MARYSVILLE — With his tousled hair, casual clothes and friendly enthusiasm, it’s easy to imagine Derek Munson as a kid.

It becomes even easier to imagine when one watches Munson encouraging kids to make pies out of ingredients like bugs and dirt and assorted slimy stuff, but his hands-on activities offer grade school students lessons on getting along and writing, even in the midst of gross-out sessions designed to appeal to younger audiences.

Munson is the award-winning author of “Enemy Pie,” an illustrated children’s book about a boy who plans to get back at another boy whom he doesn’t like by serving him the eponymous dessert, and for the past six years he’s read his story to thousands of students and conducted experiments, in which they make both “good pies” and “bad pies.”

Starting Jan. 9 at Marshall Elementary, Munson brought his show to the Marysville School District for a week-long tour, and local students got to hear the story of a boy whose father shares with him the secret of “Enemy Pie,” “a surefire way to get rid of enemies,” but only if you’re nice to your enemy for the whole day before you serve him the pie.

After the young narrator of Munson’s book spends an entire day with his “enemy,” another boy named Jeremy Ross, he decides that Jeremy isn’t his enemy after all, but his dad still serves Jeremy “Enemy Pie” anyway. The boy warns Jeremy not to eat the “bad pie,” but it turns out that the pie wasn’t bad after all. Thus, the boy’s father kept his word since the “Enemy Pie” got rid of the boy’s “enemy,” by turning him into a friend.

Just to make sure the lesson stuck, Munson called up students from the audience to help him make “good pies” and “bad pies,” albeit with a generous helping of imagination, by pretending that colorful pieces of Play-Doh were actually sweet fruits, and that rubber worms and insects were the real things (don’t worry, parents, none of these pies were eaten).

Students squealed with amusement and aversion as Munson instructed their peers to roll the dough of the “bad pies” with bowling pins instead of rolling pins, and to top them off with shaving cream rather than whipped cream, but his intent became clear when he presented the “good pies” and “bad pies” to his audience.

“Imagine you have an enemy, which I hope you don’t,” Munson said, holding the “bad pie” in front of him. “Now, if you gave your enemy this pie, do you think that would get rid of them? Probably not. They might decide to get back at you by tricking you like you tricked them, and then they’d be an even worse enemy.”

Munson then set down the “bad pie,” and picked up the “good pie.” “What if you gave them this pie instead? What do you think might happen? Maybe they’d become your friends. They might not, but whenever you do something good for someone else, something good will always happen, even if it’s something that you don’t expect.”

While the younger kids at Marshall Elementary remained a bit fixated on the pies, the older students asked Munson what the process of writing “Enemy Pie” was like. Munson’s story about writing his story began 10 years ago, in Seattle’s Gas Works Park.

“I found this giant patch of blackberries and I wondered why nobody else was eating them,” Munson said. “I was going to be making some blackberry jam to give to some of my friends and if there was something wrong with them, I knew that wasn’t such a good idea, so I wondered what to do with these bad blackberries.”

When Munson returned home, he turned his thoughts into the first book he wrote, completing the first and second drafts in only four hours. He then submitted his story to several different publishers, before Chronicle Books picked it up, and from there, he spent the next eight months rewriting his original story six times.

For Munson, being a writer simply means that you keep on writing and maintain a steady output in a way that you can enjoy.

“When kids are given a way to see writing as fun, they’re going to keep at it,” Munson said. “As soon as it’s not fun, they’re not going to do it. The key to becoming a better artist, in whatever field you’re in, is quantity, not quality. The quality comes with the quantity. I try to focus on ways to keep them writing, and let the quality take care of itself.”

Marshall Elementary Principal Michelle Gurnee praised “Enemy Pie,” and Munson’s presentation, for offering something for every age and ability level in elementary school, especially in its experiential-based learning.

“It’s very powerful for children to see an author who’s been published,” Gurnee said. “Enemy Pie’ is a wonderful story, that all of the children can relate to, about how to change an enemy into a friend. When [Munson] talks to the children about how he just got the idea and started writing, and about his publisher, I think it makes the process of writing real to the children. Meeting an author makes them feel they could possibly be authors themselves.”

Munson is visiting Marysville’s elementary schools through Jan. 16.