The God Book: School fund-raiser becomes success story

"I found God on the leaf and it said 'hi God.'" Robert Schuster, age 7 "I see God in a sunflower." Gregory Schuster, age 7

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Shelly Mecum can’t leave her front doorstep without running into the Almighty. Not a blade of grass, not even a shadow can she see without a reminder that her Lord is near.

Her former students taught her this with their photos, hundreds of snapshots of things the young people identified as the face of God.

"God made the sign so people won’t get hurt," wrote Ashley Wilhelm, then age 5, of a photo of a one-way sign. And now, said Mecum, a schoolteacher-turned author, having seen Wilhelm’s vision, she can’t look at a common street sign in the same way.

"They lifted the veil of the ordinary, so I could see the extraordinary," she said. "I will never be the same."

Soon a lot of others may start looking at things differently, too.

Agents, publicists and editors who have seen the book that came of those photos are saying that Mecum, Wilhelm and hundreds of other kids and adults from a small ‘Ewa Beach Catholic school may see what began as a homely little fund-raising project explode into a publishing success along the lines of the "Chicken Soup" and "Tuesdays with Morrie" phenomena.

They, and the eager creators from Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, await HarperCollins’ May 1 release of "God’s Photo Album," a 192-page inspirational book that already ranks as a main selection for the One Spirit book club and an alternate for Doubleday’s and the Literary Guild’s. Finally — and this raises Mecum’s characteristic enthusiasm to the boiling point — Oprah Winfrey’s reading club also has shown interest, and she wants to feature the book on her show.

The book captures the events of April 23, 1998, when 14 busloads of the school’s children, parents and staff set out to find God in everyday Hawai‘i.

Roger Jellinek, Mecum’s literary agent here in Honolulu and a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, said the first time he saw the project, his radar went off. He knew immediately, "It’s not a book, it’s a movement."

Developments since then have proved his initial impression: "The publisher is printing 75,000 copies in the first run. It’s an enormous commitment. And I’ve never seen anyone with 36 endorsements, a first author or otherwise."

The endorsements come from the likes of Spencer Johnson (author of the perennial best seller "Who Moved My Cheese?") and revered children’s book writer Madeleine L’Engle ("A Wrinkle in Time").

"God’s Photo Album" captures April 23, 1998, when busloads of children, parents and staff searched for God in everyday Hawai‘i. Photo courtesy "God’s Photo Album"

"A confirmed atheist would have to rethink his position after looking at ‘God’s Photo Album,’ " wrote Malachy McCourt ("A Monk Swimming"). "For a little while all’s right with the world and God has brought his heaven to the earth of Shelly Mecum and her band of angels. Hosannah and hurrah!"

Three years ago, when Mecum was a fourth-grade and reading teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, nobody could foresee the odyssey that the school had begun, that it would take them much further than the circle-island route on which they had embarked, armed with notebooks and Fuji one-shot cameras.

The school, beset by budgetary problems and falling enrollment, was on thin ice.

"We could have closed," said Dennis Sasaki, now in his eighth year as principal. "We needed to look at another source of funding besides tuition, because we know the people in the area could only afford to pay so much."

Somehow, Mecum knew there was potential for saving the school in what she’d conceived as a simple writing assignment.

"They were writing these essays about where they had found God in everyday life," she said. "What whispered in my brain was, ‘It’s a book!’ "

Then she prayed for a little refinement to that bit of inspiration.

"I said, ‘God, we need you to save the school, but do you want the school to be saved? ... I’m not smart enough to know how to get a book published. I need a marketing angle.’ "

And God, it seems, came through with the angle: a variation on the tested "Day in the Life" photo expedition model, paired with a hunt for divine signs.

The result was a collection of photos and jottings from the expedition crew of 300 that boarded the bus on that April day. The first publisher, the Honolulu firm Mutual Publishing, assembled them into a kind of coffee-table volume filled with images captioned with explanations of how those images reflected God.

