Jenna's Story: A New Author Steps Forth

So she hasn't seen all those blog entries speculating about when the Bad Blonde Twin is going to have her baby?

"I'm not pregnant," she deadpans, then throws her head back and laughs.

Voice raised, she repeats the point for emphasis. It's as if she's trying to outshout the din of unsought celebrity that has engulfed her since she was in her teens.

"I'm not even pregnant!" she says.

* * *

Her voice is husky and lacks the anticipated Texas twang. Her hair hangs below the shoulders of her dark blue Lela Rose dress. She looks straight at you when she talks and her words spill out thick and fast.

It's easy to imagine Jenna Bush as the life of a pretty loud party.

It's just as easy to see her as the kind of teacher whose energy sustains her when the third-graders are bouncing off the walls. And teaching, as it happens, is where the story of "Ana's Story" begins.

After graduating from the University of Texas and a stint on the 2004 campaign trail, Bush got a teaching-assistant position at the Elsie Whitlow Stokes charter school in Mount Pleasant. The next year she had her teacher's certification and a job co-teaching a third-grade class.

"Many of my kids emigrated from El Salvador, Peru, Mexico -- all over this region," she says. She didn't know much about their lives and schooling back home, and "that started me thinking."

One thing she thought about was volunteering with UNICEF in Latin America. She applied jointly with Mia Baxter, an old friend who'd been working as a photographer for Glamour magazine.

"Our friendship is sort of based on challenging each other," Bush says, grinning, "and I think she was ready to photograph something besides mascara."