When they were young, James Rumford and his brother used to fight all the time, a common enough circumstance in families, if not a happy one. But Rumford, an award-winning writer and children's book illustrator who lives in Manoa, is making something happy from it: a new children's book, to be released next year, called "Tiger and Turtle and How They Became Friends," dedicated to his brother.

Even happier, for children in Gil Ramirez's sixth-grade after-school program at Waipahu Elementary School, the story came to life even before publication. The youngsters, who have been studying video production, last week introduced Rumford to a claymation interpretation of his story. Rumford had shared the text with the students, but not his artwork, wanting them to pursue their own visions.

And he loved what they saw in his story.

In the inaugural viewing, he paid close attention as Tiger and Turtle scrapped over ownership of a beautiful flower (each laboriously hand-modeled by the videographers), laughed when Tiger sent Turtle cartwheeling and Turtle returned the favor, flipping the cat end over end. And he smiled when the two reconciled, realizing neither would enjoy the flower if they continued their spat.

"I guess our lesson here was fighting never solves a problem," says the narrator.

The trio of sixth-grade videographers — Angelica Badua, 12; Saralynn Biti, 11; and Myka Oca, 11 — beamed as Rumford described what he liked about the short film: the way the tiger and turtle clay figures expressed their personalities (Turtle, a kittenish figure, wears a perky pink bow) and the action shots wherein the characters flew through the air. And, he said, "I liked that in the end you told what you thought the story was about. In a book, you can't do that because you have to leave it to the readers to decide."

Forgotten, for the moment, were the three computer programs the girls had to master to shoot the film, edit it and record the voiceovers. Gone was the anguish when they realized that they'd erased an entire scene, thinking it was a preliminary shot, and had to shoot a complex action sequence all over again. Gone the nervousness they'd felt waiting for "Mr. Rumford," as the students call him, to see their work.

EDUCATIONAL TOOLS

Ramirez and math teacher Rowena Raquel, who helped with the artwork and lessons in drama, were beaming, too. The two are among those at Waipahu Elementary who give up what would otherwise be teaching prep time to conduct a variety of classes and activities for children who need a place to stay after school as well as the enrichment of classes not otherwise offered.

Ramirez started the class with just one computer and his own video camera. Later, resource specialist and after-school coordinator Esther Kanakuri was able to get him a sophisticated Mac computer and other equipment with the aid of a 21st Century federal grant.

Kanakuri said Ramirez, who is just four years out of the University of Hawai'i, has impressed her with his confidence in the children's abilities — especially given that many of the young people don't have computers in their homes, and knew little about the machines when they started the class.

"He really lets them learn for themselves. This equipment is expensive and complicated and some teachers would be afraid (to let students use it) but he empowers them, he really trusts them," she said. The class is so popular that Kanakuri has had to lift the original cap of 16 students. Ramirez takes it in his stride, even allowing the younger brothers and sisters of some students to sit in, or try out the computers. His doors are open before and after school so students can use the equipment. "He really promotes a dialogue among the younger kids and the older ones, so they learn from each other, they mentor," Kanakuri said.

Even as she spoke, a girl maneuvered around the class with a digital video camera on a tripod, quietly and unobtrusively documenting the visit by Rumford and an Advertiser reporter and photographer.

Ramirez said the children will need these skills as they head off to middle school next year, and as technology increasingly becomes a taken-for-granted learning tool. But the class goes beyond learning techie tricks: hidden within the lesson plans are studies in math, language arts, drama and art, team-building, risk-taking and self esteem, Ramirez said.

"It's not about the test," Ramirez said, referring to schoolwide test scores, "it's about teaching the whole child."

'DON'T GIVE UP'

Also happy were the fourth-graders cross-legged on the floor watching a quartet of videos, some of it their own work, in addition to the sixth-graders' more sophisticated piece.

Most fun was "Honesty," a "papermation" video made by the iMovie class using drawings. In it, a student shows up in class sans homework and answers a teacher's query with a series of fibs, narrated in different voices: "My computer crashed." "My sister ripped it up." "My dog ate it." "My mother threw it away." The tone is spot-on — that searching-for-something-that-will-work desperation we've all employed in childhood. In the end, predictably, since the stories don't work, they conclude that "honesty is the best policy."

The "sets" for these films are distinctly unimpressive in their raw form: battered clay figures, rough drawings. They fill the screen with gorgeous colors and shapes but, in real life, fit on a single worktable.

Saralynn Biti, a Marshallese who would like to be filmmaker when she grows up, patiently explained the stop-start film process (shoot, move figure, shoot, move figure, shoot. ...) and the use of the zoom lens to make the simple set pieces larger than life.

While she talked, Rumford perched on a kid-size chair at the front of the class, answering their questions about his work. He has become a sort of de-facto artist-in-residence for Waipahu Elementary, having been invited to read from his book, "Island Below the Star," at an assembly 10 years ago.

They wrote to thank him and invited him to come again and he did, realizing that this school faces many challenges with the number of immigrants and poorer families in its population. Another year, a group of teachers acted out one of his stories for an assembly, and the children were vastly entertained. Then came the video opportunity: "Just the fact that they would want to do this with the kids — it isn't easy to teach this kind of thing on top of your regular teaching day," Rumford said.

His role is encouragement and modeling the creative life.

"You can be creative and make all kinds of wonderful things," he told the class. "And if you want to share them with somebody else, you can, but that takes courage. You wonder if they are going to like it. But if they don't, you have to say, 'I'll wait until they do like it.' Don't give up."