Upcoming Book fair, award, and author feature!

Hey lovely community,

It’s been a minute. Promotion for Bringing the Beach Home has slowed down, but I really enjoyed sharing my book with kids through various events. And if you haven’t gotten a signed copy yet, come on along to…

The Social Justice Children’s Book Fair! We are in our ninth year, with an awesome partnership with the Bay Area Book Festival and The Conscious Kid. You can read all about the event, taking place on Saturday, December 6th from 11-3 on our website. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get the latest news, and let us know your are coming at this Eventbrite link! In addition to having over 50 vendors, including authors, artists and literacy orgs, we are expanding our programming. Check out all the awesome performances, panels, activities and read alouds.

This year we are also launching the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair Award and holding a ceremony the night before at Chapter 510, a partner in this event. The annual award is given to a children’s author whose work embodies our mission to support “independent creators who conceive, develop, distribute, and champion social justice-themed children’s books.” This year we are honoring three authors: Mona Damluji for her book I Want You to Know, Raquel Donoso for Viva’s Voice, and Maya Gonzalez for The Gender and Infinity Book for Kids. This is a free event, but there is limited capacity, so please RSVP here.

And if by the end of this exciting weekend you haven’t had enough, I’ll be speaking with fair organizers Inno and Rob on a panel at the Howard Zinn Book Fair. This will be a truly radical weekend of children’s books.

And now onto the main dish of this newsletter. I was delighted to have Sanaam Lalwani as a member of a cohort I ran last year to help folks write and publish their first children’s book. And Sanaam did it! Learn more about her beautiful book, and her partnership with Sandhya Nankani of Literary Safari below…

You were a member of the Create Your Children’s Book Cohort that I ran in early 2024. Can you talk about why you signed up and how the course led to you creating a manuscript of your book?

First of all, thank you Laura for giving us this wonderful opportunity to talk about the book I authored, Life is a Dance. Enjoy It! I am so grateful to Sandhya for introducing me to you. I had expressed my interest in writing a children’s book to her. As I was sharing my ideas, although Sandhya saw a passion in me, with her knowledge of the literary world, she could tell I didn’t know how to begin. So when she recommended I join your ‘Create Your Children’s Book Cohort,’ something in me got ignited and I was intrigued. Now, I am glad I participated in the Cohort because along with learning tools to bring out my creativity, it also brought new friendships and a safe space for bouncing off ideas.

The course was the framework for my story house. Starting from really honing in on my inner self to ask the question, “Why do I want to write a book?” to writing blurbs after the book got completed. The prompts were very helpful in bringing out my creativity as I had to dig deep to find the answers. I really enjoyed meeting different authors online and being able to converse with them and learn from their experiences. All in all, my time with you was very enjoyable and it helped me forget about everything that was going on in my life too and I would get lost in another world.

Can you tell people about the story itself and what it means to you?

The story is about a little girl Saisha who keeps making missteps during the annual Navratri dance festival. Navratri is an annual Hindu festival that celebrates the goddess. Nav- means nine and ratri means night and Navratri is celebrated over nine nights with prayers, gatherings, and lots of dance. One of those dances is called Dandiya Raas!!

With encouragement from her mother and the strength of Goddess Durga as her role model, Saisha learns to see things differently, use positive affirmations and enjoy the moment rather than striving for perfection. The story was inspired by my own healing journey when I used these positive affirmations while recovering from a stem cell transplant.

I believe in life, we all have ups and downs. If we try to be perfect all the time, we can put too much pressure on ourselves. Then we forget to enjoy the present moment and miss out on the little joys that come our way. But when we learn to let go and not allow the small things to bother us, we can enjoy every moment a little more. It’s like the lotus flower—it grows in muddy water, but still rises and blooms, bright and beautiful! We’re like that too. We all dance in different ways. Sometimes we miss a beat or have the dropsies. One way to feel better is by using affirmations. Affirmations are kind things we say to ourselves, like “I can do this” or “I am enough.” Saying these words helps us believe in ourselves. When we believe in ourselves, we can do anything!

Check out this Instagram of Saanam taking part in a Navratri festival:

How did the cohort and our work together help you to develop the story?

The cohort taught me the structure and gave me golden nuggets like use threes in your work so I made three different instances to show Saisha’s imperfections before she broke down and I used the word “Sticks! Sticks! Sticks!” so as to bring emphasis to the next part. I learnt to take constructive criticism from the fish bowl which helped me to see my flaws and what the readers thoughts would go through if the manuscript was written that way. The main thing that I needed to work on was on “Show don’t Tell.” We had many examples to emulate from and did some exercises to better understand the concept. I also learnt about how the children’s book should have many layers and how it should pique the interest of the guardian or teacher as well as the children. In addition to practicing blurbs, we also were asked to think and formulate our author’s mission statements which enabled me to realize what the core value was in the book and what compelled me to write and helped me ponder on my goals. Finally, we did discuss next steps on how to get the book published and the different routes and were able to get a glimpse into the literary world. So thank you again Laura for this memorable experience that I will cherish always!

