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FOXBORO - What started with a graduate program in counseling became a lesson in life.

Annie MacDonald calls Steve Smith her mentor. Back in 1991, she was his student and graduate assistant at Keene State College in New Hampshire.

Smith, a North Attleboro High School graduate, ultimately became Annie MacDonald's Morrie Schwartz, the subject of the New York Times best-seller, "Tuesdays With Morrie."

This spring, AuthorHouse published MacDonald's "What's Up With Poppo?" a children's book about a girl whose grandfather gets progressively worse from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. MacDonald is donating a portion of the book's proceeds to the ALS Association.

Smith, who died from complications related to the disease on Oct. 9, 2007, asked MacDonald, a former Foxboro schools' guidance counselor, to write the book. They reunited in November 2005 at a Panera Bread in New Hampshire after MacDonald sent Smith's family a sympathy card that June when a former classmate mistakenly heard that he had died.

At the time, Smith - "Poppo" to his two granddaughters - was more than three years into his battle with ALS.

"He said, 'I'd really like you to write a children's book for me on behalf of my grandchildren,'" she said.

Coincidentally, MacDonald had written about "the embarrassing mistake that brought him back into my life" as the final assignment for a graduate correspondence course in writing children's literature. At that time, she had only spoken with Smith on the phone.

Her writing teacher found the story compelling - and incomplete.

"I don't know if I would've pursued it if she hadn't written back to me and said, 'Your story is not done,' " said MacDonald, who worked in the Foxboro schools from 1999 to 2007. She now resides and works in New Hampshire.

"She was the one that said, 'You've been given a second chance to say goodbye. Go take it.' "

MacDonald calls her relationship with Smith "my own version of 'Tuesdays With Morrie.'"

"Tuesdays With Morrie" is Mitch Albom's New York Times best-seller chronicling his reunion with one of his former college professors after a 20-year absence.

Albom's professor, Morrie Schwartz, was dying at the time. The title refers to their weekly get-togethers in Schwartz's study. The book later became a TV movie starring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon.

Smith, MacDonald said, was "just one of those teachers that you remember. He thought outside the box, and pushed you."

"I was having to learn again from my teacher. He was showing me about dying," she said.

"He laughed. He thought it was so funny I made such a stupid mistake," MacDonald said.

At the time they reunited, he could barely speak, she recalled.

"After a while, I didn't see it anymore, because the teacher I remembered was still in there," she said.

Smith provided a list of "all of the things he thought might scare a child" with a relative with ALS, MacDonald said.

He wanted them included in the book - which he agreed to draw, but did not finish; Ashley MacNeil illustrated the book.

The book is narrated by an unnamed girl who enjoys visiting with her grandfather, "Poppo," who "giggles when I dance."

As the story progresses, Poppo becomes more and more ill. The girl asks her parents, "What's up with Poppo?" and they explain in general terms, and tell her how she can help him.

"Poppo's sick," Daddy says. "The muscles in Poppo's legs don't work like they used to work. He needs the wheelchair to help him move around."

"Give Poppo extra hugs," says Mommy.

Smith appreciated MacDonald's tribute so much that his family mentioned it in his obituary, which ran in the Oct. 13, 2007, Sun Chronicle. He was 60.

"He was an avid artist and was in the process of creating artwork for a series of children's books he was developing with a former student," the obituary states.

MacDonald said she has written four "Poppo" books. She finished the first one in the spring of 2007, and the second one, "Poppo's Half-Birthday Wish," before he died.

Teacher and student also began developing a curriculum to go along with the book, she said.

"He would talk about those books as part of his future, too," MacDonald said.

MacDonald wrote the third and fourth books, "Poppo's Very Best Trick," and "Bubbles for Poppo," after Smith's death.

Only the first book has been published.

She is unsure if she'll publish "Bubbles," in which mind-magic "takes the illness away."

"It would provide a wonderful message, but I don't know if it's a realistic message for children," MacDonald said.

Foxboro students dealt with ALS several years ago.

Ahern Middle School Principal William Palladino died from the disease in April 2000. He had been principal for nearly four years. The school's media center is named in his honor.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.