A normal day in June quickly turned into one of the most exciting moments of children’s book author Fran Borin’s writing career. Standing in her kitchen in Mission Hills, she received the email she had been waiting for. After 30 years of dreaming, the second book of her three-part series The Ghost Adventures of Orion O’Brien had been named to the Kansas Notable Books List for 2024.
“I sent the book in January, so when I got the email, I just can’t describe it,” she said. “I called my husband and said, ‘Come and read this’.”
The Kansas State Library puts out a list each year made up of 15 books, either written by a Kansan or about Kansas. An incredible victory for self-published Borin who has been working to spread the name of her ghost adventure stories based in Northeast Kansas.
As a teacher and paraprofessional in the Shawnee Mission School District in the early 90s, she saw an article in a newspaper about how people who lived in the Shawnee Indian Mission area thought they had ghosts in their houses. They attributed the ghosts to students who had attended the Shawnee Indian Mission School.
“I thought ‘My students would love a story about this'," she said. “I didn’t write the story for 25 more years.”
The series follows four elementary school kids led by Orion O'Brien who live in Fairway, Kansas, as they encounter different ghosts and spirits of children from the past. The kids join together to help these ghosts solve problems and mysteries from their time. Borin uses historically accurate locations and cultural facts to provide an educational and entertaining experience for her readers.
“When I go to talk to students, I never use the term ‘educational.’ I say ‘This is a fun book. This is a ghost story.’ That’s how I bring them in,” she said. “But I hope they do learn the power of friendship.”
Borin enlisted help from Wyandotte Indian nation member Richard Zane Smith to look over her manuscript before it was published in 2022. His insight allowed her to create a more authentic main character for her first book The Ghost of Samuel Grayhawk.
“He told me about things I would never be able to find on the Internet, about how men wore their hair, some words in the Wyandotte language,” Borin said. “Even though it’s a children’s book, you have to do all the research, the same you would for any book.”
The second book The Spirit of Quindaro required research on a major stop of the Underground Railroad, and the third The Phantoms of Wakarusa, a deeper dive into the Wakarusa War. The three books together earned Borin the right to call them a series.
As the popularity of her books grow, Borin visits with students throughout Kansas, where she signs books and takes pictures. Her next stop is the ceremony at Washburn University in September to honor the books on the 2024 Kansas Notable Books List. For Borin, the most rewarding part of being an author is watching the looks of learning on kids’ faces.
“If you want your kids to learn something you don’t shout it at them, you whisper it in their ears,” she said. “I hope they will get some inspiring ideas that will help them do a good job being adults when they take over the world.”
When I talk to kids, I say this happened where you live.