RR Branstrom Daily Press Children’s author and illustrator Aaron Zenz made a visit to students at Camerron School recently

GLADSTONE — Students at Cameron Elementary School were treated to a visit from children’s author and illustrator Aaron Zenz recently. The Michigan-based creator read books of his own design to the kids, discussed what his job entails, made the children laugh with a drawing demonstration aided by a puppet, and explained the process of creating a book.

The first book Zenz ever wrote, “The Hiccupotamus,” was published in 2005. He’s illustrated 44 other books since then and written nine of those himself.

Zenz, a father of six, now travels to do school author visits, which he says he enjoys “as much or more than making the books themselves.”

Principal Katee Inghram said that a teacher at Cameron who had previously worked at a school downstate and seen Zenz give a presentation there recommended bringing the artist to Gladstone, where a few of his books were already in the school library.

Before his arrival, but after the booking, students were given the opportunity to order Zenz’s books to take home. Those who did received them with personalized autographs the day of the visit.

Since “The Hiccupotamus” has become a crowd-pleaser, the author read it aloud while images of the pages, illustrated with Prismacolor colored pencils, were projected in the library. Children’s laughter accompanied the silly rhymes and stage hiccups from the author.

After reading the book itself, Zenz spoke about what went into its creation.

“Every book that ever existed has two stories to it,” Zenz told the students. “The obvious story is inside the book, with all the characters running around and everything happening inside the book. But then there’s a second one. There’s also a story that’s behind the book, a story about how this book got here.”

He said that just like a carpenter doesn’t go out and start building a house without blueprints, there’s a number of planning steps that go into building a story. He explained that there was some trial and error to finding the right rhymes, and showed the kids some early draft illustrations. He even brought along the original dummy — a simple mockup, uncolored, on plain paper — of “The Hiccupotamus” before it became a finished book. The kids got a kick out of yelling “dummy” at it.

Zenz also demonstrated how to draw a hippo and was interrupted several times by a hiccuping hand puppet, to riotous delight from the children.

Four separate presentations were held at Cameron on Monday for the different grade levels — readiness kindergarten, kindergarten, first grade and second grade. For the youngest group, instead of giving them the behind-the-scenes talk, Zenz read a second story.

The target audience for Zenz’s presentations is from kindergarten through sixth grade, but he’s done the high school level, too. Older kids receive different delivery.

“I’m able to keep the structure and main points of my presentations intact across age groups,” Zenz said. “The main beats of the sessions are the same, but the delivery and energy, the song-and-dance if you will, gets adjusted depending on the age group in front of me. For older students, puppets get dropped in favor of fun interactive group writing activities. …I can read the room pretty well and have different routes I can take.”

Zenz’s goal is to get kids interested in creating, to inspire them to work on their own projects. His presentations on Monday began by telling the kids how lucky he was that he gets to draw and color and tell stories for a living.

“I love getting kids excited about reading and writing and creating. My goal is never to shine a spotlight on myself. I don’t want kids to walk away knowing a bunch of Aaron Zenz facts. In fact, if they happen to forget about me but go out and start making a bunch of stuff, I’d say, ‘mission accomplished!’ I’d love to know that new art and stories are coming into the world because of our time together,” he said.

When asked if anything new might be in the works, Zenz replied to say that he is always writing and creating. Additionally:

“I have some manuscripts that are making the rounds to publishers, and I am excited to see what gets greenlit next!”