Lion’s Tale Has Happy Ending for Student

THOUSAND OAKS —  It was a fluke, Debi Simpson insists, sitting in her high school library and staring at the children’s book she co-wrote.

Really, she wants a career in medicine, not kiddie lit. Her book? She and her mom knocked it out in 20 minutes on the home computer, at the suggestion of one of her teachers.

“It was supposed to be extra credit,” said Debi, 17, a trace of amazement in her voice. “It wasn’t supposed to be a book.”

But her Westlake High School teacher, Bill Csellak, thought otherwise. After finding an illustrator and scraping up the cash, Csellak published “Lonesome Leo, the Little Lion,” himself.

He has taken the book on the road, hitting book fairs in Burbank and Los Angeles and selling well at both. Now, Csellak is trying to line up signings at bookstores. And once finals at Westlake High School are over, he plans to shop Leo around the major publishing houses to see if anyone bites.

Debi and her mom, Diane, have even started work on a sequel, using the same animal characters.

“When we actually saw it in print, I said to Debi, ‘If there’s a need out there for stories for children that have a moral to them, these characters could do it,’ ” Diane Simpson said.

The moral of “Lonesome Leo” is not to judge a book by its cover, or in this case, a lion by its scent. And it’s one of the reasons that Debi and Diane’s tale made it into print.

Last summer, Csellak suggested to one of his summer school classes that students could earn extra credit by writing a children’s story about a lion and an owl. He wanted to give budding authors a starting point, and the choice of animals was just a whim.

“It was the first thing that came to my mind,” he said.

Debi sprung the assignment on her mother late one night. Unlike her medical-minded daughter, Diane Simpson has long written poems and stories for her family and friends. The two started brainstorming: names, situations, lines of dialogue.

“The ideas bounced off each other,” Diane Simpson said. “She was talking--I was typing.”

The story they concocted follows a lion cub named Leonardo Aloyisius Mortimer Smith. He loves to play games but has no playmates because the other jungle animals run away whenever they smell a lion.

So Leo pours out his misery to a kindly owl who then rounds up monkeys, wart hogs and tigers to play with the cub. Once they get to know Leo, the other animals like him just fine.

“This little lion comes to learn that people are often afraid of what they don’t understand,” Csellak said. “The moral, the lesson the story teaches, is an extremely important one for children.”

And important enough that he told Debi the story should be published. Important enough that he soon began toying with the idea of publishing it himself.

It wouldn’t be cheap. A survey of printers found most would charge between $8,500 and $11,000.

Worse, the story did not yet have any pictures. Neither mother nor daughter claims to be much of an illustrator--”I couldn’t draw with a stencil,” Diane Simpson said--and the first few students who Csellak approached to draw the story didn’t pan out.

Then Csellak turned to his nephew, Erik Abel, a junior at Adolfo Camarillo High School with dreams of becoming a freelance graphic artist. He read the story, then started cranking out drawings, and plotting which points of the story to illustrate.

“I wanted to tell the story through the pictures,” he said.

Abel didn’t consult with the Simpsons while fleshing out their characters or story. But his finished illustrations, rendered in ink and water color, were a perfect fit, Debi said.

“It’s right on the spot,” she said.

Csellak committed to publishing the book once he saw the drawings. He had already rented a booth at The Times’ Festival of Books at UCLA, thinking he would sell some old volumes lying around the house. Now, he took the “Leo” manuscript and art to a printer in Oxnard with orders for 2,000 copies, hoping to have them ready for the festival.

The books arrived on his doorstep less than 24 hours before the event. With the authors and illustrator there, they sold 70 copies. At a book fair in Burbank, they sold another 20. (After paying off the publishing costs, Csellak and the Simpsons have agreed to split any profits.)

Many of the customers have been elementary school teachers who liked the story’s message, Diane Simpson said.

Even better, Debi said her 10-month-old niece loves the book. Not that she can read it, but the drawings seem to delight the child.

“She didn’t chew it like most 10-month-olds would--she was looking at the pictures,” Debi said.

FYI

“Lonesome Leo, the Little Lion,” priced at $10.95, is published by Lion Eyes Books! . For information, contact Bill Csellak at 499-2130.