When 16-year-old Chloie Marshall was younger, she had a special desk at home she called her "thinking zone."
It was her quiet place; a spot where she could sit for hours and write poetry and essays.
"I used to love that desk," Chloie says. "The number of notebooks I've had over the years is ridiculous."
The desk was also where she honed her vocabulary, heeding her mom's rule that she shouldn't use any words that she couldn't spell or define. Her first big vocabulary word was "resurrection" - a nod to her Christian faith.
Now hitting her mid-teens, the Chattanooga STEM School student is putting all that word power to good use. Her new children's book, "Gigi the Giving Grasshopper," is being recognized from Chattanooga to New York City, where next spring she will attend a book signing event at the Sister's Uptown Book Store in Harlem.
The book, which is about two virtuous grasshoppers named Gigi and Ella, was inspired by a group that Chloie and her mother, Samaria White, started in 2018 to provide snack packs to children at Hardy Elementary School. Before COVID hit, the group of moms and daughters was packing 300 take-home food packs every other week for Hardy students.
Over time, the group has also provided bottled water to schools, sponsored winter coat drives and provided clothes for school uniform closets. The women also used their group to promote other charitable programs and random acts of kindness.
Recently, Chloie used her communications skills to start a campaign to find a kidney for a sick friend. After a major media push, including TV and radio interviews, a donor was located and a transplant completed.
Chloie says her mother always preached "God, family and community," in that order, and she credits her faith training with shaping her book, which models acts of kindness.
"God has had such an impact on my life," Chloie says. "I was raised in the church. My mom was raised in the church."
"She has strong spiritual foundation," Samaria adds. "You have to start teaching children when they are young so that their foundation is strong."
Although she goes to a high school that emphasizes math and science, Chloie says she might major in child psychology or political science in college. She says her book is a way to create a legacy of service for others to follow once she goes away to college.
The book is published by Writer's Republic, and is available on the publisher's website along with Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.
The mother and daughter say that grasshoppers throughout human history have been symbols of hard work.
"If a purple dinosaur can teach teachable moments, a green grasshopper can teach teachable moments, too," Samaria says.