Savannah Sunderman, 10, right, became a published author after writing an alphabet book to help her younger sister, Rachel Cheyanne Sunderman, left, learn her ABCs.

Bonner Springs ? At age 7, Savannah Sunderman saw her 4-year-old sister attempting to learn her ABCs and decided to jump in and help.

Little did Savannah, now a 10-year-old, know that her pages, featuring the letters of the alphabet and corresponding pictures, would someday be turned into a children’s book.

“I didn’t plan on any of this at all,” Savannah said. “I was just bored, so I was drawing an apple. I just thought it might help my sister learn her ABCs and spelling.”

Last month, Savannah’s book, “A-B-C,” was released to the public through Tate Publishing and Enterprises. The book takes children through each letter of the alphabet and includes words and pictures of objects that begin with each letter.

The idea of children teaching children isn’t a new one in the Sunderman household. Savannah, who attends Rosehill Elementary School in Lenexa and spends part of her time in Bonner Springs with her father, said she could remember her older sister, Brandi, who is now 18, teaching her lessons when she was little.

Savannah continued the tradition when she decided to help her little sister, Rachel Cheyanne, learn her ABCs.

“I read it to her over and over,” she said.

Savannah is currently working on a second ABC book, this one using tongue twisters.

When creating her first book, Savannah said she tried to pick words that weren’t used in every other ABC book.

“I didn’t want it to look similar to others,” she said. “I just used what was on my mind. For ‘N’ I used nine and for ‘V’ I used violin.”

Her creativity did not go unnoticed by her parents.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Savannah’s mother, Candy Sunderman. “We’re so proud of her and excited. I’m still kind of like, ‘How is this happening?'”

Both Candy and Savannah’s father, Derek Sunderman, said they were impressed with the pages their daughter created, but the pages sat around the house for 10 months before Derek decided to see if a publisher would be interested.

He sent the pages to Tate Publishing after researching the company online. He thought their Christian background would be a good fit for the book. To his surprise, he soon got a call from the publishing company and the process began.

“It’s pretty impressive,” he said of his daughter being published. “We didn’t realize just how rare it is that (the book) would get through this process.”

The book went through an editing process that corrected a 7-year-old’s mistakes, but Savannah was able to be hands-on with the illustration process.

While working with the illustrator, Savannah made it clear that she wanted some of the drawings to look as though a child drew them, being that the book was written from a 7-year-old viewpoint.

The illustrator created an image of a little girl, who looks like Savannah’s little sister, who walks the readers through each letter. On each page there is a large letter of the alphabet, which looks colored in by a child with some crayon marks outside of the lines. Behind each letter, Savannah’s version of the letter as originally drawn in her manuscript can be seen.

“I feel really proud of myself,” Savannah said. “It’s kind of a surprise. You don’t know what is in your future.”

While Savannah hopes to one day be a surgeon with a large animal farm in Wyoming, she said she enjoyed the teaching process and learned a lot about her capabilities.

“Most books are written by adult authors about kids. But they don’t have the kid’s perspective. It’s cool to know that a kid wrote that,” she said of her book.

Her book is available at many major bookstores, including on Amazon.com. She also has a reading, Sept. 22, at the Oak Park Library in Overland Park and a book signing Oct. 3 at Books-A-Million in The Legends at Village West.