Retired Waimea Canyon teacher Stormy Bradley, pen name, Stormy Cozad, has used her time away from teaching to write unique and award-winning children’s books. “Last year my first children’s book came out, ‘Tori and the Origami Box,’ it won an
Retired Waimea Canyon teacher Stormy Bradley, pen name, Stormy Cozad, has used her time away from teaching to write unique and award-winning children’s books. “Last year my first children’s book came out, ‘Tori and the Origami Box,’ it won an Honorable Mention award in the Children’s Book category,” said Cozad.
Her new book “Uncle Harry’s Junkalunka Car” has just been released. “The kernel to ‘Uncle Harry’ began years ago with Harry Hamamura, the Shell gas station owner in Kalaheo. He used to tell me about adventures he had with his own kids in the cane fields fishing with his junkalunka car. The phrase stuck. After he passed away in 2000, I asked his wife and kids if I could write about their adventures. They said, ‘Yes,’ but it took a while for the story to emerge,” said Cozad.
What began as a homework assignment for Mrs. Agee’s Kalaheo class last year will come to a fruitful end next week. When the former teacher was invited to Agee’s class to share “Tori and the Origami Box” and talk about the writing process, “I also read my then-unfinished story, ‘Uncle Harry’s Junkalunka Car,’ and Mrs. Agee gave them homework to ‘finish’ the story. If I used any of their ideas to finish the story, I promised to mention their names in the dedication of my next book,” she said.
Cozad will be giving a small award to four students in Mrs. Agee’s writing class at Kalaheo School on Tuesday, from 8 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. “I won many writing contests when I was young, and those contests are what kept the writing spark alive for me,” she said.
