WVHS students premier children's story videos for Once Upon a Child

Warwick Valley High School students from multiple academic programs and creative disciplines wrapped up an extended creative collaboration last week, turning stories, illustrations, and narration into video shorts for this year's Once Upon a Child project!

Now in its ninth year, the annual project is a perfect example of an academic undertaking that reflects the tenets of the Warwick Valley Portrait of a Graduate, which articulates the district's aspirational vision for the skills, attributes, and dispositions that every Warwick Valley student should possess upon graduation. It emphasizes relationships, experiential learning, student choice, and group collaboration, as well as the development of enduring academic, interpersonal, and critical thinking skills. Once Upon a Child is a project built on and which fosters the three qualities of creativity, collaboration, and communication.

Students from Danielle DeBella’s creative writing class write the children’s stories. They collaborate with art students from Kristen Spano and Nicole Sisco's classes, who create the illustrations. Each story is narrated by a voice actor; some are students, some are teachers, and this year, one is even a professional voice actor whose credits include the voice of Smartie on Sesame Street! Students in Dan Cecconie’s video production class produce each story by filming the narration, editing it with the illustrations, and adding sound and visual effects.

The creative teams for each story have regular check-ins throughout the collaborative process to cover storyboarding, track progress, and review work before releasing final versions.

The Once Upon a Child project actually grew out of a concept Mr. Cecconie developed while working as a television producer. Children's book publishers would bring copies of upcoming releases to the television station, asking for ways to promote the titles on air. Mr. Cecconie had the idea of taking stills of the copy and illustrations and turning them into simple animations, then overlaying those visuals with narration. To this day, Mr. Cecconie still jokes that he believes his idea "was a precursor to Reading Rainbow!"

You can enjoy all nine of this year's productions below, along with a gallery of images from the project. Here are the talented individuals who collaborated to bring these stories to life on screen.

1. Terry's Homework
   Story by Wyatt Cirbus
   Illustrations by Allie Wolf
   Narrated by Ray Mark
   Produced by Aedyn Conway
    
2. Safety & The Magic Black Cat
   Story by Emma Rudnick
   Illustrations by Juliana Browning
   Narrated by Deborah Grausman
   Produced by Violet Tinnirello
    
3. The Oracle Tree
   Story by Allie Perez
   Illustrations by Milla Perry
   Narrated by Juliet Thomas
   Produced by Nya Whight-Webb
    
4. Mary and the Magic of Messy Color
   Story by Lilly Rother
   Illustrations by Knatley Roxas
   Narrated by Violet Tinnirello
   Produced by Josiah Jeudy
    
5. Manners Matter
   Story by Carly Kunisch
   Illustrations by Maddie Pesta
   Narrated by Lia Salmon
   Produced by Ryan Pesta
    
6. A World of Colors
   Story by Rocco Beltrone
   Illustrations by Keene Eicher
   Narrated by Matthew Salmon
   Produced by Lia Salmon
    
7. Ben Asks for Help
   Story by Isabella Dudhnath Tacardon
   Illustrations by Riley Portka
   Narrated by Marilyn Brozycki
   Produced by Landon Komorsky
    
8. Bailey Tries Something New
   Story by Andrea Scott
   Illustrations by Emily Luale
   Narrated by Jack Kennan
   Produced by Jack Keenan
    
9. Gary's North Star
   Story by Marissa King
   Illustrations by Felicia Gambino
   Narrated by Nya Whight-Webb
   Produced by Felicia Gambino