“My worst day at Zuiker Press is better than my best day at CSI,” says Anthony Zuiker, who created the CBS crime drama franchise and produced all four shows for 16 years. “Because the work we are doing now actually means something for the world.”

Zuiker is the force behind a series of issue-oriented graphic novels, the fifth of which is Activist: A Story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Shooting by Lauren Elizabeth Hogg (Zuiker Press, Nov. 5), one of the surviving students of the Parkland tragedy. The first four books in the series focused on kids who have lived through divorce, cyberbullying, racism, and body image issues; coming soon are transitioning, autism, and suicide—the last of these written in collaboration with the bereaved parents of Hailee Joy Lamberth.

Zuiker started small, funding the first volumes with a fundraiser held at his 50th birthday party, then giving away classroom sets of them to principals and teachers in his Southern California area. As laudatory emails poured in and hundreds of the books were requested, the project was picked up by Simon Schuster; the books are now starting conversations inside and outside of middle school and high school classrooms all over the country.

When Zuiker heard about the Parkland kids who were speaking out about gun control, he knew the issue was right for the series. Since widely known students like Emma Gonzales and David Hogg turned out to be too busy for the intensive process involved in creating the books, David’s younger sister, Lauren, was suggested. Zuiker had lunch with her and her mother when they were out in L.A. filming a segment with Anderson Cooper about Lauren’s Twitter exchange with Donald Trump, Jr., and Melania Trump; the vocal high school students opposed conspiracy theories and the idea that her brother and other activists were “crisis actors.”

Zuiker flew to Florida for his standard three-day interview with the family. Afterwards, he took his notes and holed up at a “writers haven”—Starbucks was mentioned—to produce a 22-page script in Lauren’s voice. He showed this to Lauren and her family, and they had no notes for him at all: he had gotten it right. From there, he began the lengthy process of developing the graphic novel with a group of artists (five are credited on the copyright page of Activist.)

“We do not give young people blank pages and say, ‘write a book.’ Completely impossible,” says Zuiker. “On the other hand, what I don’t want to start doing is saying ‘written by Anthony Zuiker’ on the cover, and take the thunder away from the child. It’s her story.” If this process leads to a certain sameness in the way the stories are told, Zuiker thinks consistency is a positive thing for the series.

After establishing Lauren’s background—activist mother, FBI agent dad, close relationships with brother David and her two best friends, alias “Heart” and “Soul”—Lauren’s experience the day of the shooting is narrated in detail. Both of Heart and Soul were among the dead.  

The turning point in Lauren’s story—the beginning of her path to activism—came when the school principal called for students to walk onto the football field for 17 minutes of silence to honor the dead students. Feeling this was not an adequate response to the situation, Lauren tweeted out a different plan. She and her classmates linked arms and kept walking, right past the field, joining with hundreds of other area students for a rally.

Zuiker and his wife Michelle, a former teacher, have three sons, ages 19, 17, and 12, and are directly in touch with issues affecting kids. In fact, the whole idea for the press came when their middle son wanted to do a book about his struggle with autism. In the end, Zuiker Jr. decided to keep his story private, but gave his parents the idea to do a full-blown publishing company to tell kids’ stories. Now, the press is looking for a subject for a volume on vaping.

“Every time a child picks up one of our books, the immediate message is ‘I’m not alone.’ Every time I hand a book back to a family, it brings the family closer,” says Zuiker. “And what I never realized is how much my wife and I would grow in the process.”

Marion Winik, author of The Big Book of the Dead, teaches memoir at the University of Baltimore.