As they sat on the cafeteria floor, fourth graders from Kristi Krieg’s class were asked to close their eyes and create a character for a book from their imaginations.

Katherine Pryor, a children’s book author from Seattle who was visiting Oak Harbor Elementary School, then prompted the class to think of a name for the character and determine if it was a boy or girl, a person or an animal.

One child came up with a character in her head named “Bob the octopus.”

“What can you tell me about Bob?” Pryor asked.

“A whale wants to eat him,” came the reply.

In a short exercise, Pryor got elementary school students to think about what it’s like to be an author.

She spent the day at Oak Harbor Elementary Thursday, sharing with different classes how to create characters, build stories and other writing tools.

“I didn’t think I would always be able to write for my job but I alway loved writing,” Pryor told Krieg’s class.

“I always felt I had stories inside of me I wanted to share.”

Pryor is finding her niche in picture books centered around healthy eating. She wrote her first book titled, “Sylvia’s Spinach,” which was published by Bellevue-based Readers to Eaters in October. Her second book, “Zora’s Zucchini,” by the same publisher, is expected out this summer.

Pryor’s background is rooted in advocating local and sustainable food systems. She is co-founder of South Park Fresh Starts, which grows vegetable starts for a food bank in Seattle.

Lisa Phillips, who works as an aide in Oak Harbor Elementary’s literacy program and is also a beekeeper, met Pryor at a state farmers market association conference and asked school principal Dorothy Day if she could invite her to speak to students.

Day liked the idea because of a “double tie-in” that related to her school. A school enrichment program led by Krieg has produced a garden club of about 20 students and an assortment of leafy vegetables growing in the school garden, pollinated in part by mason bees imported by Phillips.

Through Department of Defense grants, educators also have received more extensive writing training the past two years, Day said.

“It’s a great way for kids to have a real author here,” Day said. “She’s going to talk about her writing process and how to write a book. The plan is so they can see the connection with what they’re learning in the classroom to someone who’s actually published.”

And reaching that goal requires determination and patience, Pryor told Krieg’s class.

When she submitted a carefully-crafted draft of “Sylvia’s Spinach” to an editor from the publishing company for consideration, she said she was asked to revise the story about 10 different times.

She said she has about 40 different drafts of “Zora’s Zucchini” on her laptop at home.

“For a book that is 542 words,” she said with a laugh.

“I revise it a lot. The story can always be better.”

When Pryor spoke to Erica Bailey’s fifth grade students about developing a story, she talked about the importance of creating a universal problem connected to a character in which others can identify.

The character goes about solving that problem or problems in the story.

Listening to a father talk about his own child’s experiences with eating spinach helped inspire Pryor’s first book.  His daughter, just like the central character named Sylvia in Pryor’s book, didn’t like eating the dark green vegetable until she planted some and watched it grow in a garden at home.

“The reason why you eat food that’s grown close to home is because it tastes amazing,” Pryor said.

Pryor said she’s been heavily involved with writing as a profession for three years but only in recent months has it become a full-time venture. She’s writing books that not only focus on healthy eating but “making good food fun and funny,” according to age groups.

The illustrator in her books, Anna Raff, lives in New York City. Pryor said she wasn’t allowed to talk to Raff while she worked on illustrations for “Sylvia’s Spinach,” and was amazed at how the character turned out.

“She looked almost exactly how I pictured her in my mind,” Pryor said. “She saw the same character in her imagination as I saw in mine.”