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By the time you get around to reading this I hopefully will have packaged up about 25 pre-orders of “Dreams of a Rocking Pony,” shipping them off to Cottonwood, Arizona; West Palm Beach, Florida; and Austin, Texas, to a name a few. The book is going to some cold places too, like Billings, Montana, which is currently buried in snow.

In light of this incredible milestone of publishing a book with my grandmother, I wanted to share the story of what got us here, of how we came to complete this passion project, together.

In the Spring of 2019, when Autumn was just a few months old, we were visiting her Great Grandmother Peggy (I’ve always just called her “Peggy”). Peggy had recently, in the last year or so, completed a series of paintings of whimsical, playful animals. She was a lifelong painter so this was no surprise. Then Peggy made copies of the paintings and pasted them together in a book. She wrote small descriptions of the animals, such as, “a trick skunk black-and-white.” She presented the book to Autumn as a gift, gluing a piece of rabbit fur on the book bind, a little detail that was in perfect Peggy-fashion.

Autumn loved the book (as much as babies can express themselves anyway) and so did we. Peggy then asked me to help toy with the wording, creating more of a storyline to accompany to illustrations. We put in some time on the wording and joked about having the book published together someday (clearly once you see the illustrations, most, if not all, of the credit goes to her!).

Then the pandemic happened. The visits to Arizona stopped. The book got read and worn and read some more. I started taking stock of what was most important to me (I think we all did) during this time. I thought about the things I wanted to invest in. I thought: What if I did pursue publishing that book? Wouldn’t that be cool?

During this time I researched publication for children’s books, eventually settling on Luminare Press in Eugene (which is to say we didn’t settle at all, they are fantastic!). I decided to surprise Peggy with the book, and did just that when she received her proof copy in the mail on January 19th!

Now, almost a month later, and the book is live and ready-to-order on Amazon. Come February 11th we will celebrate our true “Pub Day,” when we receive a box of 75 books ready to be shipped directly to our readers.

It feels good to be typing this. Not because I am super proud of myself, I am not. I am most proud of my grandmother, the illustrator. I am most proud of the publishing house, including their cover design artist, Claire. And I am most proud of my daughter, Autumn, for inspiring it all. It feels good to be typing this because this was our pandemic silver lining. This book was a beautiful glimmer of something different and luminous in 2020. And honestly, I think you’ll like it a lot, too.

Love,

Mama Bird