5-year-old from West Windsor wins NJ Network’s writing conest
By: Jane Karlicek
A West Windsor Township resident has written and illustrated a children’s book that has won first place in New Jersey Network’s Reading Rainbow’s “Young Writers and Illustrators Contest.”
And she’s only been a resident a short time.
Erica Borsack, the author and illustrator of “Erica’s Applesauce,” is only 5 years old and a kindergartner at the Maurice Hawk School in West Windsor. Her book won first place in the kindergarten division and will be entered in the national competition.
Erica is very proud of her eight-page book that tells the tale of Erica making applesauce with her grandpa and her mommy. And she’s very excited to go to the Barnes & Noble bookstore Saturday to be honored for her winning book.
“She worked very, very hard on it,” said her mom, Charlene Borsack. “It took her about two weeks from start to finish. We couldn’t be prouder.”
“Erica’s Applesauce” reads, in part, “Erica passes the crushed apples with the water in the bowl back to Grandpa. Grandpa cooks the crushed apples with the water in a pot on the stove. Then Grandpa passes them back to Erica. Now Erica has the applesauce. Yum, yum, yum! Erica ate it all up.”
“She had the story in her head and I wrote it down,” Ms. Borsack said. Then Erica took a pencil and started to draw the pictures that would illustrate her story. If she didn’t like the picture, she would erase it and start all over, Ms. Borsack said.
Erica then colored her drawings with her favorite color.
“In every picture, the oven is purple,” Erica said.
Erica said she is a good colorer — something which her grandpa must have passed down to her.
“He’s a really good artist, too,” she said.
And, Erica pointed out, in each picture, the clock on the oven changes time.
“My mom helped me,” she said.
The inspiration behind the story came one day after school, Ms. Borsack said.
Erica attends the morning, half-day kindergarten program in West Windsor. One day after school, Erica wanted to make applesauce as an afternoon activity. While Erica scraped the inside of an apple, her mom told her the story of how she used to make baked apples with Erica’s grandfather.
Later that afternoon, when Erica’s brother, David, a third-grader at the same elementary school, came home from school, the application to enter a story in the Reading Rainbow’s sixth annual “Young Writers and Illustrators Contest” was in his backpack. Erica told her mom, “I have a story about making applesauce,” Ms. Borsack said. “She rattled it all off.”
Erica dedicated the book to her Auntie Pearl, who died when Erica was a baby.
The contest was sponsored by NJN’s “Reading Rainbow,” an Emmy-award winning Public Broadcasting Service series on the pleasure of reading. “Reading Rainbow” airs weekday mornings at 10:30 a.m. More than 600 children, grades K-3 from throughout the state and surrounding areas, entered the contest.
While Erica doesn’t quite feel like a celebrity yet, she said she did autograph a copy of her book for her principal.