The Actual Experts
So You Want To Be A Toy Designer takes young readers inside the process of making the toys they love, from product testing to the teamwork and problem-solving required. What inspired you to write this nonfiction book for children?
Toys are the first objects in a child’s life designed entirely with them in mind, and I wanted to crack the magic open. Children deserve to see the hundred sketches behind the one toy, the prototypes that ended up in a drawer, the grown adults sitting around a table arguing about whether a teddy bear’s eyes might come loose. There is also something irresistibly humbling about a profession where one of the recurring occupational hazards is watching a child push aside the toy you spent six months on to play with the box it came in. A job that funny and that earnest deserved its own book.
A deeper reason is that kids are the actual experts on toys. They have spent every year of their lives studying the subject with total attention. They have opinions about which toys feel right in the hand and which feel cheap. They know exactly the moment a toy gets boring, and why. They have wished a hundred times that a particular toy did one specific thing differently. Those instincts are not preliminary versions of grown-up opinions — they are the real thing, and toy designers spend their careers trying to listen to children that closely. I wanted a book that handed that recognition back to the reader: you already know more about this than you think you do. The questions you ask about your own toys are exactly the questions designers ask. You are not preparing to enter the conversation. You are already in it.
I also wanted to dispense with the assumption that growing up means leaving toys (and fun) behind. The adults inside this profession are, in the most enviable sense, people who never stopped playing with toys. They build, sketch, prototype, play, and study play, and they get paid to do it. That isn’t a betrayal of adulthood; it is one of its better versions. Toy designers do work children take seriously, even when adults forget how to — and I wanted to take it seriously too.
The book is honest about the challenges of toy design, including failed ideas and redesign. Why was it important to show children that creativity involves trial and error?
Because the lie that good ideas arrive wholly formed and instantaneously quietly damages the children who can’t produce them on demand, which is all of us. The truth is, the thirtieth sketch is usually the good one. Toy designers fail in front of seven-year-olds for a living, and that isn’t a setback. That’s the job.
When a child learns that the toy they love was version fourteen, not version one, something loosens in them. They get permission to be on version three of their own thing and not feel behind. I wanted children to meet adults whose entire profession depends on being wrong, often, and in public — and to see that those adults love what they do. Iteration is not the obstacle to creativity. Iteration is creativity.
What kind of research did you do to show the day-to-day reality of toy designers?
I worked in three layers, because no single source could give me everything I needed.
The first was the historical record, which turns out to be one of the most charming bodies of biography in any industry. Ruth Handler watched her daughter give paper dolls adult roles and realized no toy let girls imagine themselves as adults. Barbie was the answer, named for her daughter Barbara. A navy engineer in 1943 knocked a tension spring off his workbench and watched it walk end-over-end across the floor; his wife named it Slinky. Eddy Goldfarb is 104, holds nearly 300 patents, and still walks out to his garage every morning to prototype on a 3D printer. These stories aren’t decoration. They are evidence of who toy designers actually are: curious, unembarrassed about play, often working at the edge of accident and intention.
The second layer was the present-day craft. I drew on industry reporting, accounts from designers at the major houses, the play-research literature, and — more interesting than it sounds — the ASTM F963 safety standard, which specifies the exact force a part must withstand before a small child can pull it loose. What struck me there was that constraint is not the enemy of creativity in this field; it is the medium designers actually work in.
The third layer was the texture of an actual working day, which neither history nor industry publication will give you. For that, I triangulated until I could build a composite that felt true: the morning safety lab report, the hour of fast sketching where forty-seven drawings get discarded, and three get pinned to the wall, the midday session behind one-way glass watching seven-year-olds pick up a prototype or — worst of all — get more interested in the box.
What I was reaching for, across all three layers, is what I reach for in every title: a portrait a working practitioner would recognize as their own.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The list is long — and continuing to grow! I tend to work on several titles at once and only release them when they feel finished, so the order is always evolving. Most recently, I was thrilled to publish So You Want To Be A Waterslide Tester and So You Want To Be An Astronomer & Exoplanet Hunter, which brings the series to thirty-seven published titles, and I am nowhere near slowing down.