The project was nearing publication when, two years ago, Mecum attended a Honolulu writer’s conference where Jellinek was a speaker — and her entire course changed. She was feeling both giddy with the encouragement she’d secured from the editors of the Winfrey book club and then crushed to learn that their local publisher would be unable to supply the national demand that such exposure might generate.

"She’d stood up and asked, ‘What do authors do if they decide not to go to a local publisher?’ " Jellinek recalled. "That was on a Saturday. I invited her and Mr. Sasaki to come by. She told me about the project, and I was captivated. I thought it was just such a wonderful idea."

Mecum opted to start over, in the hopes of landing a national publisher. It was a nerve-racking decision for her and for the school, which had been waiting breathlessly for their work to hit ink.

"It was a scary process," Sasaki said. "Can you do it? What's going to happen?

"As Shelly always says, ‘You have to take a leap of faith,’ but not everyone can do it."

She took the leap, and while she was plummeting in free-fall, Jellinek gave her another jolt: A coffee-table book would never sell, he said. Mecum, being interviewed in the same Ward Centre Borders store where Jellinek had convinced her, retraced the steps of that day.

"He said, ‘Where do you see your book being displayed?’ I thought it might be under ‘Inspiration.’ He said, OK, let’s go there."

Mecum walked to the Inspiration stacks. "Then he said, ‘Now, find a book like yours.’ I found — well, I don’t see it here anymore — Mother Teresa’s book, which was this big.

"He said, ‘How much is it?’ I looked, and it was $60. He said, ‘OK, now buy it.’ I said, ‘No, it’s $60!’ And he said, ‘Exactly.’ " (The revamped book will sell for $23, hardbound.)

Besides the price-point problem, a showy picture book, while visually pleasing, would miss the whole point of the adventure, Jellinek said.

"I told her to bring in the material, and she brought in six boxes of notebooks and photos," he said. "I said, ‘No, you’ve got to write the book; you tell it so well.’ She was a bit shocked by that.

"There was no text in that version; it was an album. But I just loved the story about how it got done. ‘You’ve got to put a proposal together,’ I told her. ‘You should go to the Maui Writers’ Conference.’

"Well, somehow the proposal didn’t get done when she got to the conference," he said. "But she was so passionate about the topic and told everyone in reach.

"She’s riveting. She captivated a lot of important editors and bestselling authors. She got a lot of endorsements even without a proposal. That was astonishing. I’ve never seen that happen."

Eventually the proposal got written, and so did the first three of 15 chapters. That’s what sold HarperCollins, which signed her for a six-figure advance. And Mecum, emboldened, is upping the ante with the Winfrey show: She and the students are appearing in a video being sent to Winfrey, inviting her to produce an episode of her show from the school campus.

However the marketing campaign finally plays out, 70 percent of the profits will benefit the school. Sasaki said plans include building a preschool and starting a scholarship fund for needy students who want to attend.

Mecum, who took a leave of absence last year to write the book, is convinced there’s a divine hand guiding things. So perhaps it’s appropriate that the book was renamed from its original title, "Finding God in the Gathering Place." Mecum’s father had nicknamed the book "God’s Photo Album." Best-selling author Spencer Johnson heard that and declared, "That’s the title."

There have been so many favorable omens, Mecum believes the project is blessed.

"When I was a child, I read Madeleine L’Engle’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ " she said. "On that day, I decided I wanted to be an author.

"Then, on the same day I signed with HarperCollins and I became an author, an endorsement came through from Madeleine L’Engle." Mecum beamed.

Her enthusiasm is infectious.

"She’s quite a cheerleader, isn’t she?" Sasaki said. "Sometimes, it’s exhausting."

And it’s inspirational. Remy Cabrera, a fourth-grade teacher and Mecum’s former colleague, recalls moments of frustration on campus when the enterprise sometimes seemed to overtake other events. But she’s "really thrilled with this project" and knows that students are as enthralled with the notion of being writers.

Also, readers.

"I know Mrs. Mecum influenced one student," Cabrera said. "Every day now I see her in the morning before the bell rings, sitting under a tree, reading and reading."

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