May 15th, 2017 I self-published my first children’s book, Elsie’s Easter. It is a wonderful feeling to have this project finished but also scary since I have been working on it three years and wasn’t sure what life would be like, post-publishing. I am however, overwhelmed with gratitude for how well my book has been received. Today I am beginning a series of posts about the process of making the book.
I’ve been asked the question many times, ‘what inspired me to write Elsie’s Easter’. In this series of posts I would like to answer this and other questions that I have been asked.
As always, it is the children. It’s all about the children and my excitement at having them all home again for Easter. Not all of them came home that Easter but they had been home just the fall before and so I had finally met all my dears at that point. I wanted to bless them each with a little hand-knit rabbit. I had plenty of yarn from a previous project. It was a lightweight yarn in as many colors as possible. I remember the yarn arriving the October before in a huge box. One of each color.
I used it to weave scarves and knit hats for the children. It had been a lot of fun with yarn everywhere and so many colors. They had loved the scarves and hats and wore them proudly.
I was sorry later to find out that it wasn’t the warmest yarn for hats in the bitter cold of our Ohio winters, but it was great for knitted rabbits. I made each one a different color. We had so much fun with them as they emerged from the knitting needles. Each time the kids came to visit they would inspect the progress. They picked out the colors of their own rabbits.
The book is the story of that Easter day that we had here. Elsie represents Chloe and all the rabbits represent her own dear nieces and nephews, my grandchildren. Little Harry has since been born and has a sister now as well. We traveled out to see her and had quite an adventure which will have to go into another story book. Elsie’s Easter is about family. It is about the anticipation of being together. It is about being part of the preparations and contributing to the overall fun and excitement. It is about belonging.
I want to talk more about other aspects of this story but that will have to wait for another blog post. Thank you for reading. I would like to hear from you. If you have a question about the book that you would like me to answer in a future post, just leave me a comment. Leave me a comment anyway, I love reading the comments. I hope you enjoyed the story.
If you haven’t gotten your copy of Elsie’s Easter you can buy it on Amazon. If you would like me to sign it for you and send you a green bow like the one Elsie is wearing you can order it here, directly from me.
This post contains an affiliate link.