The near-term lineup is one of the most fun stretches I’ve worked on. Several of the upcoming titles have what I think of as the “is that a real job?” factor — ice cream flavor inventor, candy scientist, professional taste tester — careers that delight children before they have even opened the book. I’ve also begun work on a fashion design title for near-term release, and my son is lobbying hard for me to move cryptographer and esports athlete (pro gamer) up the queue. He may well succeed. What I love about this stretch of the series is how wide it is reaching: from the timeless callings to the ones that reflect just how strange and wonderful the working world has become.
If I had to predict the next one to land based on where things currently stand, it would be So You Want To Be A Journalist. But new titles are rolling out continuously through the rest of 2026, and the full list — along with a sign-up for upcoming releases — lives at LindaSoules.com. I would love for readers to come find the one with their name on it.
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This is not a simplified, watered-down look at a fun job. It is a real, honest guide to what toy designers actually do — the years of industrial design training, the child development study, the materials engineering, and the iterative prototyping that happen long before a single toy reaches a shelf. You will discover how designers learn to see the world through a child’s eyes while solving complex engineering problems, and why that combination of imagination and technical skill makes toy design one of the most unique professions a young person can pursue.
Inside, you will follow the full design process from first sketch to working prototype to safety testing. You will learn how designers draw on child psychology to understand how play shapes learning at every age. You will see how teams of engineers, creative designers, and manufacturing specialists work together to turn an idea into something a six-year-old picks up, plays with for hours, and refuses to put down. And you will meet the visionary inventors whose toys became the defining objects of childhood for generations.
But this book goes further than most career guides for kids. It explores the real skills toy designers build — sketching, 3D modeling, materials science, understanding how small hands interact with objects — and shows what young readers can start doing right now to develop those same abilities. Whether you love to draw, build, tinker, or simply take things apart to understand how they work, this book helps you see how those instincts connect to a real profession.
Illustrated throughout with detailed, engaging artwork, this nonfiction guide treats its readers as equals. It brings the same depth and honesty that boys and girls ages 10-14 and up deserve when they ask a serious question about their future. No talking down. No sugarcoating. Just a clear, fascinating window into the craft behind the toys you grew up loving.
The toy that will define the next generation of childhood has not been designed yet. It is waiting for someone with the curiosity, the craft, and the joy to bring it into the world — and that someone might be you.
Continue the cycle, or end it?
The Junkyard centers around a pit bull trapped in the brutal world of dog fighting who would rather lose than harm another living creature. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
The inspiration for The Junkyard struck from three moments in time, several years apart! In 1999, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace arrived in theaters. After a 16-year wait, this Star Wars fanatic finally got to sink his teeth and imagination into another action-packed space adventure. The movie began with great audience anticipation and musical fanfare and… two heroes going to a meeting about a trade embargo. On my way out of the theatre, I thought, wouldn’t it have been cool if, when the heroes went off to their meeting, something terrible happened back in the place they had left unprotected? What if the movie’s underutilized and underdeveloped villain attacked their friends? Would that have given the story more emotional weight? Would it have raised the stakes? Those thoughts stayed with me until 2005, when I began writing a short story about junkyard dogs. In its first pages, two dogs of a peaceful tribe leave home and journey across the junkyard to meet and negotiate with the dogs of a militant tribe. While they are gone, an animal that craves revenge attacks their home. The story’s beginning has since changed, but this meeting remains a pivotal moment. So again, I must thank George Lucas for inspiring me!
Second, I was in lower Manhattan, NYC, on 9/11/2001. One of my many takeaways from that horrific day is that the attack on the World Trade Center was an act of revenge. So, when the U.S. retaliated, I remember thinking, Who will want revenge next? When does the cycle end? In that moment, I had a theme for The Junkyard—and I knew that somewhere in the story, its hero and supporting characters would be forced to choose: Continue the cycle, or end it?
