John U. Bacon

Remember Field Day? For most of us, it was a hallowed year-end school tradition, right up there with ice cream socials, and signing yearbooks. The kids loved it, of course, and looked forward to it every year.

But not at Burns Park, one of Ann Arbor’s oldest, most desirable and most educated neighborhoods – and occasionally, one of its kookiest. There is a reason many townies jokingly refer to it as “The Republic of Burns Park.”

The Burns Park PTO might be the most active one in the state. In the late ’90s, some parents, led by a social work professor, decided the competitive spirit of Field Day was too much for the kids, and changed “Field Day” to “Friendship Day” – replacing foot races, long jumps and tug-of-wars with games that emphasized cooperation over competition.

A noble notion – but the kids hated it. During one event, a cross-section of students from all grades had to walk together on two long boards. The big kids kept yelling at the little ones to lift their left foot, then their right – but the first graders didn’t know which was which. They all fell over, and the first graders burst into tears.

I suspect that’s not exactly what the parents had in mind.

For the students bused in from the less affluent part of town, canceling Field Day really stunk. All year, they had to compete in class against some of the nation’s most privileged students, where success is publicized in every way imaginable. But on Field Day, many of these students were, for the first time all year, winning the medals.

Well, no more of that, either.

I grant the parents had good intentions. I’ll also take a wild guess that some of them wanted to spare their kids the specter of not being at the front of their class for the first time. But few parents seemed to object when their kids got gold stars for reading, writing and arithmetic.

In trying to protect some students from finishing last, they not only denied the bused-in kids their day in the sun – quite literally – they denied their own kids the chance to learn some humility, to realize losing a foot race is no big deal, and to discover the next morning that the sun still came up, right on time, and they were going to be just fine.

Instead, we confuse competing with bullying, which schools are rightly focused on eradicating. But the two could not be more different. Competition, properly taught, teaches respect, fair play, and good sportsmanship – the exact opposite of bullying.

Friendship Day lasted only a couple years – the new P.E. teacher has brought a nice balance of the old and the new – but the effects still linger. A few Burns Park parents and teachers have told me too many kids don’t know how to accept losing – especially the boys. If they get knocked out playing four-square, they simply yell, “Do over!” and that’s exactly what they get.

As one of my friends said, “My kids need to learn how to lose. Without me there. Or any parent. And get over it.”

If you can’t learn these important lessons on the playground, they won’t be any easier during auditions for the high school play or tryouts for the band.

We are raising a generation of domesticated kittens, then throwing them out into the Serengeti. We might feel better about it – but in the long run, they won’t.

About the author: John U. Bacon is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.” He also co-authored “A Legacy of Champions,” and provided commentary for “Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game,” which has been airing on various stations in Michigan and nationally.

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Maria LoCicero and Leandra Blander, students at Summers-Knoll School, read from the book "Moon Wolf," which they helped illustrate. They helped with a book reading on Sunday at the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom.

The Chronicle has no idea how often howling echoes through Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tearoom, but customers there definitely heard wolf-like sounds on Sunday afternoon. The occasion was  a reading of “Moon Wolf,” a children’s book illustrated by students at Summers-Knoll School and written by the head of school, Joanna Hastings.

The book is a classroom project turned fundraising venture – it’s now sold at several local stores. “Moon Wolf” tells the story of a wolf who lives in the moon and leaps to Earth when the moon is full, enjoying many adventures and raucous howling along the way.

The 22-page book is actually an excerpt from a much longer narrative poem by Hastings, also called “Moon Wolf,” that was performed several years ago at Performance Network in its old digs in the Technology Center on Third and Washington. [That warren of buildings burned down in 2003 – the YMCA's new facility is now on that site.]

Joanna Hastings, head of school at Summers-Knoll, reads from "Moon Wolf."

So how did the excerpt from her longer poem end up as a children’s book? The saga started at last year’s Ann Arbor Book Festival, an annual event featuring panel discussions as well as a vendor fair. Summers-Knoll had a booth at the festival to promote the school – as an activity for kids at the booth, they had materials to make miniature books using paper, stickers and markers. Hastings worked the booth with Kim Guziel, the school’s business manager, and while they were there they started making little books themselves, just for fun. That activity prompted Guziel to encourage Hastings to write a children’s book of her own.

Guziel kept nudging her, as did Melissa Bruzzano, a parent at the school. As Hastings thought about it, she realized that part of the long “Moon Wolf” poem she’d written years ago might work as a poem for children. And that’s what she decided to pursue, with the idea of having students illustrate the work.

Several parents got involved in the project too. Ruth Marks, an artist whose daughter Amelia attends Summers-Knoll, coached the students as they worked on the drawings, which were done in February of this year. Bruzzano researched book printers. She tried to find one locally, but none she contacted could produce the work in color, she said. A couple of local firms suggested she try Color House Graphics of Grand Rapids, and that’s where they ultimately got “Moon Wolf” printed.

Ruth’s husband, James Marks, owner of VGKids in Ypsilanti, did the pre-production work, which included selecting the artwork that ended up in the book. (Because not all the images could be used for the story, the final pages include photos of the kids and their art.) The project cost around $1,300 for 200 books, an amount that included shrink-wrapping the books.

On her head of school blog, Hastings wrote about the process earlier this year: “Most of the images were developed by several children. When the selections were made, no one knew who had drawn what. Each illustration is a collaboration and a fusion of energy from each class. That is what makes them so special, and makes me so proud of the finished product. I feel as if every child’s spirit is represented in the overall response.”

Some of those students were on hand Sunday to sign copies of the book. And after Hastings read it aloud once, two students – Maria LoCicero and Leandra Blander – read through it again, the second time embellished with sound effects from the audience, which consisted mostly of Summers-Knoll families. (Hastings had hoped for a broader community turnout. Before the reading began, she said she wished some of the families who came to town that day for the Taste of Ann Arbor would wander in for the book reading. It wasn’t clear that any of them did, despite the alluring howls.)

The books are selling for $20 at Crazy Wisdom, Downtown Home & Garden, Falling Water and Nicola’s Books. Proceeds will go toward needs-based scholarships at the private elementary school, which is located at 2015 Manchester Road in Ann Arbor.

Alec Bayoneto, one of the illustrators of "Moon Wolf," reads a brochure about summer camps at Summers-Knoll School while he awaits the start of the book reading on Sunday.

The front cover and an inside page from "Moon Wolf," on a table in the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom.