ROME - Megan Henderson, second grader at Fairland East Elementary, learned Thursday that &#8220all bad people do not wear black.”

Local author and journalist Susan Nicholas visited the school and read her book, &#8220Are you a Good Stranger?” to the students, educating them about stranger safety. After the reading, Nicholas and the students participated in a question and answer session about how to identify and deal with various strangers.

&#8220What does a stranger look like?” Nicholas asked the students after reading the book.

Hands shot up around the room as students told Nicholas that strangers oftentimes looked like everyone else, they were not always dressed in black or dark clothes and that sometimes someone who looked nice was not always a good stranger.

That idea in itself, Nicholas said, had a role in the book being written. Over the summer, Nicholas' oldest daughter had opened their front door to a stranger because &#8220he looked nice.”

&#8220That scared me,” she said. &#8220When my daughter opened the door.”

That incident got Nicholas thinking, she said, that maybe talking to her daughter was not enough. Nicholas said they had told their daughter not to talk to strangers and that she often was shy around people when her mother was out in public with her.

Nicholas has reported nationally and locally on missing child alerts, Amber alerts and things of that nature for 17 years in her job as a broadcast journalist.

&#8220I thought maybe I could put it in writing, and the kids would understand,” she said. &#8220I feel like if we talk to our children now, maybe they will be more prepared when they are older.”

Nicholas said the schools teach students about bus safety, fire safety and even germ safety but do not spend much time on the subject of stranger safety.

Talking about it was what they did at Fairland on Thursday, and even though a small group of students were in the library as Nicholas read her book, the entire school got to participate through closed circuit television.

Many of the students said they really enjoyed the book and learned a lot about being safe around strangers in the process.

&#8220We learned about not talking to strangers,” first-grader Hannah Marcum said.

To educate the students is the reason Nicholas is going around to the schools reading her book and she plans to send a book proposal to Scholastic as she wants to turn her book into a teaching tool for schools.

The book is illustrated by local artist Michael Mayne, grandson of Dott and Don Mayne of Ironton.

&#8220Are You a Good Stranger?, which is locally published and distributed, is available at Empire Books, Borders and Amazon.com.