As sophomore Dana Zschau looks over her art work and asks some peers for input, she decides it’s perfect for the intended audience. She then turns in the assignment to her teacher and hopes it is good enough.

The Melbourne Airport recently asked Zschau and the rest of her Digital Arts 2 class to create a book for children. The airport recently was named the Florida gateway for TUI, a British charter air service. So the airport has been developing plans to lure British tourists to Melbourne by 2022. Zschau and other students were asked to together create pages for an activity book to keep children entertained during the flights and to promote Melbourne’s many features.

“I want to make it look good, knowing that it’ll possibly be published,” Zschau said. “I’m like, it’s got to be perfect. millions of copies could be distributed. If one page is lacking [in quality], then the whole thing could be ruined.”

Her teacher, James Finch, set a deadline for Nov 5, however, he has made students go back and edit their works to make sure the airport is fully pleased with it, and has even given them this week to do so. 

“[TUI] requested our art resource teacher to see if they could get something in,” Finch said. “If we don’t do it, I’m sure they’ll have somebody professionally do it, but we’ve already done three children’s books in here. No other high school even publishes a children’s book like this for their art program — and we’ve done three of them.”

Zschau said she’s pleased the work so far. 

“I’m doing a find-the-difference page of a beach scene,” she said. “I saw what [my classmates] produced, and [it] was honestly so good and of such high quality that I’m sure the company will love it.”

Finch also is pleased with the progress that his class is making so far. 

“Overall, it’s looking pretty good,” he said. “I don’t have the cover, but I do have almost all the pages done.”

Zschau overall enjoyed the experience of being able to create a page for the children’s book. 

“If I could be a published artist, I would definitely do it again,” Zschau said. “Even though art is more of a hobby for me, it’s still really cool to be able to do things like this.”

By Ana Bustamante