A new children’s book, “Fighter Clay Saves the Day,” teaches young readers about how their bodies fight sickness and why washing their hands is important.
Adam Harlan, author and Michael J. Setcavage, illustrator, both natives of Lebanon, spoke with LebTown about the 42-page children’s book that is geared toward readers ages 6 and younger.
Harlan was raised in Mount Gretna and studied film and communications in college. After college, he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for a few years, and then moved to the New York/New Jersey area, where he lived for about a decade.
During this time, Harlan said he supported himself by doing “odds and ends jobs,” which included writing, acting, and producing, as well as being a paramedic in New York City.
He then married and welcomed a son. “And I figured I needed to kind of start my life over, so to speak, just to kind of support my family,” Harlan said. He moved to Lancaster County to pursue nursing through the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences.
In 2018, Harlan returned to Lebanon County, where he works as a nurse in the emergency department at WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital. On August 26, he will start working as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner in the emergency department through WellSpan Philhaven.
The story behind the story goes that Harlan was “in nursing school, learning about the immune system and how it works. I guess the artistic side came out. I was like, ‘Wow, this would make a really cool animated series.'”
Around 2018, Harlan acted on his inspiration and wrote the pilot episode and the series bible, which is a reference document that can include information on the episodes, plot, setting, characters, and style for the animated series.
He envisioned it would be like “Harry Potter meets The Goonies.”
But then, inspiration struck again. “As I was reading, you know, my son, I would read stories to him every night,” Harlan said. “And I really enjoyed the children’s books where they rhyme, and they have a rhythm to them, and they’re kind of musical because you can really play around with how you read it to the kid and make it fun for your child. So I was like, I could make this into a children’s book.”
Around 2019, Harlan worked to bring the characters Clay, Bu, and Lemi from the animated series to the children’s book realm.
The story itself is about T cells being educated in the thymus, which is like their university, and then graduating or leaving the thymus to fight pathogens. Along the way, young readers learn about why washing their hands is important, the way that they usually contract sicknesses, and what happens when they get sick.
“Simply, it’s a story about how a kid gets sick, and then he becomes better through time,” Harlan said.
With a complete draft of the children’s book, Harlan faced an obstacle. “I was just thinking, I have all these ideas, but I have no way of getting it on paper because I’m a horrible artist.”
This was when he started to search for a local artist to collaborate with on the children’s book. “At the time, I was working a lot of overtime at the hospital, and I was busy. I’m much better face-to-face, so I wanted to try to get someone local,” Harlan said.
He and Setcavage had gone to Cedar Crest together and were friends on Facebook. “I was looking through my Facebook friends, and every once in a while, his art would pop up. I was just really impressed by it,” Harlan said, mentioning Setcavage’s murals in the City of Lebanon, specifically those for Scott Church.
Harlan messaged Setcavage on Facebook, and the collaboration began around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am definitely with Adam 100 percent. I love what he’s doing,” Setcavage said, regarding the concept behind the children’s book. “A lot of kids’ books teach certain things, but this is about health, keeping yourself clean and cleanly. So, it’s like that’s never going to die out. It’s a genre that’s going to be around forever.”
Setcavage was born and raised in Lebanon County and had what he described as “a troubled past.” He studied graphic design and computer science at The Art Institute of Philadelphia before dropping out to welcome and support a child.
Setcavage returned to Lebanon County, where he supported himself and his child by working for himself and doing art on the side.
As part of their collaboration, the two would meet up to discuss what the characters would look like. Once the characters were created, the two would continue to meet up to discuss what each page would look like before it was created.
Based on their discussion, Setcavage would create rough drafts of the page, and Harlan would approve the final draft, which is what ended up in the book.
“Michael and I both had the same thought that as far as the illustration goes, we wanted each page to be kind of a work of art; every time you read it, you see something else that you haven’t seen before,” Harlan said of their philosophy toward the illustrations.
The two aimed to make the children’s book a favorite for children and adults alike so that both parties would want to pick up the book again and again.
Harlan and Setcavage were the only people involved in the writing, illustrating, editing, publishing, and distributing process of the children’s book.
When asked how many hours went into the project, Harlan replied, “You should ask Michael that question,” to which Setcavage jokingly replied, “No comment.”
Their collaboration spanned four years, with Harlan estimating that each page in the book took about one to three months to create.
“But we each had our own lives, so we weren’t rushing it, so to speak,” Harlan said. “We were like, ‘Okay, when we get it done, we get it done.'”
Setcavage echoed this approach to working on the children’s book. “I’m an artist; I’m a natural-born procrastinator. Honestly speaking, I would not work on this book unless I really felt it because I liked what Adam was doing. I didn’t want to just pump something out and just be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m done.’ … I spent a lot of time in doing the painting, and I wanted to make it something that the parent could also appreciate.”
“Fighter Clay Saves the Day” is available for purchase directly from the author and on other online platforms, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Walmart. Harlan and Setcavage are working to get copies of the book in stores.
Looking toward the future, Harlan is working to market and sell the book. Depending on its success, he might transfer the concepts and characters from the book into an animated series, which might start out as short clips on YouTube.
In addition, Harlan is currently editing one of his plays. The play is set in Mount Gretna in 2010 and features two brothers who are attempting to reconnect and resolve issues following a tragedy in the family.
As for Setcavage, he is taking it “day by day” and will continue to do art outside for as long as possible. “I love Lebanon. I used to want to get away from it, but now that I’m older, I’m true to the area, and I want to make it beautiful.”
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