Avon Lake teacher and motivational speaker couple write children's books during pandemic

AVON LAKE — Countless students from around Ohio and the nation know Jim "Basketball" Jones as a funny and inspirational presenter at school assemblies. Students at Avon Lake's Erieview Elementary School know Brenda Jones as a caring and thoughtful kindergarten teacher. But when the COVID-19 pandemic affected the way both do their jobs, the local couple decided to take on another role: children's book authors. The show Jim Jones has presented at more than 7,500 school assemblies over more than 20 years combines basketball trickery and messages that encourage positive habits, so it felt natural that his and Brenda's "Bouncy" series also features those familiar topics. The books allow him to "carry forward my message without me having to be there," he said. Focusing on a basketball that could not bounce, the stories teach kids that they are important and can learn new skills with patience. The first two entries into the series, "Bouncy: The Basketball That Couldn't Bounce" and "Bouncy and The Power of Yet," have been released and are available on jimbasketballjones.com/shop and Amazon. The third book, "Bouncy and the Piece of Cake," is due out this spring and will deal with themes of patience and overcoming daunting tasks by breaking them into smaller pieces. Jim and Brenda Jones had been wanting to write the children's series and the moment they decided to make it a reality came last summer. "We were just sitting out on our back deck, and Bouncy was born," Brenda Jones said. "... We just had written down a bunch of different ideas and we started putting that together in a story." The Bouncy books list both Jim and Brenda as co-authors, and each brought their own unique perspectives and skill sets to the project. As an experienced educator, Brenda Jones knows what young children want and need from a book. Jim Jones brought his storytelling expertise built through an early life full of adversity. He has dyslexia and was put in special education classes from first to 10th grade, facing ridicule from fellow students. But a determination to find success led him to Bowling Green State University, where he said he graduated at the top of his class in the business school. "This has been the driving force for me, knowing that I struggled so hard," he said. " I was picked on so much for being different, that when I go to my shows, I can see those kids and there have been all these magical moments." He recalled one show at an elementary school in Dover, where he saw a young student in the crowd and recognized instantly that the boy could use some extra encouragement. When Jones spoke with the principal about giving the student a basketball as a gift, she told him the boy suffered from a very difficult home life. Virtual learning and safety measures for in-person schooling have brought opportunities at assemblies like that to a near-standstill, but Jim Jones has been adapting his show into prerecorded and livestream videos. When it is safe for students to gather for large assemblies again, he hopes to incorporate the Bouncy series into the program. The books have been catching on with students and their teachers so far, in part because of Brenda Jones' knowledge of what makes a children's series successful. "They definitely have to have characters that they can relate to, and Bouncy is like a little kid," she said. Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @drey1357.