Local teen launches first book

It was in the middle of being bear-hugged and high-fived by friends and other children attending Wilder Penfield Elementary that Vincent Pilkington-Landreville, 13, a graduate of the Dollard des Ormeaux school, spoke to The Chronicle about his first book, The Story of Stories.

""My dad told me that I was reading a lot, and not writing enough," the teenager, who currently attends St. Thomas High School, explained. "So I told him, watch me, I'm going to write a book."

That was about four years ago, estimated his father Charlie Pilkington, a teacher at Wilder. Yesterday night, his son's labour bore fruit, as the school held a well-attended book launch in its gymnasium.

Charlie Pilkington spared no expense amusing the audience with his introduction of Vincent, contrasting his boy's artistic and creative interests with his own lack of interest in them as a teenager.

"By the time I was thirteen, I had read a book," he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd. "It was compulsory reading," he added.

Pilkington noticed his son's veritable love of literature of reading in third grade, he said, and decided to make an observation. "I never see any of your writing," he told him, which Vincent took as a personal challenge.

The youth read the first chapter of his book to much applause yesterday, introducing his main character Joshua, a mischievous boy who enjoys playing pranks on classmates. One night, after his father reads to him from a book containing various fairy tales called The Story of Stories, Joshua takes a peek at the book's open pages on his desk, only to find himself disappearing into its pages.

"I just wanted to dig into my mischievous side and see how I could do different things in my mind," Vincent explained about creating a protagonist who is clearly at least a little different from him.

He cited Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowlings and Twilight author Stephanie Meyer as some of his influences.

In a speech to the audience, Dollard des Ormeaux councillor Errol Johnson summed up the evening succinctly. "A star is born," he said, thanking Vincent's parents and teachers for helping to raise someone with such a love of reading and writing.

As Vincent finishes up his first year of high school at St. Thomas, it appears he is setting up new challenges for himself.

As one of his high school projects, his father explained, Vincent collected letters from his grandmother to his grandfather, who had been serving in World War II, and used nothing but his own imagination to recreate letters that his grandfather would have written. "I could actually hear my dad's voice," Pilkington said, all the more extraordinary considering Vincent has never actually met his grandfather, who passed away before he was born.

Story of Stories is published by Xlibris. It is 107 pages long.