Finally, as comedian Ricky Gervais once said, “We don’t deserve dogs. They are perfect. I couldn’t invent anything better.” I agree with him and love dogs unreservedly. In 2024, I recalled a 2007 news story about a famous athlete being indicted for running an illegal dog-fighting operation. I thought about the brutality and terrible conditions the dogs of the fighting ring experienced, along with the kind of person who could subject dogs to that kind of treatment, and I remembered the short story I’d written years ago. Suddenly, I had The Junkyard’s villain. And to me, the opposite of an evil human who fights dogs for pleasure had to be a pacifist dog who refuses to fight! I had The Junkyard’s hero. I knew my short story had to evolve into something bigger and deeper—its first pages had to change to better introduce its hero and villain. That’s when The Junkyard became a novel-length story.
The novel explores the idea that kindness is not weakness. Why was that message important for young readers?
In a world that can often feel divided—and in schools and neighborhoods that have developing minds and at times, competing egos—I think it’s important to communicate how kindness can build bridges, imprint positively on the mind, and create happiness; how it can inspire friendship and leadership; and how it can provide affirmation to someone that they are seen, that they matter, and that love and respect are available to them. In my humble opinion, kindness is the world’s most powerful influencer. I think giving young minds more examples of kindness in action, whether they be on the page or in real life, is a very good idea.
I also think it’s a good idea to communicate that it’s okay to be kind to yourself. In the face of peer pressure, bullying, and all the negativity that can creep into a young reader’s life, it’s okay to stay true to your values and stick to what you believe in. The friendships or ‘found families’ that last and are the most rewarding are with people who love us for who we are. In my experience, ‘staying true to you’ inspires people, too.
Many middle-grade novels focus on adventure, but The Junkyard also deals with trauma and recovery. Why did you feel those themes were important to explore?
As adults, we know that not every day is a winning day. We all get knocked down from time to time, whether literally or figuratively. When I think of trauma and recovery, my mind defaults to stories of people far tougher than me—people who have overcome disease and tragedy and survived wars and live every day to the fullest. I often think of Floyd Patterson, a champion boxer who took his share of traumatic blows. A reporter once said to him, “You got knocked down more times than any other heavyweight champion in history.” To this, he famously replied, “Yeah, but I got up more times than anyone.” My hope is that the trauma and recovery aspects of The Junkyard help young readers see resilience as an essential and inevitable part of life—one nearly as essential and inevitable as asking for and accepting help. It’s okay to put pride aside and lean on the people who care about you. That’s what our biological and ‘found’ families are for!
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am currently refining an upper-middle-grade / lower YA science-fiction story and outlining the sequel to The Junkyard. I hope both will be available in the near future!
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Ninja is a pit bull who would rather die than hurt another dog. When she purposefully loses in the fighting ring of a cruel junkyard owner, Mr. Fergusen, she is punished and left for dead at the edge of a nearby forest. A tribe of stray junkyard dogs finds her and gives her a new name, Maytag. They nurse her back to health and welcome her into their secret home inside the northern junkyard’s mountains of wrecked cars, appliances, tires, and trains. For the first time, Maytag feels love and is incredibly relieved to be free of Mr. Fergusen’s fighting ring.
But her relief is short-lived.
Saab, the aggressive Rottweiler of the southern junkyard, plans to conquer the north with the help of Canis, a vengeful forest wolf. If the junkyard becomes a warzone, Mr. Fergusen will surely take Dodge’s strays to the put-down place. When Saab’s plan is set in motion, Maytag must decide if her new friends are worth fighting for.
Noble Intention
The Dream House follows a family who starts to build their dream home when things start going wrong, and soon their dream home is a nightmare. What was the inspiration for your story?
The spark for this story, The Dream House, came from a deeply personal and meaningful connection. I have an acquaintance with roots in India who now lives on the other side of the world. He has long been a reader of my children’s books, and we often have deep conversations about the stories and characters I create. He has always appreciated how my books tackle real emotions through a child’s eyes.
