Interview withStephanie Teer Author of “I...Am...Cheetah!: The Gift”

INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE TEER AUTHOR OF “I...AM...CHEETAH!: THE GIFT”

Stephanie Teer truly believes that a child’s imagination is magical. When her son fell in love with wild animals, she began searching for fictional books that portrayed his favorite animal—The Cheetah! After her search came up empty, she decided to write her first book, I…am… Cheetah! for her son as a gift. It was a gift, which soon turned into The Wild Animal Kids Club series. Hi Stephanie, welcome to Reader Views Kids! Tell us, what is “I...Am...Cheetah!” about? I like to describe my story as an enchanting story of five kids who love wild animals. Three siblings, The Cedillo family, and their friends attend their community Park Day at Safari Park every week. The day starts out like most days, but the little sister runs into a situation where she encounters the park bully, captain of the girl’s soccer team, who thinks that all kids who love animals are a bunch of geeks and nerds. This sparks, the oldest brother, to share a magical secret and create a special club, The Wild Animal Kids Club. The kids soon discover that the power of their imagination and ability to believe that anything is possible opens up a magical portal where they can interact with real live animals. The fun part of the secret club is that the animals are only visible to them. The kids learn that even with the wonder of magic, there is great responsibility. Especially, when the cheetahs run into the soccer’s team net by accident. The kids soon learn that they need to find the courage and the wildlife warrior within themselves to help save the cheetahs. But most importantly, they must find a way to stand up for what they believe in and be proud of who they are. It’s a fun and engaging story for young readers and for older struggling readers. What inspired you to write this story? I wrote this book for my youngest son as a gift. I wanted to write a fictional story that would motivate him to read. At the time, my son hadn’t discovered his love for cheetahs and anything to do with Africa. But he was

also a struggling reader and understood that for his age, he wasn’t able to read books at his level. He was embarrassed by books that he could read. In several books, I found that he struggled mostly with the vocabulary. There was no joy or motivation in reading on his own. He loved when I read to him, but he didn’t want to struggle on his own. We’d also been studying concepts around conservation, and he was fascinated with people who dedicated their lives to saving animals. We actually met Dr. Laurie Marker, from the Cheetah Conservation Fund, when she was touring in the US. Her efforts to save the cheetah in Namibia gave me the final push to write engaging stories that also helped children learn about endangered animals. This is the first book in a series, what kinds of animals will you feature in subsequent stories? How many books are planned for the series? There are five books in the series. The animals featured, include the cheetah, wolves, red pandas, tigers and the last book will be the polar bear. I also have a higher-level middle grades series for ages 9-12 to follow the end of this series with the same characters.

Read the complete interview with Stephanie Teer

By Sheri Hoyte