A book for Jasmine

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AMBOY - As a matter of course, 6-year-old Jasmine asks new friends whether they want to touch her heart. The doe-eyed girl's question is literal - she wants people to feel her tiny miracle beating. It's unfair to say the rural Amboy girl suffers from DiGeorge syndrome, a genetic deletion that caused her to be born with half a heart. She taunts her younger brother and baby sister in great-grandma's backyard pool. She pedals a bike, leaving a trail of dust along the gravel road. She goes to public school, and goes to church. Jasmine Stewart does all the things all first-graders do, but her tiny ticker quickly tires. She has gone through more open-heart surgeries than birthdays - and she needs quick stops to catch her breath. One foot is pigeon-toed and one slender leg is slightly longer than the other, so she walks with an uneven gait. Her body cannot process calcium, so her teeth require constant attention from dentists. She's also fragile. Just below the deep, pink scars of seven open-heart surgeries beats a heart assembled from a mishmash of parts. She needs an escort during recess to shield her from getting struck in the chest. Peggy Pedersen, Jasmine's great-grandmother, recently self-published a children's book to help Jasmine and children like her cope with the symptoms of DiGeorge syndrome. "I wanted to write with a purpose," Pedersen said. "I wanted something special for her." In Pedersen's story, a capped squirrel follows Jasmine and helps the girl when she fatigues during day-to-day activities. Pedersen jokes that Jasmine is the $2 million baby. Although insurance companies tossed the infant around like a hot potato, the Stewarts managed to stay afloat by shifting jobs to employers who would cover her. Still, extras in Pedersen's family are a rarity. Publishing "Jasmine and the Magic Squirrel" cost Pederson nothing up front. Instead she opted to give up a percentage of the book sales down the road. Doctors didn't think Jasmine would make it to her first birthday. Her mother Megaen Stewart hardly saw Jasmine for during her first 30 days. She spent them in a medically induced coma. "It was real hard," Megaen recalls, smiling as the children squeal in the pool outside. "We just had to keep praying she'd make it. Ultimately, the book that features the little blonde miracle isn't a money-making endeavor for Pedersen. She donated the first 100 copies to the Ronald McDonald House in suburban Chicago, where the family has spent months waiting for doctors to close up Jasmine's chest. Pedersen envisions at least nine more books in the Magic Squirrel series that deal with day-to-day activities made difficult by DiGeorge syndrome. The reasons for writing were the same for Dixon resident Linda Marini, whose grandson Seth suffers from seizures. The 9-year-old boy's head drops back without warning and he falls into a deep sleep, sometimes up to an hour or so. He's been to doctors in most major Midwest cities, but none have been able to pin down the source. The seizures happen two or three times a week, and make him a target for taunting classmates. It's a source of such pain for Seth that Marini wanted to produce something to help him cope while educating others. "He feels like he has to prove he's tough," Marini said. In her recent book, "Sonny Finds a Blessing," a sad sun bear with seizures stumbles on a dozen other animals with a variety of troublesome traits - a giraffe with a crooked neck, for example. "We all have something, and it's OK that you have it," is the message Marini wants to send to children. "It's all those things kids think about that aren't really that bad." Marini has been working with children for most of her adult life and wants to write three or four more children's books a year "until I can no longer write."