In the opening of submissions to its first coloring book, the Latin Club hopes to encourage student artists to incorporate Latin themes and create an engaging activity for kids at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA).
The club intends to collect submissions until Jan. 1, when they plan to start piecing the illustrated pages into one coloring book to donate to CHOA, offering one service hour for every page submitted.
Latin Club co-president junior Lela Mariolis said a goal of the club was to determine a meaningful service project that would incorporate Latin stories, leading to the club’s idea to create its own coloring book.
“We were trying to generate different ideas on what to do for a service project and one of the ideas was to volunteer at CHOA, but we found a problem that you had to be 18 or older in order to actually volunteer there,” Mariolis said. “We looked into other ways for helping and contributing. [CHOA] asks for these donations of certain materials for engagement kits, and one of those things is coloring books, so … we landed on creating a coloring book.”
Latin teacher Amy Leonard has served as the co-sponsor of Latin Club since 2004 when she started teaching at Midtown. Through her experience supporting the club for the past 20 years, Leonard said the coloring book is a unique service project that differs from previous ideas.
“We have always struggled to develop a service project that was meaningful that wasn’t just a food drive or going to the food bank,” Leonard said. “This is one we have found where our unique perspective about the ancient world matches the needs of, for instance, the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.”
The coloring book focuses on classic ancient Roman and Greek mythology themes that are central to Latin Club.
“Latin Club celebrates all aspects of the Latin language and the ancient world,” Leonard said. “One of those aspects is mythology. Kids love mythology, so that was just sort of the number one thing we thought to do.”
Junior Gabriela Waldman has been a member of Latin Club for the past three years. Having taken drawing and painting classes three and four along with participating in the Art Club, Waldman said she was excited to combine her passions for a community service project she cares about.
“Typically, for the coloring book, we are definitely looking for images that are mythologically related, especially since that would make for stories, and interesting ones at that,” Waldman said. “It would make for something that would be fun and engaging to color and see in a visual medium. I’m definitely planning on depicting more well-known myths like Perseus and Medusa, but also lesser-known myths.”
Along with creating an engaging service project for students, such as Waldman, who want to combine their interests, Mariolis hopes the children at CHOA also view the coloring books as an interactive educational opportunity when the club delivers them in the spring.
“I’m really hoping that it can be a tool to educate [children at CHOA] on things they might not be exposed to otherwise,” Mariolis said. “Or just give them more context around these things.”
Having finished one illustration and currently working on two additional pages, Waldman said she looks forward to contributing to the service project.
“I’ve always loved art and engaged in it since I was a kid,” Waldman said. “When I found out about mythology, primarily in middle school up to high school, it just became natural to combine the two or learn how they interacted both in my own art and art throughout history.”
In an effort to integrate multiple artists within the coloring book, Latin Club hopes to connect the club to others across the school, branching out to a variety of students to combine mediums and present a diverse range of classic stories.
“We just have hundreds of talented artists at this school,” Leonard said. “You do not need to be a Latin student to submit to it, although the Latin students will ultimately be designing the order that the stories go in, and we’re picturing them writing the short blurb that explains what the story is about.”
While early in the submission process, Mariolis said she hopes to see more submissions from students who may not be in the Latin class or Latin Club to create a broader outreach.
“I’ve gotten a few submissions already and the people that have submitted are starring in Latin, so I’m really hoping that this can help engage other people if they try and research what they want to draw,” Mariolis said.
Waldman hopes to soon receive more involvement and collaboration with submissions, connecting to even more students previously not in Latin.
“This is just a way to not only bring this community service that might not be so common at Midtown, but also to anyone who might receive it just to get them to have a bit of fun, learn a little bit more about these stories or just see some cool art that other young people made,” Waldman said.
