Meet Elyse and Garrett Fox, a husband and wife author team with some pretty lofty goals. Children have many fears and supporting them with positive visualization as well as analytic skills to assess and analyze risk is paramount in a child’s development. This book does all that and rather than simply telling a child not to be afraid it is full of parental support and acknowledges fear without pandering to it.
The positive message about having the power to control your own thoughts and actions carries this book all the way! Read their interview below to learn what motivated them to write the series, and what part of publishing they’ve found to be the most difficult. Books Children Read looks forward to seeing how this team moves forward with this series.
1. What motivated you and your husband to write/illustrate children’s books together?
My husband and I are both kids at heart and have always enjoyed dabbling in various creative outlets. When I was younger, I loved coming up with stories and actually did a lot of cartooning where I’d create different characters and give them backstories. Growing up, I spent more time living in my imagination than I did the real world. As an adult, it’s been a really fulfilling creative outlet that we hope to eventually turn into a full-time career.
Garrett has always been a major dinosaur fan (he can literally name them all), so it felt like a natural marriage of creative interests. Also, there are few limitations or rules with children’s books, so you just have pure creative freedom. You can tell a story and temporarily transport yourself into a whimsical world where anything is possible. It can have a deeper underlying lesson, be filled with adventure, or it can be complete nonsense – as long as it’s entertaining!
2. What are your goals for this series of books?
We hope the Developing Dino Tales will help guide children on their journey to developing important social and emotional skills. While they’re cute, entertaining stories, we also hope the activities help parents and teachers to facilitate and guide open conversations with their children that otherwise would not have happened.
3. Tackling the publishing business is a tough job. What have you found to be the most difficult aspect of publishing so far?
The hardest part has just been staying consistent! It’s easy to run into creative blocks or feel like you’re tackling a monumental task. Life gets busy and it’s easy to not do the work you know you need to, but breaking things down into small increments and tackling a little bit at a time every day helps to keep the momentum moving forward.
4. What books do you have planned for the future?
I’m sure we’ll eventually branch out into other series, but we plan to continue adding more Developing Dino Tales as there are so many other subjects we want to write about. Once we have a full cast of characters, we may look into having them appear in multiple titles. Our third book is currently in progress and will be titled “Dinosaurs Don’t Dance.”