WOODLAND — Chad Trisef, co-writer of the fictional book series “Oracle,” spoke to Woodland Middle School students to promote childhood literacy, the importance of helping others, and shared stories about exploring the world’s real-life mysteries in presentations during school assemblies on May 10 and 11.
In 2011, Chad teamed up with his brother, Wayne, to write a fictional book series called “Oracle” under the pseudonym “C.W. Trisef” (Chad and Wayne Trisef) about a teenager, Ret, exploring the world’s real-life mysteries to collect elements in order to save the world. The duo wanted to create a wholesome, fact-based, fictional adventure series for all ages, especially targeting students in third to eighth grade.
Chad, a father of four daughters and a son, wanted to help promote childhood literacy while also minimizing the amount of violence young children may be exposed to in their entertainment.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t really like to read, so once I became a father myself, I wanted to do things to help promote literacy,” he said. “I wanted to write books about social elements such as freedom, self-control, charity, and forgiveness.”
The series’ emphasis on teamwork and helping others might stem from how the brothers wrote the books themselves by teaming up to write the series together.
“When my brother told me wanted to do write these books with me, we decided to give it a shot,” explained Chad. “We’ve now written five books in five years and we absolutely love doing it.”
The pair self-publish their books and sell them from their own website as well as online retailers like Amazon.com.
During his presentations, Chad shared the development of his series and talked about the values presented in each of the books. Chad discovered his obsession with real-life mysteries from watching a Disney cartoon, “Ducktales,” when he came home from school growing up. In the cartoon series, Scrooge McDuck and his nephews visit locales all over the world such as the Bermuda Triangle in order to solve mysteries and find treasures.
“I loved mysteries and treasure hunts so my love of mysteries really inspired my writing,” explained Chad. “Our books give me the opportunity to talk about real-life mysteries which actually exist all over our planet.”
So far, Chad and Wayne have released five books in their series featuring real-life mysteries including the Bermuda Triangle, a huge region of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances; Bimini Road, an unexplained, man-made paved road which is fully underwater; El Dorado, a fabled city made entirely of gold; and natural phenomena like the Aurora Borealis or “Northern Lights,” where the sky lights up at night due to electrons colliding with the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere. In order to enhance the material in their books, Chad travels to the locations in real life, researches them, and documents the details he discovers there.
In addition to writing the books, Chad and his brother visit schools around the country at no charge to talk about how they came up with the ideas in their book series and to promote reading to children of all ages.
“I started presenting to schools about three years ago and have now held more than 500 assemblies, presenting to more than 100,000 students around the country,” said Chad. “I love presenting and talking to kids, so I travel as much as I can each year.”
In order to encourage kids to help others, Chad and Wayne created a free social network called YourWorld where kids can post stories about helping others each day and read posts made by other kids around the world.
“Our hope is to help the younger generations learn the importance of helping others,” explained Chad. “The generations coming up seem to understand that we need to take care of the planet and each other.”
Following the presentations, Chad held Question-and-Answer sessions where students and teachers inquired about how he comes up with the ideas in his books, the future of the brothers’ book series, and how self-publishing works.
To learn more about the Oracle series and the YourWorld social network, you can visit the website www.trisef.com.
Information provided by Woodland Public Schools.