During one of our discussions, he shared two “true stories” from his life that he felt might hold the seeds of new picture books. These anecdotes were vivid and rich in authentic human detail. They stayed with me for a long time, circling in my mind as I thought about how to give them narrative shape. In fact, both of those “story seeds” eventually blossomed into published books: one became The Old Rose Villa, and the other became The Dream House.
While the core idea—the struggle of building a home—is rooted in real experiences, I let my imagination lead. As a storyteller, I didn’t want to write a literal biography. Instead, I transformed the experience into a “fable-like” version of reality, using the freedom of fiction to lean into fantasy and exaggeration where the story needed it. In a children’s book, you can amplify the “nightmare” aspects of the house—the cracks, the leaks, and the sheer absurdity of the situation—to create a stronger emotional impact. By stepping away from the literal facts, I was able to focus on universal feelings: the excitement of a new beginning, the frustration of being misled, and the ultimate joy of finding a solution.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
At the heart of this story is a father’s deep desire to reconnect with his roots by building a dream vacation home in the mountains where he grew up. He feels significant pressure and a longing to show his family how magnificent his home region is. However, this noble intention becomes tangled in a whirlwind of excessive enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. I wanted to explore how our passions can sometimes blind us; the father is so eager to see the dream realized that he overlooks the warning signs about the builder. This is a very human trait—the way our hopes can outpace our common sense in a chaotic mix of excitement and pressure.
When I write, I usually start with a situation that forces characters to reveal who they really are. In The Dream House, one of the most important themes was exploring trust. We often teach children to follow their dreams, but we don’t always talk about how dreams often require help from others. When that help is dishonest, it creates a particular kind of hurt. I also wanted to highlight that the most stable foundation isn’t concrete or steel; it’s the relationships and the community around you.
The villagers’ role is crucial—they embody an honest strength that stands in stark contrast to the builder’s flashy promises. A key motivation was the idea that help often comes from unexpected, humble places. Ultimately, the story suggests that a “dream house” isn’t defined by its architectural grandeur but by the peace and authenticity within its walls. The story teaches us that being honest and keeping things simple is what truly makes a home beautiful.
The art in this book is fantastic. What was the art collaboration process like with the illustrator Akanksha Priya?
For this project, I put a great deal of effort into finding an illustrator with the right cultural connection. It was very important to me that the artist be from India, so the environment, houses, and people would be depicted with authentic detail. Since the book’s inspiration came from a friend’s history, I felt a responsibility to ensure the book’s visual world honored those roots with a genuine spirit.
I was fortunate to find Akanksha Priya, a versatile artist who is also deeply involved in traditional handicrafts. Her approach was truly unique. She created the original illustrations by hand and incorporated mixed media elements, such as fabric scraps, to add a rough, tactile “local color” to the pages. This gave the art a wonderful texture that digital illustration simply couldn’t replicate.
I found this artistic choice incredibly successful. It brought a sense of the real world into the “fable.” Last summer, we displayed the original physical illustrations on the walls of the Wickwick Summer Shop in Finland. It was wonderful to see visitors’ reactions; the art sparked so much admiration because people could see the intricate details and the physical materials she used. Our collaboration was grounded in a shared goal of authenticity. I provided the narrative framework, but Akanksha brought the village to life with her artistic craftsmanship, ensuring the story remains beautifully rooted in the landscape that inspired it.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am always working on multiple projects simultaneously. My process is a constant flow: some stories are being written, others are being edited, some are in the illustration phase, and others are in the final layout stage. There is always interesting work to do in the world of books!
I recently presented several works, including The Hermit’s Hut, A Stargazer, The Fox and the Garbage War, and Thomas and the Magic Violin, to partners at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Now, my focus has shifted to new stories that address pressing contemporary issues. I am working on an important book about water—an essential condition for life. Water is the foundation of agriculture; it enables cities to function and provides energy. However, when water management fails, it can lead to serious disputes in real life. Even worse, neighboring areas, towns, and nations may start fighting over ownership of water supplies. I am exploring this vital theme through a fable, translating complex global issues into a story for children.
