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Martha Hamlett reads her book "Just One More Game" to a group of second graders from Appomattox Primary School. Photo by Jill Nance

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Posted: Tuesday, February 9, 2016 12:15 am

Emma Schkloven

Martha Hamlett first found the inspiration to write in the fifth grade. Her teacher would assign 20 spelling words each week and require students to incorporate them into a story.

“You had to be creative, because they could be any words under the sun,” said Hamlett, who works as a finance procurement coordinator at BWXT Technologies, Inc.

Through her teacher’s encouragement, she unearthed a passion for crafting the written word, which continued into high school, on through her time as a business major at Lynchburg College and even once she married and started a family.

She began writing stories and poems for her children after deciding she did not like books currently on the market.

“Society went through a stage back in the ‘90s where everything had to have a political bent,” she said. “They weren’t just entertainment books. Fun, fantasy.”

Hamlett, who grew up in Charlotte County, tried submitting her stories to a publisher, but after a few rejection letters — nice ones, she noted — the aspiring author decided she was too impatient to wait for her stories to be picked up and published them herself.

“You can’t go into [it] believing that you’re going to make huge amounts of money,” said Hamlett, who has led classes on self-publishing at Longwood College and at teachers conferences. “You do it because it’s something from your heart that you want to do. … I don’t lose money, but I don’t make ‘Harry Potter’ kind of money either.”

In October 2015, Hamlett released her second story “Just One More Game” and since then, she has been sharing the book with school-aged children in Lynchburg and its surrounding areas.

“Just One More Game” follows Corey, a young boy obsessed with his video games. Corey wants to beat the Black Knight, the villain in his medieval-inspired game, so much that ever after he falls asleep, he continues to play the game in his dreams.

Hamlett said she drew inspiration from her sons Noah and Christopher, who often would ask her to let them play “just one more game” before bed. The story, she said, speaks to the change in society from children’s tendencies toward imagination-based play to screen-based entertainment.

Like “Just One More Game,” most of Hamlett’s stories come from real life inspirations, including her first self-published book “Bats in the Air, Bats in My Hair,” which came out in 2008.

Her stories start out as poems, title first, she said. From there, she outlines the trajectory of the story and then elongates her poem to meet the 32-page layout for publishable children’s books.

Once she has the story written, Hamlett contacts illustrator Davey Morgan, who has worked with her on both of her previous books and has the copy for a third, with a specific idea for the design of each page. The brightly colored pictures, filled with clever pop-culture references and other eye-catching details, bring Hamlett’s rhyming stanzas to life.

“I think the kids, they like those fun quirky stories like that and just connect with it,” said Morgan. “They kind of picture themselves being there."

As part of her plan to spread her stories to a wider audience, Hamlett reached out to teachers at and offered to read to the students.

Many accepted her offer and so Hamlett now spends two Fridays per month traveling to different schools, from Lynchburg to Charlottesville and even Skype sessions with schools in Henderson, North Carolina.

“I had read her first book … years ago and with her being local it was a no brainier,” said librarian Jane Vaughan, who organized Hamlett’s visit to Tomahawk Elementary around Thanksgiving. “I'm always going to conferences and meeting authors and telling students about how cool it is, so when I found out she was available and had an educational presentation it was a matter of details.”

While visiting the classes, Hamlett discusses the concepts of authors and illustrators, rhyme, characters, themes and story structure. Hamlett leads the students through visualization exercises, including asking them to describe how they would draw an illustration for a section of one her poems.

“I think having someone other than a teacher discuss educational strategies was a really cool real life meets school [moment] and made a definite connection for each of them,” Vaughan said.

The author tailors each reading to the age of the students, allowing them to apply the knowledge they have learned in school in an enjoyable way, without becoming bored, frustrated or disengaged from the learning experience.

“We push STEM so much in society,” Hamlett said. “What do [people in those fields] have to have? Their imaginations have to turn all the time to create all of these things that we use. So, if you’re … fostering that ability from a young age up in creative play, encouraging drawing and coloring, it’s going to help them later in life.”

When she visited Tomahawk Elementary School, Hamlett stayed from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to read to every class from kindergarten to fifth grade, taking only a 40-minute lunch break and even then, she met with students.

“She agreed to have lunch with a select set of third-grade boys that are very weak readers,” Vaughan said. “This was a huge deal to these boys.  They had to meet specific criteria the teacher set for them before they could be considered for this privilege. … As we ate, each child had prepared questions they wanted to ask Martha. So, we went around the table and each child got to ask her a question as we enjoyed our pizza and brownies.”

Hamlett has received positive feedback, especially from the children, who will sometimes draw and send her pictures through their teachers.

When asked what the best part of the experience overall has been, Hamlett said it is the hugs the students often give her.

“Kids appreciate that you took the time, so there’s an automatic return on the investment of going in there,” she said. “It’s an innocent appreciation; they’re not judging, they’re just enjoying.”