Local Author Wants Kids to Know Storms Should be Respected Not Feared

You might know the name, Maria Wallace, from seeing us share her beautiful and powerful storm photography. You might not know, she's got a whole lot more on her plate than that, by choice. Maria has written and published six fiction novels and the latest venture includes working on a children's series.

Wallace explained it as part of an effort to make children weather aware and is tied to her social media page on Facebook, "Chasing Grace."

The characters in Shayla Garden Chronicles are two characters who teach about gardening and nature, how to handle wildlife and how to handle when a hailstorm is coming and about to knock out all of your tomato plants.

She said it's a way to teach kids and people how to take care of growing a garden and growing their own food.

That's why she includes a recipe for all of that extra zucchini you end up with at the end of the growing season.

And there's something for the parents too.

"And then there's like a natural cleaning hack that I do every Friday at 7: 30 and then on Chasing Grace it's the same thing there's two weather photos that are posted and then on Fridays at 7 o'clock Professor Testino teaches something about some kind of weather phenomenon."

And teaching about weather, she said, makes it less scary for children.

"I think a lot of kids are intimidated by weather you know lightning is extremely bright extremely loud. It can be terrifying and I wanna desensitized children to that. I want to teach him that weather isn't something that you need to be afraid of. It's something that you can be respectful of and still see the beauty, and I think you can carry that into life. You know you deal with things that are stressful, and instead of looking at it as a negative you can look at it as a positive. What can I learn from this? What's the beauty that I can find in this negative situation?"

Brining her love of weather with her love of teaching just seemed to fit to pull these two passions together in one place.

"All ages is my goal so you have you know the beautiful weather photo but a lot of the adults like but it comes with little captions from with talkies with like this this cute little humor and and then we have the teaching side of it too, where adults can learn through the text, but you also have this cute little cartoon that kids can learn from so it's something that parents can sit down with their kids and show them the page and they know it's family friendly content and it's also educational and everybody get something out of it."

Plans for the future for this Southeast Colorado author and photographer are plenty full.

"I definitely wanna have a decent series chasing Grace and Sheila Garden Chronicles. I would say in 10 years. I'm gonna be leaning more toward curriculum for schools," hopefully by then the books will be kicking off and in children are really resonating with these characters and then being able to turn it into something that they can learn at school that again is wholesome it's teaching you how to take care of yourself how to take care of nature and how to appreciate nature disconnect from electronics go outside. There's a sunset every night it's really pretty and it's free. You can enjoy it and I just want to teach people."

While Wallace will still be out snapping photos of the storm she hopes you take in the advice she offers.

"Disconnect you know go out and just breathe the fresh air and look at the beautiful sunset. Take a moment to just you know disconnect and just calm down and just enjoy nature for a minute."

(Wallace's characters )

Maria Wallace

~Anne Boswell, Colorado News Your Way, anneboswell@coloradonewsyourway.com