THUNDER BAY — Julie McGowan was signing her two books at the Moose Market on Saturday.
Her first book, This is my Family, is surrounded around families without the traditional mom and dad, and the other is based on adventures of McGowan’s granddaughter and her papa.
“There are families that don't live with traditional mom and dad.
“Some of them are in foster care or adopted or live with their grandparents. We raise our granddaughter and she had questions about the fact that she lived with us, and so did a lot of her friends in her class.
“They're seven years old. So, they're starting to ask questions.”
McGowan said she decided to write the book just to have them understand that it's not necessarily who you live with.
“It’s the people you live with and if there's love there, that's a family,” she said.
The second book is called The Adventures of Princess Delilah and Friends, McGowan said.
“It's the first of a series of books. Delilah is our granddaughter's name, so that's where the Princess Delilah comes in.
“It's based on stories that her and her papa make up when she went to bed at night. This one is the first of the series and they're just going to be adventures.
“The mantra on the back of the book is ‘don't think, what if I fall? Think what if I fly?’
“It's to give young children the confidence to have adventures and be confident in what they're doing and to try new things.”
McGowan graduated from university this past May.
“I was in school for five years and I started writing. The first one I wrote started in 2022, and it took about a year for it to go through the illustrations and putting the book together with the publisher.
“This last one was a little bit quicker. I started the last one in March.
“My illustrator is the daughter of a friend of mine, she's 14.”
The hope of these books is that they will give an opening for adults and children to have meaningful conversations.
“It's a different world than we lived in when we were growing up.
“It's to foster the conversations between the two, the adults and the children and have them understand that it's OK to discuss feelings and it's OK to try new things.
“The first book is more conversations on where they live and trying to answer the questions that a lot of them have about the situations that they're growing up in. The second book is more to give them the confidence to try new things.
“And even though they may say, ‘oh, I don't want to try it,’ to give it a chance and try it because a lot of times they'll try it and they go, ‘oh, I like doing this. I want to do it more.’”
McGowan said adults along with children should read these books together.
“Sometimes children like to read the books themselves. And then they have questions that they want answered. I think it's a good learning book between the adults in the families and the children.
“It's a book that will foster conversations. Once they start reading the book, the children have more of an outlet to ask the questions that are on their minds and have the meaningful conversations that they need to have,” McGowan said.
These books are available on amazon, at Entershine Bookshop and McGowan’s website.
