Although it’s always hard not to find child prodigies fascinating, it’s also true that we never really know when the kids in our neighborhoods will impress us either.
Whether we’re talking about a child who’s already started on the road to independence before they’ve even hit their second birthday or one who revealed more about their home life in a drawing than even their parents realized, the little ones can sometimes show us they’re not to be underestimated.
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So while one little boy’s homemade book might seem a little familiar if you look back on your own memories of the second grade, there’s something a little more grown up about his ambitions and the way he found an audience for it.
Ever since he was a baby, 8-year-old Dillon Helbig has spent quite a lot of time in libraries.
And as he told Good Morning America, that love for libraries blossomed into a dream to see people check out a book he had written from his local branch of the Ada Community Library in Boise, Idaho.
That dream started to germinate when Helbig was five, but he made it a reality back in December.
But of course, he needed to write a book first and by the time that month rolled around, he did it.
As People reported , the result was The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis, an 81-page book written down in a red notebook and illustrated with colored pencils.
The story apparently sees Helbig try to decorate his Christmas tree before the star on top whisks him away through time to the first Thanksgiving. It then transports him to the North Pole and somewhere along the way, the Grinch makes an appearance.
But this was only phase one of the plan, as Helbig felt the need to quietly add it to the children’s picture-book section without anyone noticing.
And as the library’s branch manager Alex Hartman would confirm, he would manage to do this without either any staff members or his grandma noticing.
In Hartman’s words, “It was a sneaky act.”
But while Helbig would tell his mother Susan what he did, he found that it was not on the shelf anymore when he visited again two days later. This led his mom to contact the library and request that it not be thrown away, if they had it.
And not only did library employees consider it too special to dispose of, but they officially added it to their graphic novels section.
As Hartman said, “Dillon is a confident guy and a generous guy. He wanted to share the story. I don’t think it’s a self-promotion thing. He just genuinely wanted other people to be able to enjoy his story.”
And it seems that people have been, as the book already has a waiting list of 55 people who can each take it out for four weeks. However, they can’t renew it due to the high demand.
Helbig’s work has also earned him the library’s first Whoodini Award for best young novelist, which was named after the library’s mascot.
At last report, Helbig is working on a second book called The Jacket Eating Closet , which will feature The Grinch again as well as Helbig’s dog Rusty.
h/t: People