In addition, I have written three novels for young children, scheduled for publication later this autumn. My goal is to present them at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair. Before then, there is still much to do: we have to finalize the layouts and develop compelling cover art—designs that hint at the grand adventures within. It is an exciting time at Wickwick Books, and I am motivated by the chance to create more stories that help children think, feel, and see their own challenges in a new light.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Warm Values | Facebook | LinkedIn | Amazon
Fortunately, loyal friends from the village come to the rescue. But what will the vacation home be like in the end?
Childhood Is A Magical Time
Dance of the Gargoyles follows a group of friends as they return to the gargoyle realm on a rescue mission that leads them to riddles, ghostly gargoyles, & waking giants. What is the most rewarding aspect of writing an adventure series?
The most rewarding aspect of writing an adventure series is getting to relive the excitement I felt as a kid reading my first adventure. Childhood is a magical time anyway and stories such as these only added to that magic. I’m also excited by the prospect that some child may read these stories and remember them fondly as I have done my favorite stories.
Gargoyles are often portrayed as frightening or ominous creatures. What drew you to making them central figures in your fantasy world?
My wife and I were watching the musical Cats, and I was fascinated by the idea that once a year the cats would come together to decide something related to the human world. Then I began to wonder what gargoyles would discuss if they did the same thing. I toyed with the idea of working this idea into one of my adult supernatural series, but it never felt right. Once I decided to make it a middle-grade series, it was only natural that the gargoyles would have their own personalities.
The riddles and puzzles add an interactive element to the story. What do you enjoy about challenging both your characters and your readers?
The riddles and puzzles also seemed like a natural element in the gargoyle realm. I loved solving puzzles as a kid, and it was something that Milo and his friends could also do, without having to be athletic or having magical abilities. My hope is that the readers have a little fun by trying to solve them before the characters do, which is why I delay the answers a bit.
Can fans look forward to more adventures withMilo Savage and the Gargoyle Hunters?
There’s a good chance that we could hear more from Milo and his friends. But there’s an even better chance that a little-sister version of the adventure is somewhere in our future. Stay tuned…
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The gargoyle realm is about to be discovered! And if that happens, all of humanity will be doomed. Not to mention, poor Gerty, the talking English sheepdog is still trapped somewhere inside the realm.
Milo and his friends must travel into the uncharted Westworld and follow a strange trail of clues to find Gerty and the talisman which controls the Moonstone. Without it, the Snarloks will take over and imprison every human on earth.
But Westworld is an ancient and mysterious place. So ancient, that it’s rumored if people venture into it, they forget who they are. And they become lost forever.
Follow along with Milo, Suzy, Sammy, and Kat, as they palaver with a giant gargoyle signpost, try to survive the Slithering Desert, and find a mirage, all while solving gargoyle riddles, in the final book – Dance of the Gargoyles!
Disgruntled Entitlement
Debt centers around two lawyers whose lives are becoming defined by the debt they bear as they face the aftermath and lessons learned following a colleague’s tragic suicide. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The novel is a retelling of Crime and Punishment in the same way The Stranger probably was. The contention being that the moral architecture of the age has started dictating different moral conclusions. The book uses the arcs of murder and prostitution almost allegorically, and I think it was this general theme that drove the plot more than anything else. I saw Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice a couple months after finishing Debt, and that film sort of corroborated the emergence of this new archetype for me. Someone who transgresses a moral boundary and not only feels no direct remorse but whose life gets immeasurably better as a result, and who suffers no consequences. That’s sort of the meditation here. I’m also a corporate attorney.
The voice is frantic, funny, disgusted, and intensely precise. How did you develop that tone?
I wrote another novel, – -, where the narrator of Debt is the main character. The world of that novel is more straightforwardly absurd, so when Wade is situated in a world that’s ostensibly “normal,” it’s like he’s still suspended in that absurdity. He approaches the world of Debt as if it were its own Invisible City, and I think that’s where the tone comes from. This place is pretty absurd if you think you’re only visiting.
