathematical cosmologist, Born With a Bang has sold 6,000 copies since last April. It is written from the perspective of the Universe, as if she were telling the 13-billion-year creation story to her 21st century children.

In October, Learning Magazine gave the book one of its 10 Teachers' Choice Awards of the year. There were over 400 submissions vying for the recognition.

As the environmentally savvy might be wont to say, Jennifer and Morgan's unique parent-child literary effort has been "an organic process," fueled by a time-honored family tradition known as the nightly bedtime story. When Morgan was 6, he and his mom would become storybook characters. According to the dictates of whatever narrative they were reading, they would live "as happily as they could be, as angry as they could be." They had great fun embodying the roar of a ferocious tiger...

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