What started out as a story George Finguerra told his grandchildren in the car on the ride to piano lessons turned into a children’s science fiction novel with a message for young kids to get involved with protecting the environment. The Westbury resident hopes that kids will love the story of The Cube, which follows a brother and sister into a new dimension, and that they will also join the millions of youth clubs dedicated to helping the environment after reading.
Finguerra was driving two of his granddaughters, who live in Port Washington, to piano lessons one day when the girls began acting up. After telling the girls the story he says has always been developing in his mind, the girls wanted more. A few days after Finguerra finished telling his granddaughters the story, one called to ask if he would write the story down, come to her class and be the mystery reader at Sousa Elementary School.
“I sat down and there were about 23 eight year olds,” said Finguerra. “I told them I wrote this book and I would read the first chapter, then ask if they would like me to continue. After the first chapter, everyone raised their hands for me to continue. By the fourth chapter not only were all of the children raising their hands, but the two teachers were.”
After reading the story to each of his granddaughters’ classes, the teachers urged Finguerra to develop the story more and then publish it.
“I got lucky because right after that time I became aware of a movement in this country that is going unnoticed,” said Finguerra. “Children are beginning to take a very active interest in the environment. They should because these are the children who are going to inherit the planet. I began to do some research. They original story is science fiction, but I wanted to incorporate an awareness of the environment by children.”
The 18-chapter children’s novel, with illustrations by Finguerra’s childhood friend Dominick Taranto at the start of each chapter, is aimed at kids ages seven to 13. The Cube follows Ken and Kathryn, a brother and sister that delve into a different dimension while hiking the Adirondack Mountains. The two siblings learn about the importance of keeping their environment safe and later bring that knowledge back into their own world to explain to others that it is their duty to care for the environment. At one point in the book, Ken gives his friend, Jason, a sermon on the negative impact of littering and how it will affect future generations.
“The most significant action that [Ken and Kathryn] take, and it seems like such a small little thing, is at the fair,” said Finguerra, explaining the scene where the siblings organize to help pick up blown away paper products. “How many times are you at a fair or big family picnic or park and it’s a windy day and paper flies everywhere. Where does that paper go? It’s at a level that kids can identify with. It’s something they can easily understand, that a lot of these parks get overrun with trash, that it builds up or gets into the ground.”
“Children are beginning to take a very active interest in the environment. They should because these are the children who are going to inherit the planet.”
Along with teaching children the importance of preserving the environment, Finguerra offers many other lessons in his novel. The Cube deals with choices of morality, teaching kids to make the right decisions. Because there is so much violence on television and in video games, Finguerra said it was necessary that he keep violence out of his book as well.
“The Cube deals with the loving and respectful relationship between a brother and a sister, a father and a son, a mother and a daughter and children and their community,” said Finguerra. “We need to have more of that kind of writing. Less emphasis on the violence and more emphasis on relationships that are working. I think those relationships represent the majority of the relationships we have in the world.”
After selling more than 200 copies and receiving rave reviews from children he reads the book to, Finguerra believes that he will write a sequel to The Cube.
“The book is dedicated to the Sousa Elementary school because were it not for the cooperation of the teachers for allowing me to repeatedly go in and read to the children, I would not have the gotten it off the ground,” said Finguerra. “Each time I did that the children and the teachers motivated me to go on.”
The Cube is available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle format.
