{"id":11649,"date":"2015-08-19T14:56:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T18:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11649"},"modified":"2015-08-19T14:56:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T18:56:19","slug":"school-caretaker-pens-novel-for-kids-and-young-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/school-caretaker-pens-novel-for-kids-and-young-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"School caretaker pens novel for kids and young adults"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summer is winding down and as kids gear up for a return to school, they will do so chock full of memories \u2013 and maybe a secret or two \u2013 collected during the season that will have to sustain them until next June rolls around.<\/p>\n

But the secret\u2019s out for Bob Lightbound, caretaker at Northern Lights Public School. As the kids return to this northeast Aurora school in September, they will have an author in their midst.<\/p>\n

Mr. Lightbound, an Aurora resident writing as R.H. Lightbound, recently published his first novel, Too Many Wishes. <\/p>\n

Too Many Wishes follows teenage brother and sister Richard and Lorali who happen upon an ex-genie and find themselves on an adventure replete with wishes \u2013 and the dangers of \u201cthose willing to stop and nothing to get their hands on the secrets behind unlimited wishes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book has been in my head for 30 years,\u201d says Mr. Lightbound. \u201cI just had to get this idea out of my head. I sat down in front of my computer and started to type. My wife, Judith, didn\u2019t even know. After a year, I said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve finished my book!\u2019 and her response was just, \u2018What book?!\u2019
\n\u201cBefore I started to write, I just kept having the same dream over and over. The dream was only the idea of what the book should be about, but that is why it took a year to write \u2013 you need to dream more.\u201d<\/p>\n

After finally getting the story of Richard and Loralli out of his head, and bouncing a few further ideas off his family, he made the bold step of printing off the manuscript and mailing it off to Friesen Press. Then, it was time to play the waiting game.<\/p>\n

It was a game he was familiar with. 20 years ago he sent another book to a publishing agency in New York. Although their interest was piqued, Mr. Lightbound said they found it too short. Given the option to extend it into a fully-formed book or shorten it to be a magazine feature, that particular story was shelved. It was a different story altogether, however, for Too Many Wishes. <\/p>\n

\u201cRight away they said they liked it and with a little bit of revision said they could make a good story out of it,\u201d says Mr. Lightbound. \u201cI made four revisions to it over four months, sent it back, [and] this is the version we all like the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking in an elementary school, I see the books they read and sometimes I read them too. If it looks like a good story, I\u2019ll pick them up and read them during my breaks. Eventually I thought I could write a book somewhere along those lines, a book I knew kids would love.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the wheels start turning on a new school year, Richmond Hill kids at Crosby Heights Public School, a school at which Mr. Lightbound used to work, will find Too Many Wishes on their library shelves and that is just the start of what the author hopes will come. The book is currently making the rounds of literary agencies with the hopes it will catch the eyes of players in the film and television industries.
\nAn action-packed adventure, Mr. Lightbound says his story would make an ideal movie or TV show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope kids take away a sense of adventure [and a way of looking at the world],\u201d he says. \u201cCoincidences aren\u2019t coincidences. They are meant to happen. There are people you are meant to meet. By meeting that person they put you on a different direction of your life without even realizing it. It will move you in a different direction, if you heed it.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer is winding down and as kids gear up for a return to school, they will do so chock full of memories \u2013 and maybe a secret or two \u2013 collected during the season that will have to sustain them until next June rolls around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/2015-08-20-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-31T","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 07:44:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}