Building Character One Adventure at a Time

What's left to do after you've completed law school, built a successful practice, been a Marine, married and fathered three children? For Scott Pryor, the answer was to author a children's book – The Going Green Gang Saves the Nature Preserve.

History

Pryor grew up in Park City, Montana during a time “when instilling character and encouraging hard work in your children was important,” he recalls. As a child, Pryor was always charged with one task or another, always responsible for earning his accomplishments. “I felt useful,” he said.

As we sat under the awning of a coffee shop, rain falling, Pryor told me how important these values were to him when he entered the Marines at age 17. “The Marines gave me a good framework,” he said; “they taught me integrity and strengthened my sense of discipline. Honestly, I was more proud of what I accomplished in the Marines than I was when I received my law degree.”

Coincidentally, a friend of Pryor's he met while doing his undergraduate work turned out to be instrumental in the publishing of his first book.

The Book

With his background, it's no surprise that Pryor wanted to write a book that would teach values like honesty, hard work and ambition to children. “We underestimate our kids,” Pryor said. “It's important to encourage initiative in [children] and to help them achieve their goals.”

The Going Green Gang Saves the Nature Preserve is “our pilot book,” Pryor said. He teamed up with Tamra K. Misseijer – friend, previously published author and wife of his undergraduate buddy – to create the GGG. “Tamra deserves so much credit for the story and character creation,” he noted. Having already published a book, Misseijer was instrumental in their efforts to get off the ground.

The concept is built on an environmental platform, “but it's not a book about going green necessarily,” said Pryor.

To briefly summarize, the GGG finds the nature preserve in pitiful shape – there's trash everywhere, structures are crumbling and the green space is in a general state of disrepair. Together, Solar Sam, Recycle Rita, Ozzie Ozone, Tidy Taj and Patty Planter clean up the preserve. They collaborate. “They have a vision and they do what it takes to make it a reality,” Pryor explained. While the GGG does “spread awareness about environmental issues,” notes the Tate Publishing synopsis, they also strengthen character while teaching kids the importance of teamwork.

The Inspiration

While Pryor's personal history indeed inspired his book, so did his family. “The idea actually came from my mom,” he said; “and my own children have really given me a lot of inspiration.” In fact, one of the characters is modeled directly after his own son. Misseijer has several children, as well, so there were plenty of young kids in their lives from which to draw ideas.

Each member of the GGG has a rounded, well-developed profile that will evolve with them through the future of the series.

A quick story. When one of Pryor's children was in 1st grade, he brought home a pamphlet about recycling. Their family began recycling, and today, it's his youngest child's responsibility, among others, to separate it. “It makes him feel useful and needed,” Pryor added.

This story embodied Pryor's philosophy on character building, as well as his goals for his first book. “People look at me funny when I tell them that all my children, even my five-year-old, have chores and responsibilities. I think it would be bizarre if they didn't,” he said.

The Future

Pryor referred to this first book as a pilot. It explains the formation and naming of the GGG and gives them a platform from which to launch subsequent books. “We're hoping to have a website, and then a cartoon possibly,” he outlined. People would be able to use the website for several things – to share ways in which they've bettered their communities, to build their own room in the GGG's adventure tree house (the tree house, hopefully, will be the focus of the next book).

A lot of what Pryor and Misseijer will be able to accomplish, however, will depend on the success of this first book.

The book will be officially released July 19, 2011, and book signings will be set up throughout your area. These will be excellent times to introduce your entire family – especially your children – to an inspiring, hopeful series of literature. Plus, being able to meet the author is always exciting. It's a short paperback appropriate for children from the time they can read through third or fourth grade, and it's less than $10 dollars.

Pryor concluded: “I guess our ultimate goal for the Going Green Gang books is to build character in our youth, one adventure at a time.”

Visit Tate Publishing to inquire about Pryor's book.