A Belwood author recently published a new picture book.
Marilyn Helmer has over 30 books published and her most recent is Sarah’s Wings, a picture book about a young girl who loves butterflies and finds the courage to overcome her fears.
The picture book also documents the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly.
“My greatest love is picture books,” Helmer said.
The inspiration for the book came from seeing milkweed around her family’s cottage in the summer.
“I don’t remember which of our children … saw the caterpillar and then saw one of the little eggs,” she said.
“Now, we did not watch the whole metamorphosis, we weren’t there for the whole thing, but I just liked the idea of that.”
In fact, Helmer keeps a running diary of possible story ideas.
“It’s amazing, it’s like anything else that you look for or sort of become attuned to … things do come to you,” she said. “I’ve realized that it’s good to write them down because then you forget about them and so on.”
Helmer first started writing when her children were young and the family made frequent trips to the library.
“We’d come home with an armload of books … and I loved those books,” she said. “I loved reading to them as much as they loved listening to the books so then I thought, ‘This is what I’d like to do with my life is write for children.’”
She began writing short stories, poems and articles for children’s magazines.
“It certainly wasn’t an instantaneous acceptance,” she said. “I went through the usual pile up of rejection slips … but my ultimate goal was always to write a book and so my first book was published in 1992.”
That first book was The Boy, the Dollar and the Wonderful Hat. Then she published a middle reader called Boathouse Treasure.
Her 1998 picture book Fog Cat won four book awards.
“So … it helped my self-confidence out there a bit,” Helmer said.
Since then Helmer has written everything from picture books to novels, delving into chapter books for beginner readers when her daughter, who’s a teacher, had trouble finding books for her intermediate classes.
Now, Helmer said, her daughter often features her mother’s books in her classes.
“It’s so much fun to go in and talk to her class,” Helmer said.
Though Helmer said she often has numerous ideas for books, they’re not always viable.
“I have several that are started and just fizzled out,” she said. “Yes, there is an ending but it’s not going to support the book … it’s too obvious, there aren’t enough twists and plots because you definitely need that and certainly in this day and age more than ever to keep children reading because they have so many distractions.
“It’s just so much easier to play a game on their iPad or whatever.”
To find more of Helmer’s books visit marilynhelmer.com.
