Young Author to Speak at Waukee Public Library Tonight

Petite for her age, Jade Miller stands a little more than 4-feet nothing, about chest high to most people.

Don’t let her diminutive frame deceive you. A mighty, courageous and fearless heart beats inside. A few seconds into a conversation leave no doubt about that, and why the 12-year-old West Des Moines girl calls her blog “Mighty Girl Iowa.”

A few seconds more, and any doubts are cleared up about whether this kid can get her historical fiction book on bookstore shelves before she reaches her 13th birthday.

Her book, Sybil’s Ride of Courage (Paperback, 28 pp, Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC, ISBN 978-1-61862-733-9), is now available online and in book stores. The book is based on a true story of an unsung hero from the Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, who rode 41 treacherous miles to warn the militia when British troops landed in Connecticut.

“I have always liked writing, especially short stories,” Jade says, enunciating her words with greater precision than many adults, exuding a sense of self-assuredness that seems out of place in one so young. “That comes quite easily to me.”

Her mom, Daff – short for Daffodil – said Jade was reading by the time she was 3. Her mother and father – Chip Miller, a marketing professor at Drake University – “surrounded her with words,” Daff said.

They sang to her, read stories to her, and recited poetry to her. “She was not allowed to whine or cry when she was angry,” Daff said. “We told her, ‘Use your words.’”

She says her daughter, who attends Cowles Montessori School, is an old soul, “an old woman in a young body.”

Thomas Beard, a conceptual editor at Tate Publishing, said he can’t speak to that. “She’s unique, that’s for sure,” he said.

And the kid, the youngest author Tate has ever published, can write, he said.

“She has a lot of writing talent for someone so young, and a good grasp of historical things. I found myself learning some things,” he said. “She has a good voice and it was a fun read.

“When I got it in, I was surprised that there weren’t a lot of mistakes amateurs make – for example, using too many words when a couple will do, not being precise and terse,” he said. “She’s unique.”

Where Are Women In History?

The book started as a research project at Cowles Montessori in Windsor Heights, where Jade attends school.

She said she discovered that history books are “full of men,” but there aren’t many female role models. She also found that young-adult reading selections often focus on boy-girl relationships or fantasies and science fiction and they don’t impart particularly strong lessons.

As she wrote the book, the Mighty Girl Iowa blog developed as a way to keep people up-to-date on her progress and as a forum to discuss different issues facing adolescents today – whether it’s why more girls aren’t interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), as Daff shares in her , or an alarming trend toward bullying.

Jade says she knows something about that.

“It’s sort of happened to me, just not on a strong, dramatic scale,” she said.

The solution that has worked for her is to involve her teacher, Jade said. Adolescents in similar situations may need some guidance. So to help other kids who are bullied cope, she wrote a short story, “The Life of Jessica Wendell,” a seventh-grade girl who was bullied by a clique of mean girls.

“It’s very, very Christian, and how she’s changed because of Bible study,” Jade said. “She’s building up her courage and waiting for the time when she’ll have the guts to walk up to them and tell them to cut it out.”

Daff said she is “enormously proud that she has taken on this awesome responsibility to encourage young girls in the areas of courage and being truthful so early.”

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Jade Miller will discuss her book, "Sybil's Ride of Courage" tonight at the at 6:30 p.m. The discussion is free and is open to the public.