How did you balance empathy for Bill and K with the satire directed at their choices and ambitions?
That’s a good question. It’s very true that Bill and K are representatives of one of the least sympathetic classes in our society, the HENRYs. It’s also true that their situation is almost entirely self-inflicted. What do they have to complain about, really? The book leans into this some. On another level, their problems and their misery are kind of a way of saying that it doesn’t get better for anybody. Like that Malvina Reynolds song, “and there’s doctors, and there’s lawyers and business executives,” but even they can’t get a little box anymore. There’s a disgruntled entitlement and a pessimism that make the book possible. We forget to pray for the HENRYs, and so the HENRYs forget to pray for us.
If readers finish the novel haunted by one thing beyond the satire — the romance, the exhaustion, the fear, or the compromises — what do you hope lingers most?
Debt is a tax imposed by the capital class on the cost of social mobility. If you feel like you’ve been disappointed for so long that you’ve forgotten an alternative, at least you’re not alone. It’s not a hallucination. Things have gotten worse. They are getting worse. There are intractable logics at the core of our systems that we both suffer and enforce. And if you can find a way to fall in love and get married, then you should.
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Adventures of Sher: Surviving the Tributaries of South America
Adventures of Sher: Surviving the Tributaries of South America, by Sherana Barakat, is a childhood memoir told with the wonder, alertness, and emotional honesty of a young girl discovering the shape of her world. Barakat looks back on a nomadic period of her life, moving from Georgetown to Dredge Creek, then into Venezuela’s Amacuro River region, and finally back toward Guyana. The book reads like a memory preserved in color: family, rivers, boats, food, animals, folklore, and danger all sit close together. It’s not just a travel story. It’s a personal record of what it felt like to grow up inside movement, uncertainty, and deep attachment to place.
One of the most appealing parts of the book is the narrator’s sense of freedom. Sher’s childhood isn’t presented as simple or easy, but it’s full of curiosity and confidence. She climbs trees, helps with fishing, watches waterways change color, and learns the rhythms of rural life by being right in the middle of it. When she says, “This was my first taste of living freely,” the line captures the spirit of the book beautifully. The natural world isn’t background scenery here. It’s a living presence, full of mango trees, caimans, piranhas, dolphins, mangroves, muddy waves, and night sounds that stay with her.
Barakat also gives the story a strong family center. Sher’s father stands out as the adventurous force of the book, a skilled navigator who can read the land, water, sun, and stars. Her mother brings steadiness, care, and resilience, especially during the family’s difficult moves. The memoir also honors storytelling itself, from bedtime reading to her grandfather’s folklore about turn tigers and giant creatures. Those stories blend naturally with Sher’s real experiences, especially during the frightening night at Shell Beach when the family believes a jaguar may be outside the door.
The illustrations add a lot to the reading experience. They have a hand-drawn softness that fits the memoir’s tone, and the colored-pencil texture makes the pages feel intimate, almost like entries from a remembered childhood sketchbook. The images of fruit, boats, mangrove roots, waterways, birds, and the child sitting near the river help make the setting feel tangible. Some pictures are especially effective because they don’t just decorate the text. They extend it, giving visual weight to the rivers, trees, and animals that shaped Sher’s memories.
Adventures of Sher is a warm and reflective memoir about a childhood shaped by migration, family courage, and the pull of wild places. Barakat’s voice feels sincere and personal, especially when she writes of the Amacuro River, “This peace and quiet was the perfect harmony for one’s soul.” That feeling runs through the book. It’s a story about looking back with gratitude, not because everything was comfortable, but because those experiences made life feel vivid. Readers who enjoy memoirs about childhood, nature, family history, and life in Guyana and Venezuela will find this a heartfelt and visually rich read.
