Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Eliza does more than a little for kids

Scott Dickensheets

Friday, Jan. 16, 1998 | 9:38 a.m.

WHAT HAVE you done for teenagers lately? Personally, I've refrained from grinding them under the wheels of my sport utility vehicle at the bus stops and convenience store parking lots where they congregate, conspiring our overthrow. Isn't that enough?

Eliza Toussant would undoubtedly say no, then gently reprimand me for such violent impulses. A recent arrival from a certain noncontiguous, rather chilly, 49th state that -- for deeply personal reasons involving an ex-spouse -- she wishes me not to name, Toussant brought with her a strong concern for kids and a pack of, you guessed it, Cootie Dragons.

Toussant, a former pediatric nurse and day-care provider, is the self-published author of two kids books. These aren't fables wherein gently frolicking woodland creatures impart warm messages. The first, 1991's "Soddy Bear," featured a megalomaniacal bear who desired the millions of gallons of honey produced by that honey sheikdom, Kuwait.

"I wrote that about the Persian Gulf War because kids didn't really understand what that was about," Toussant says in the dining room of her Green Valley home. Off the page, she is a charming mix of devotion, drive and remarkable naivete -- of the massively hyped 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, she wondered aloud, "Weren't they in New Jersey or something?"

On the page, she works hard to get the facts straight, particularly in the second book -- it deals with AIDS. Aimed at fourth-graders and up, "The Cootie Dragons" concerns a hockey squad composed of dragons, the captain of which, improbably named Kaplan, contracts a deadly, HIV-like virus. Although the book never uses the word "sex," opting instead for the tamer "mating," it doesn't pull any punches about the risky behavior that infected Kaplan.

Toussant printed about 5,000 copies in 1993, and although she didn't achieve her primary aim -- getting it adopted by school districts in the aforementioned 49th state -- she has sold them all. "I have to have a reprinting," she says -- perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 copies.

"I just feel there's a need for a lot of help, more than is being given out there," Toussant says. "I don't think people are really listening to teens, getting to the core of what their problem is."

Then she flips on a cassette player: It's a song she wrote in 1996, after the teenaged niece of an acquaintance was murdered in Kansas City while sticking up for a friend in a peer skirmish.

"We are best of friends till the end," Toussant sings, "You cover my back, I'll cover yours ..." That feeling for the teen condition propels her still; among other things, she's developed a game based on "The Cootie Dragons," which she hopes to introduce into health classes. She'd also like to sponsor a 10 Million Teens March.

Good luck. It seems sadly unlikely in monolithic '90s America that much can be accomplished by a solo activist like Toussant, who lacks serious backing and speaks from a platform built of honey-grubbing bears, cootie dragons and a simple desire to help. But it's heartening to see her trying; I suppose it beats simply running the little twerps over.

Meanwhile, she's interested an actual publisher in "Cloning Around," her third volume. It's about what happens when Amber Dawn, "the prettiest and most perfect cow in the whole state of Texas," is duplicated. Not typical kid stuff, but fairly typical of Toussant's stuff for kids.