LOUDONVILLE — Pete Heath, a 7-year-old from Loudonville, is by all accounts a typical second grader.
He loves playing soccer, building LEGOs, practicing karate and being outdoors. But unlike most other children, he’s a published author.
He’s also fully blind.
Before first grade, Pete wore glasses but had normal vision. That school year, his teacher noticed his vision was getting worse, so Pete’s family had him checked out.
He was diagnosed with Batten disease, a rare genetic disorder that prevents his body’s cells from dealing with waste. His vision continued to deteriorate, and he lost it completely in the spring of 2022.
Still, it hasn’t stopped him from playing soccer, which he does with a special rattling ball and the help of his father, Joe Heath. It hasn’t stopped him from going swimming, either.
“I learned that I could swim jumping into (the) deep end of a pool, and then swimming from that end to the other end and back,” Pete said excitedly.
His lack of sight definitely didn’t stop him from writing “The Adventures of Marshmallow and Peter,” a short children’s book written from the point of view of Pete’s cane, Marshmallow.
“If he decides he wants to do something, then he’s gonna try to do it whether he has vision or not,” said Pete’s teacher Abbie Radtka.
The book follows Pete’s day-to-day adventures with his cane: going to school, taking karate classes, going to Disney World, visiting a ranch and more.
His reason for writing a book?
“Because I wanted to,” Pete said.
He wrote it with the help of his mother Beth Heath, who would record his ideas in an notebook for him. When he was done, he told her he wanted to get it published; he wanted to hold it.
Initially, the Heath family thought they would make the book themselves with Shutterfly. He brought it to school one day, where he shared it with Radtka, who is specifically trained to work with the visually impaired.
Radtka happened to know Rebecca Yee-Peters, the owner of The Adventures of Pookie, a children’s book publishing company. Radtka put Beth Heath in contact with Yee-Peters near the beginning of 2023 — and “the rest is history,” she said.
The book was released on May 3, 2023 and has sold over 800 copies. It currently has a 4.7 star rating on Amazon. The Heaths are saving half of the book’s proceeds for Pete, while the other half is going to the Batten Disease Support & Research Association.
Pete wants to write his second book about his January trip to Disney World. His goal as an author is to be able to sit in a room with all his books when he’s old, he told his mother … but he also said he wants to be a detective and a soccer superstar too, his father said.
