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Sara and Gina Zavorka collaborate to create children's book.
March 1, 2021
Sisters combine vision, talent to bring children’s book to life
By Jessica Nohealapa’ahi Goode
The Bandera Prophet
Not all that came from last year’s shutdown was bad. Forced to slow down, many rediscovered precious time with family, moments otherwise lost in the minutiae of work and extracurricular activities. Two Lakehills sisters, both Bandera High School graduates, wrote a book.
“I was bored, and I was looking at random apps to download to better myself,” Gina Zavorka said.
She found “Habit,” an app that encourages people to begin good habits and break bad ones. One of the suggested good habits was to write one sentence per day. So, Gina wrote her first sentence about a stuffed alligator, and Andy’s Mustache was born.
“I wrote the first sentence, and then I decided to write another sentence, and ideas just started to flow, and I could not stop writing,” she said.
Soon after, she approached her sister Sara.
“When my sister Gina had the inspiration for a children's book and asked me to illustrate, I jumped on the idea,” Sara said.
Currently a middle school Special Education teacher, Sara said her true passion is art.
“I have always liked drawing cartoons. This hobby started young, and likely stemmed from my dad's similarly-characterized cartoons. He drew them for morning notes, and I then drew them for doodles on the sides of homework,” Sara said, speaking of her signature big-eye cartoons, and of their father Dan Zavorka, also a teacher at Bandera Middle School.
Andy’s Mustache is about an alligator named Andy, who keeps tripping over his overgrown mustache and doesn’t know what to do. It’s available on Amazon.com in both paperback and on Kindle.
Find it at www.amazon.com/Andys-Mustache-Gina-Zavorka/dp/1637324510
“I was bored, and I was looking at random apps to download to better myself,” Gina Zavorka said.
She found “Habit,” an app that encourages people to begin good habits and break bad ones. One of the suggested good habits was to write one sentence per day. So, Gina wrote her first sentence about a stuffed alligator, and Andy’s Mustache was born.
“I wrote the first sentence, and then I decided to write another sentence, and ideas just started to flow, and I could not stop writing,” she said.
Soon after, she approached her sister Sara.
“When my sister Gina had the inspiration for a children's book and asked me to illustrate, I jumped on the idea,” Sara said.
Currently a middle school Special Education teacher, Sara said her true passion is art.
“I have always liked drawing cartoons. This hobby started young, and likely stemmed from my dad's similarly-characterized cartoons. He drew them for morning notes, and I then drew them for doodles on the sides of homework,” Sara said, speaking of her signature big-eye cartoons, and of their father Dan Zavorka, also a teacher at Bandera Middle School.
Andy’s Mustache is about an alligator named Andy, who keeps tripping over his overgrown mustache and doesn’t know what to do. It’s available on Amazon.com in both paperback and on Kindle.
Find it at www.amazon.com/Andys-Mustache-Gina-Zavorka/dp/1637324510