South graduate of 2019 and Tower Alumni Grace Reyes, has officially completed the process of creating her first children’s book, “Little Lottie’s Halloween Adventure,” in early September. Reyes attended Wayne State University with a full ride for journalism after graduating South, but has since found new interests after finishing school. Her children’s book is just the beginning of little Lottie’s story.
“If I want to do it again, it opens up to holidays, even ones that I don’t celebrate,” Reyes said. “I could do Hanukkah, and different heritages. I could do ‘Little Lottie learns about Black History Month’, or ‘Lottie learns about Hispanic American heritage month.’”
Although a children’s book may seem to be an easy task to some, Reyes went through a process that took months of hard work. However, by contacting influencers to promote her book, Reyes was met with people eager to help her.
“I did have one (influencer) on Instagram, and she does these PR videos on TikTok, and then I got some orders through there,” Reyes said.
Forming the idea to create the book in January of 2024, Reyes went through a long process of putting it into action. Months of work led her to finally release the book in early September.
“I got the idea in January, and in March I got serious about it, and then April was when I finished up the manuscript and edits,” Reyes said. “From May to August it was doing all the logistics from working with an illustrator to getting all the licensing, and figuring out how to ship it and sell it.”
Reyes put a lot of thought into making her book reasonable for parents to read their children before bedtime. Since the release of the book, she has also been reading the book to her directed audience in elementary schools such as Ferry Elementary as well as libraries in her area.
“This past Friday was my first read-aloud and it was so fun, and I was so nervous for some reason but they loved it,” Reyes said. “It only takes five minutes to read. I did a shorter story than what I probably would have wanted to do, because I know kid’s attention spans are about five minutes, and at bedtime parents don’t want to read a story that is 40 pages long.”
“Little Lottie’s Halloween Adventure” is important to Reyes, as it is a result of her dedication. Sharing her story with children has become an experience that she said is rewarding and exciting to see as she moves from library to library.
“Kids come up with the craziest things. I just did a reading at Ferry, and one little boy was like ‘well how does the dog talk to the scarecrow and the pumpkin?’” Reyes said. “I just respond with ‘well I don’t know, I think he has superpowers’ and it is fun to see what they think about it.”