Pages: 39 | ASIN : B0H2NBCYWK
Sadness Impacts All of Us
Bella and Bird Explore Sadness centers around a little girl who learns to sit with her sadness when she is befriended by a gentle horse and playful barn swallow. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Sadness impacts all of us. It’s a heavy emotion, and often we don’t know what to do with it. Just as importantly, when someone we care about is sad, we often don’t know how to respond.
The inspiration for Bella and Bird Explore Sadness came from my own experiences navigating friendships over the years. Friendship can be wonderful, but they can also be messy. We all want to feel included, accepted, and valued, yet most of us have experienced moments of rejection, hurt, or being left out. I wanted children who have felt ignored, excluded, or lonely to know they are not alone—and that there are healthy ways to navigate those feelings.
In the story, Molly is saddened when her friends do not want to play with her. Before offering advice, Bella and Bird simply sit with her in silence. That moment is intentional. When someone is hurting, our instinct is often to fix the problem because sadness can make us uncomfortable. But sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is be present. Silence creates space for trust, understanding, and connection before words are shared.
Once Molly feels heard, Bella and Bird introduce practical tools to help her understand and navigate her sadness—tools she can use whenever sadness visits again.
I also make an important distinction in the author’s notes between sadness and grief. While they are related, they are not the same. Everyone experiences sadness from time to time, and sadness itself is a normal, healthy emotion. The goal isn’t to avoid it, but to understand it, learn from it, and move through it in healthy ways.
How did Bella and Bird first come to life as characters?
Bella is my real-life horse, and Bird is real too; although he is a bit more elusive.
Bella first came to life as a character after Hurricane Ian devastated our community in 2022. The storm was catastrophic, and in the aftermath, I found myself thinking about the children and adults who were struggling to process everything they had experienced. I wanted to create stories that would help people better understand and navigate difficult emotions that arise after challenges such as hurricanes, fires, loss, trauma, and other life experiences. But more importantly, I wanted the stories to have real tools they can take along with them.
What makes Bella’s story especially meaningful is that she arrived at the barn just one week before Hurricane Ian. In fact, she arrived early and wasn’t supposed to be there yet. I adopted her from Southern California to become my equine partner in my psychotherapy practice. During the storm, Bella demonstrated a quiet strength and resilience that deeply inspired me.
Drawing from my experiences as an educator, therapist, and equine-assisted mental health professional, I began writing shortly after the hurricane. Bella’s journey became the foundation for what would eventually grow into the Bella and Bird the Emotion Explorers series.
Bird came along because I needed a character who could bring humor and lightness to some very big topics. Bird is inspired by the barn swallow’s that nest in Bella’s stall. They often use her hair to build their nests. In many ways, Bird represents all the barn swallows that have come and gone over the years.
Emotions can be difficult to talk about, especially with children and Bird’s playful, wisecracking personality helps make emotional learning feel approachable and fun. While Bella provides gentle guidance and steady support, Bird adds curiosity, humor, and a little mischief, creating a balance that readers can connect with throughout the series.
Why do you think animal characters are often effective guides through emotional topics?
Animals have a unique way of meeting us exactly where we are without expectations or judgment. Whether it’s a beloved pet, a therapy horse, or even a character in a story, animals often create a sense of safety and connection that allows us to explore difficult emotions more openly.
For children, animal characters can make challenging topics feel less intimidating. Sometimes it is easier to talk about sadness, anger, or fear when those emotions are shared with a horse, a bird, or another animal rather than by humans.
In my work as a therapist, educator, and equine-assisted mental health professional, I have seen firsthand how animals help people feel seen, accepted, and understood. They don’t ask us to be different than we are at that moment. They simply show up for us.
That is one of the reasons Bella and Bird are such effective guides. Bella offers calm, steady support and reminds children that all emotions are welcome. Bird brings curiosity, humor, and a different perspective. Together, they help children explore emotions in a way that feels safe, engaging, and approachable.
Ultimately, I think animal characters remind us that we are not alone. They can walk beside us through difficult feelings and help us discover that emotions are not something to fear but something to understand.
What challenges come with writing about emotional health for young readers?
