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Maxed Out: The Space of Imagination

by Mrs. Ramsey's Third Grade Class: John Newbery Elementary School

24 pages; Saddle stitched; illustrated children's book; full color; catalogue #07-2581; ISBN 1-4251-5738-6; US$12.00, C$13.80, EUR9.36, £6.20

What happens when you let your imagination collide with outer space? You end up with a crazy and wild amusement park only a whole room of Third Grade kids could create.

About the Book

What happens when you let your imagination collide with outer space? You end up with a crazy and wild amusement park only a whole room of Third Grade kids could create.

Welcome to MAXed OUTer Space amusement park where you can Ride Saturn's Ring Railroad, eat at the Crater Café, run Rocket Rovers, and mount a Moon Board as you let your imagination out to play.

MAXed OUT was written and illustrated by an entire class of Third Graders. The story takes "empty outer space" and fills it with bright, imaginative, and fun illustrations that are inspired by the artist Peter Max. The kids' take on what to do with "all that empty space" we call the Universe. While they explored outer space, they discovered the power of their "inner space"... realizing that their imagination is the greatest "space" there is.

About the Author

Mrs. Ramsey's Third Grade Class at John Newbery Elementary School in Wenatchee, Washington created this book using the theme of Space, the artistic style of Peter Max and the playground of their imagination.

Our class brainstormed about what we could write a book about. We were studying space so we decided to use the Universe as our theme. We thought space seemed so empty, before we began studying it. We wondered what we could do with this clean "blackboard" like Universe. We agreed that it would be a blast to create an amusement park up there. Once our theme was set, each of us created our own ride, restaurant, or amusement for the book. Our art teacher introduced the style of Peter Max as someone who had explored space in paintings in a bright and colorful way. Every student in our class illustrated a colored pencil and pen drawing for this story.

To put our thoughts about the amusement park down in writing, we broke up into smaller groups. We discussed what space meant to each of us before we began studying it, and what we thought of it after we had learned more about the Universe. We helped each other create names for our rides by using the dictionary and talking about what kind of rides they were. In the end, we created a book that other kids will love to read and look at, as much as we loved creating it.