The contest started with a question:

How might we inspire children and their caregivers to read together?‍

The William Penn Foundation, a Philadelphia family foundation devoted to education for low-income children, a sustainable environment, creative communities and civic life, partnered with innovation gurus OpenIDEO to enlist early childhood, literacy, and writing creators to write and illustrate stories set in an urban environment like Philadelphia for parents and caregivers to share with children and babies ages 0-3 to develop early language skills.

Philly, books, reading, babies, kids, education? Philanthropy and innovation? I was in! I was so inspired a wrote a story just for the challenge. I was so inspired I even made it rhyme!

Now I can finally announce that my manuscript, The City’s Backyard, was chosen as one of 10 finalists in the contest. I worked with illustrator Marc Akins (a fellow Philadelphian!) to revise and submit the story to the William Penn and OpenIDEO team. We didn’t win, but it was an honor to work with Marc and the Early Childhood Book Challenge team.

I’m proud of this story about a long, happy day in a city park like the Fairmount Park system, one of Philadelphia’s greatest treasures.