One of the biggest challenges is finding the right balance between storytelling and teaching. As a therapist and educator, I could easily fill a book with information about emotions, but children don’t pick up a story because they want a lesson. Rather, they want a story that entertains and connects them with the characters.
My goal was to create stories that feel relatable and engaging while also providing practical tools that children and adults can use in everyday life. That meant translating complex emotional concepts into language and experiences that children could understand without oversimplifying them.
Another challenge was making sure the books didn’t feel overly educational. Emotions are important, but most children don’t want to sit down and read a textbook about sadness, anger, fear, or happiness. That’s where storytelling becomes important. By following a child character through a real-life problem and introducing Bella and Bird along the way, children can see the emotional tools in action rather than simply being told what to do.
Ultimately, I wanted the books to feel like stories first and lessons second; stories that children enjoy reading while naturally building emotional literacy and emotional intelligence along the way.
When Molly comes into the pasture, gloomy and sad, Bella, the wise horse, and Bird, the wisecracking barn swallow, step in to help. Together the friends set out to explore why Molly is sad and offer valuable lessons and better ways to cope. By the time Molly leaves the pasture, she’s gained new insights, is in better control of her feelings, and has tools to take along with her.
Bella and Bird Explore Sadness provides a foundation for readers to explore, understand, and effectively manage sadness, and serves as an invaluable tool for starting honest conversations about big emotions.
My Pretty Baby: Seeking Truth and Finding Healing
My Pretty Baby is Wendy B. Correa’s tender and searching memoir about growing up inside loss, neglect, alcoholism, and family secrecy, then spending a lifetime trying to turn that pain into understanding. The book begins with a child’s bewildered grief after her father’s death, deepens through her mother’s relationship with a volatile alcoholic stepfather, and follows Wendy into music, Buddhism, therapy, sobriety, Native American ceremony, yoga, motherhood, and marriage. Along the way, she brushes against extraordinary cultural moments, from the Beatles on Ed Sullivan to Joni Mitchell’s living room to Aspen and Hunter S. Thompson, but the real heartbeat of the book is quieter and more intimate. It’s the lifelong question beneath everything: what happened to my family, and how do I survive what I inherited?
What moved me most was how vividly Correa writes from inside the body of her younger self. She doesn’t just tell us she was afraid, she lets us feel the air leave the room. The closing of her father’s casket, the stench of carnations, the Christmas tree hurled to the floor, the child trying to protect her mother from a man who has become suddenly terrifying, these scenes have a terrible immediacy. I admired the way she keeps returning to sensory memory without making it ornamental. Smell, music, weather, smoke, lilacs, cold water, mountain air, all of it becomes part of the emotional architecture. Sometimes the book’s detail is almost overwhelming, but I think that’s also part of its honesty. Trauma doesn’t arrive in tidy summaries. It comes back as fragments, textures, songs, rooms, and smells you can’t quite wash out of your mind.
Correa is writing about healing, but she’s not selling some glossy version of transcendence. Her Buddhism, AA meetings, therapy, sweat lodges, vision quest, yoga, and eventual work with birth and body care all feel like attempts to live more fully inside a self that was once trained to disappear. I liked that the book allows love and anger to coexist, especially in her complicated feelings about Paul, who is frightening and damaging, yet also later tender with her son Mateo. That moral grayness gives the memoir real weight. The final DNA revelations could have felt melodramatic in another writer’s hands. Here, they feel like the last hidden door opening in a house she’s been wandering through all her life.
By the end, I felt that My Pretty Baby had earned its hope. It carries the sprawl of a real life, with its repetitions, ruptures, misreadings, longings, and late-arriving mercies. Correa’s writing is most powerful when she trusts the lived scene and lets the ache speak for itself, and her central idea feels hard-won: the truth may not repair the past, but it can finally let a person breathe. I’d recommend this book to readers who appreciate intimate memoirs about family trauma, recovery, spiritual seeking, complicated forgiveness, and the slow, brave work of becoming whole.
Pages: 318 | ASIN : B0DWNGSF4P
