Remembering Sandy Hook’s ‘Book Fairy’

NEWTOWN — Melanie Bunch has always been inspired by the creativity of her cousin, Dawn Hochsprung, the slain principal at Sandy Hook School.

Since the deaths of Hochsprung and 25 others at the school in 2012, Bunch has carried an image in her mind of her beloved cousin — an image given to her by former Sandy Hook students who recalled their favorite memories of the principal.

“Their eyes lit up and they said, ‘Oh! She would dress up as the Book Fairy, and come tap us on the head with her wand and give us extra reading time,’ ” said Bunch, a fundraiser at the University of Buffalo.

That picture of Hochsprung — in a dress decked with white Christmas tree lights — is the story behind a literacy project launched by Bunch that features a Book Fairy figurine whose dress lights up to inspire a love of reading.

“It’s designed to encourage daily reading and help us get back to reading as a country,” said Bunch, who is raising money for production costs on a crowd-funding site called Indiegogo.

The figurine comes with a storybook that explains how a girl named Lily became the Book Fairy and “follows her adventures as she makes sure every child on earth has a book to read.”

Hochsprung’s mother said she enjoys the storybook and is pleased the idea of the Book Fairy has been associated with her daughter’s memory.

“The book fairy is a great idea,” said Cheryl Lafferty.

Bunch, who lives in a Buffalo suburb, said she struggled with how much to say in the project literature about how Hochsprung died. One the one hand, Hochsprung’s decision to protect her school and implore a gunman to drop his rifle made her a hero. On the other hand, the brutality of the crime continues to cause trauma five years later, and would be a difficult association for children to make with the fairy figurine.

Bunch chose to keep Hochsprung’s connection to the Sandy Hook shootings discreet on the project website, thebookfairybunch.com, and on the fundraising site, indiegogo.com/projects/introducing-the-book-fairybooks#.

“I did struggle with it, because it’s part of my story,” Bunch said. “She was an inspiration throughout my life, and this is another way she inspired me to do something important.”

After the project is funded and the storybook and figurine are marketed, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to literacy efforts, Bunch said.

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