UMass Boston

UMass Boston basketball player and economics major Nathan Rubin has published a children’s book to inspire kids to dream big and work toward achieving their goals.

Nathan Rubin transferred to UMass Boston in the fall to play on the basketball team. During that time, he also published a children’s book to inspire young readers across Greater Boston. Rubin grew up in Boston before moving to New York to attend Sarah Lawrence College, where he found his passion for getting involved with community youth organizations. 

“I would go and speak at local YMCA programs,” Rubin said. “I’d go to the inner city schools and talk about being a college athlete and the importance of goal setting. I grew up in a family where no one really played sports. My father's an immigrant, and I didn't really know where to go with it, but I set goals for myself and kept pushing to get to where I wanted to be.”

His conversations with the kids in high schools and the YMCA stuck with him and made him realize he wanted to do more. 

“I can go speak at a high school with fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds,” he said. “But I can't speak to five-, six-, seven-, eight-year-olds.” He wanted a way to share his experience and message with every kid. “So I thought, let's try and get this somewhere where I can get it in the hands of every kid.”

In order to do this, he wrote Chasing a Dream. 

To write the book, Rubin reflected on the speeches he had given in the past. “I just went chunk by chunk, and I took different parts of it and just tried to make it younger-kid-friendly,” he said, “and I turned it into a book.”

Though he never considered himself a writer growing up, Rubin says UMass Boston has helped develop his writing skills. 

“UMass Boston has definitely influenced my writing,” Rubin said. “I’m taking a poetry class right now that's sparked my interest in writing. I love the education here. At my previous university, I could get a diverse amount of classes, but here I feel like I can get even more of that. For example, next semester I'm taking my economics and statistics classes, but I'm also taking an African studies and a psychology class. I feel like that's the main foundation of writing, and that's what makes everyone's writing unique.”

Rubin’s biggest hope is that young readers feel inspired by his story. 

“When I was that age, I remember the people who would come speak or read to us,” he said. “My goal is to be looked at as a role model. I love the Northeast. I love this city, and I want to be able to give back as much as I possibly can.”

He is already hard at work doing just that. Since publishing the book, he has visited local schools, run workshops, and even sponsored a backpack drive at the Mildred Community Center in Mattapan. 

“How everything has worked out has been a blessing,” Rubin said. “I published the book, and two weeks later I was already at community events.”

His goals for the book are very Boston. 

“One goal is for the book to be in as many kids' hands in the city as possible,” he said. “The second goal is to shake hands with Mayor Michelle Wu because of it.”

Rubin is still figuring out where his studies will take him, but he knows the direction he wants to take.

“I definitely want to do something with economics, but then I also want to do something with community relations and give back, and social impact in these things,” he said. “Hopefully I can find a niche that ties both together.”

For now, he is focused on the city he loves and on the kids who remind him why he started all this in the first place.