Just as anti-bullying awareness teaches education, acceptance and love, other subjects lend toward overcoming ignorance as a starting point. The unknown equals assumption and fear, but Daphne students took time out of their typical school days in early May to learn a different lesson.

Author Amelia Frahm visited Daphne Elementary and Daphne East Elementary to talk about her newly published children’s book, “Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works.” She’ll also visit W.J. Carroll Intermediate in Daphne on Thursday. Though she’s traveling from her home in Apex, N.C., the author draws nearer her childhood home of Walnut Hill, Fla.

Frahm said she wanted to shed new light on an often frightening subject.

“Children learned the basics of how a nuclear power plant works, and what makes a nuclear power plant, nuclear—or different from other power plants,” she divulged. “Most of what children learn about nuclear power these days is what they see and hear on T.V.”

“It can be scary to the uneducated because nuclear power plants seldom make the news unless something goes wrong. In real life just like in my picture book we have a tendency to find someone or something to blame for anything that occurs we don't understand.”

She went on to explain that, “I hope students will learn from my presentation that whether it's a cat named Penelope or nuclear power the more you learn about something the less likely you are to fear it. Reading a book is great way to get an education. One of the things I point out to students is how what they see on T.V. is not always the way it really is. For example, when most people visualize nuclear power they think of cooling towers which are huge and TV reporters like to film them when talking about nuclear power plants because they make such an imposing visual. But a cooling tower is not the nuclear side of a nuclear power plant and many nuclear plants do not use them.”

Frahm added in a few, fun characters to help children understand her message.

“A chubby rat missing the tip of his tail and a pretty blue bird missing some tail feathers blame it all on an energy guzzling cat named Penelope,” she began. “They believe she designed Nukie Nuclear Power Plant because she wants to use the electricity from it to cook them for dinner.”

The author combined her life experiences with a desire to help children learn.

“After college I was hired by a power company to represent them and three other companies who were building a nuclear power plant in South Texas; my degree was in Public Relations-Journalism and one of my first assignments was to implement an elementary school program to teach children about nuclear power,” Frahm said. “Prior to being hired the only thing I knew about nuclear power was what I had seen on T.V. and that some of the kids from my college used to take a bus to go protest it—this was the early 1980s and the Three Mile Island accident had occurred in 1979.”

“Before I could educate my students I had to educate myself and the information I had to go through, while factual and accurate, was just boring—at least to me...which is why I was a PR grad and not an engineer.”

Back then I remember wishing for a more creative format to teach my students about nuclear power plants. One that would grasp the attention of students like the one I had been—a daydreamer.”

I left the nuclear industry in 1989, got married, and it was after we had children I began writing children's books.”

We've moved around about every five years due to my husband’s career and the last time we moved was from Minnesota to North Carolina where I discovered we were about 20 minutes away from a nuclear power plant.”

It brought back memories and I discovered that not much had changed in the nuclear industry when it came to teaching young children about nuclear power; so I decided I would write the type of book I had wished for back in the day I worked in the nuclear industry.”

“The book (published Dec. 29, 2011) took years to develop,” she explained. “I tore up my first manuscript and started over; I knew I wanted a creative approach that would grasp children's attention, but I also knew from my years working at a nuclear power plant that it had to be technically accurate to be approved by the nuclear industry.”

I became a frequent visitor to Progress Energy's Energy & Environmental Center which is located at the Harris Nuclear Power Plant in North Carolina.”

Much had changed since the days I worked at a nuclear plant—after 9-ll, any visits to the plant had to be scheduled in advance.”

When I finally came up with a version of today's book I sent it out to nuclear engineers and other professionals who are considered experts within the nuclear industry and asked for their critiques.”

As I tell my students, the engineers and children I queried did not always agree, and when that happened, I always went with what the kids liked.”

Life experience also explains what tilted Frahm towards children’s books.

“I began writing children's stories after I had children—I wrote stories for and about my kids,” she recalled. “I never considered doing it as a profession until after I was recovering from breast cancer; I had been diagnosed with cancer in 1994 and when I couldn't find a book to help explain my mood swings to my children.”

“I wrote a version of what today is the award-winning “Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy.”