Why Children's Books?

Last week I was delighted to do an Ask Me Anything over on one of my favorite Facebook groups. One of the questions that I received was essentially, "Why children's books?"  It made me smile because it brought me back to my roots.

First and foremost, I've been a mom for the past nearly 22 years. Wow, that seems like a really long time, but like any parent can tell you, that time goes by so fast. One day you're bringing them home from the hospital and what seems like the next, you're helping them move into their first apartment. This happened to me just this past August. My baby (who is now 20) moved into his first apartment and all I could think was, "Is this the same little boy that used to ask me to make up bedtime stories for him?"

That's where I truly got my start as a storyteller. Sure, I've been writing since I was a child, but my true storytelling nature didn't come out until my own children didn't want me to read them stories anymore. They wanted me to tell them stories about their own toys. Tales from the Toy Store and now Return to the Toy Store are merely offshoots of those times. I don't make up stories for my own children anymore, but that doesn't stop me from writing them for everyone else's.

On top of that, or maybe because of my own experiences with my children, I've become a bit of an advocate for early reading. My own children have been read to since they were in the womb. Did this make them smarter or funnier or more creative? Well, I can't really know that because I'm not willing to go back and change what I did. However, I do know that they both have great imaginations and that reading or story time was their favorite part of the day. They were eager to go to bed to hear what their toys had been up to that day while they were at school or just busy playing. 

Reading is important. Let's face it. We all read something every single day. It could be as big as a novel or as small as a road sign. Knowing how to read gets us through life. Maybe even more importantly, reading and storytelling encourages imagination and I can't imagine (haha) life without imagination. It's gotten me through the toughest of times. For children, imagination can teach them life lessons as they play out the stories in their heads. I hope that my stories have that same affect on them. I hope that children hear or read my stories and take them into their dreams and turn them into reality with their own toys.

Right now, I'm raising the funds to get my newest book published. While I do the writing, editing, and formatting myself, I have to pay my amazing artist (Maxx Strain) and cover artist (Eric Cockrell). I also have a blurb writer and artists that do my prints and all of the fun stuff. As much as I wish books were free to make, they just aren't. So, this is where you get to help! If you back the campaign, you can choose which books to get as well as other goodies as we hit new goals. You get to be the first people to get this book. This book will not be published on Amazon or anywhere else until you have this book in your hands. It's also one of the rare times that you can have your book signed.  You could also be making a difference in a child's life because it will be harder to get this book out into the world without your help.