Hays ? Photographs and the stories they tell are for sharing.

That’s exactly what the fifth-graders at Roosevelt Middle School decided to do with theirs that they took for a special project.

When schools in the Hays district learned last spring that nationally acclaimed underwater photographer Michael Patrick O’Neill was coming to town this fall, they all chose different ways to decorate their schools to represent life under the sea and photography.

Roosevelt was no different, with art teacher Rita Legleiter having students make jellyfish and starfish and hermit crabs and sand dollars and drawings of sharks and scuba divers to help transform the library into an “underwater ocean.”

Legleiter decided to go one step further.

She asked Hays Daily News photo editor Steven Hausler to visit the school and give the students some pointers on photography.

Fourth-grade students whose parents gave them permission to participate in an “after-school photographic adventure” then went on a photo shoot in several different areas around town.

Legleiter chose a variety of subjects that represented the area, including local sculptor Pete Felten, animals at Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History, a local sunflower field and native limestone fenceposts.

“Since (O’Neill) is a photographer, we decided to take pictures,” she said. “And since he was about ‘ocean magic,’ we decided to call our (project) ‘Prairie Magic.”‘

Knowing that O’Neill also had authored several children’s books, Legleiter took a cue from a fellow district employee for the book project.

Alicia Brungardt, instructional technology coordinator for USD 489, is a member of the Roosevelt Parent-Teachers Association. And she was presenting the idea at a PTA meeting about making the Roosevelt yearbook hardbound this year.

Legleiter, who already had planned to give each of the young photographers a CD of all the photos, decided to assemble her students’ work into book form.

So by the time O’Neill visited Hays in late September, the students’ photos were permanently preserved in a hardbound book entitled, “Prairie Magic.”

Nearly 50 of the photos selected for matting were hung for display all around the school.

The children presented O’Neill a small book of their work, and three photos were chosen for “best of show” — one selected by the students, another by Roosevelt teachers and staff and a third by O’Neill himself.

The students’ No. 1 choice was a snake with its tongue sticking out, taken by Lacey Elkins at Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History.

The teachers liked best a field of sunflowers taken by Falguni Gala.

And O’Neill’s favorite was a photo of a frog held in the hands of some of the students while Shaila Naegele snapped the picture.

The students were able to order copies of the books, and a copy of “Prairie Magic” is on display in the children’s section of the Hays Public Library.

Legleiter said she knew it would be a good educational experience for the students, but the project’s success was well beyond her imagination.

“The kids got so into trying to do things that (Hausler) had told them, and it was a great introduction to photography,” said Legleiter, who said the students were impressed when O’Neill used several of their photos for examples while addressing the rest of the school.