Author of 'God's Photo Album' working on follow-up projects
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Staff Writer
"Who knew?"
Advertiser library photo
The phrase is constantly on Shelly Mecum's lips as she recounts the events of the past nine months, since HarperCollins released "God's Photo Album," a collection of photos by children from Our Lady of Perpetual Help school, with text by Mecum that illuminates their search for God in the everyday world.
Shelly Mecum is author of the best-seller "God's Photo Album."
The bestselling book was dismissed by some when the fourth-grade teacher proposed it in 1998 as a fund-raiser for the school.
Mecum leaves shortly for a new assignment: She's been named a professor of children's literature at the University of San Diego. But her primary job will be to mastermind a "God's Photo Album" project involving 6 million children in California.
After that: Africa in 2004, where the Sisters of the Sacred Heart hope to finance the building of a school for girls in Uganda by doing a book involving Christian and Muslim schoolchildren in five nations: Uganda, Kenya, Chad, Egypt and the Congo.
Meanwhile, writer Susan Arnault Smith has developed a movie treatment for the book and is pitching the story line to movie producers.
