The common room of the Chilmark School rustled with popcorn bags and whispers on Friday afternoon as the entire school, kindergarten through fifth grades, prepared to become the audience for their own animated films. The projector screen lit up and animated puppets hula-hooped, built forts, played four square, shared snacks and engaged in lively dialogue about conflict, compromise and cooperation.

In 2010 Jonathan Auerbach released a song called Brave Women, Brave Men. All the proceeds from the song went to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, a veterans’ organization that provides support to families of veterans who died in service to the U.S. and those who return home wounded. The fund is now in the midst of raising money to open satellite centers at military bases around the country where diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will be determined. Mr. Auerbach is read to help again.

Two Oak Bluffs students were honored at the state house in Boston as part of a national reading and writing program for young people.

Lily Davey and Bella Chimes, eighth-grade students at the Oak Bluffs School, both submitted work to Letters About Literature, a program that asks young people in grades four through 12 to write to an author (living or dead) about how his or her book has had a profound impact on them. Lily wrote a letter to Tahereh Mafi, the author of Shatter Me, and Bella wrote a letter to Donna Cooner, the author of Skinny.

When you consider that Tom Dresser started his own newspaper in the fifth grade, it’s less of a stretch to imagine that he has written nearly a book a year since 2008. His latest, Women of Martha’s Vineyard, chronicles some of the most well-known and some lesser known women who share a connection to the Island. Some were born here and others didn’t wash ashore until they were middle-aged, but all called the Vineyard home.

It will be music for the ears and soul at the benefit concert featuring the Vineyard’s U.S. Slave Song Project and Spirituals Choir. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Satuday, June 1, at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, 54 Spring street in Vineyard Haven.