After the cohort, how much more did you do to develop your story?

The main groundwork and the creative aspect came from taking the course with you. However, after the cohort, there was still lots to do for it to become what it is today. Firstly, there was a lot of editing needed. I changed the whole ending and worked on making the book flow with the help of you, Sandhya and a lot of friends sharing their input and feedback. It took a lot of time to find the right illustrator, and again thanks to Sandhya, we were able to get a good fit. I think it took us at least 6 months for the illustrator to capture my vision. Once we were happy with how Saisha, the main character looked, things fell into place slowly. Once the pictures were done, there were 3 rounds of edits where the illustrations showed a lot of what I said in the story, so we could delete a lot of words that didn’t feel necessary any more. Finally, we had to carefully check the punctuation and grammar. It was quite a slow and steady process but I really learned a lot from it.

You kindly referred Saanam to the cohort. How did you know Saanam and what was your role in the early parts of her storytelling journey?

I’ve known Saanam since we were both college students. She had come to the US as an undergrad from Japan, where she was raised, and a family friend had connected us since we were both in the NY area. We hit it off and even ended up traveling together to India to take some classes at our guru’s ashram in South India with a group of young women and well, the rest is history! We have stayed in close contact over the years as she has lived in so many different places including Hong Kong and Dubai and I’ve had the pleasure of watching her career evolve from her time in the classroom as a kindergarten teacher to hosting a video interview podcast on health, wellness, culture and spirituality on YouTube during Covid.

During that time, she had started talking to me about various book ideas she was having and we occasionally chatted about how to get started. After her stem cell transplant, she told me that she had a children’s book idea and really wanted to work on it. I had just had the chance to work with you, Laura, on a few projects at Literary Safari, and I thought you would be the perfect fit to introduce her to the world of picture books and give her both a crash and immersive course in the art of creating picture books.

Once she completed the course, we connected again and as a friend, I offered to read her manuscript and began to offer her feedback on various rounds – a role that took me from informal editor to being her formal editor.

At my boutique agency Literary Safari, we specialize in creating educational media of all kinds and in recent years, we have worked with many trade authors from the kidlit world on commissioned fiction and nonfiction for the school market. In particular, over the last two years, we worked on a number of picture books with some high profile authors (whose names I cannot officially mention yet)! So my eye is always trained on how to create beautiful and engaging texts that children can connect with and that also build knowledge and offer learning opportunities. I felt that Saanam’s book had the potential to do all of these things — and so, without intending to, got involved in the act of making it “ready for publication” which meant guiding and holding her hand through the editorial, illustration, layout, publishing, and distribution process!

I know this was the first time Literary Safari decided to publish a book. Can you tell me about that process and decision?

Actually, we have published one book before this—Imagination Lab: Experiments in Creativity. It’s a companion activity book to our podcast Story Seeds. We published the book using a print on demand and self-publishing model and have been thrilled with the reception it has received. NYT/Wirecutter has featured it as a Best Gift for 10 Year Olds three years in a row and it has sold nearly 4,000 copies. That process–or experiment, should I say? :) —has shown us that in addition to trade and traditional publishing, there are pathways to putting books out into the world that are worth trying and that if you have a clear audience in mind and can create a book that is high-quality, it will find its audience.

As we got close to completing the layout for LIFE IS A DANCE: ENJOY IT!, as a friend, I realized that I would be supporting Saanam on the next steps - figuring out which platform to use to self-publish, how to distribute, even the in’s and out’s of getting an ISBN and barcode, etc. and it all suddenly clicked that since we already had a Literary Safari imprint, this could be a win-win for us – to throw our support behind a sweet and beautiful story and also publish our first children’s picture book. We’re not a vanity press, and we’re not trying to replace traditional publishing. We’re creating a third path that combines the best of both worlds: author empowerment with publishing excellence.

I really love the pacing and humor in Saanam’s book and how she made a specific cultural experience universal for all readers while illuminating simple tools like deep breathing and affirmations that can help children manage the stresses and anxieties of their daily lives—which, as we know, are many. It’s so simple yet so profound and as my daughter said, it’s the kind of book that children will want to come back to again and again. It’s been really encouraging to get the kind of feedback we’ve been getting some lovely blurbs including from authors Carmen Agra Deedy and Rashmi Bismark—and I’m looking forward to seeing how Saanam’s story makes its way around the world!

Literary Safari is also currently working on another picture book in collaboration with the Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center - it’s a picture book biography of astronaut Ronald McNair by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Chase Walker, and it will be published in January 2026. We are so excited about both these books!

Questions for Both

How can people get the book now?

You can purchase the paperback book through my website: saanamlalwani.com or through Amazon and the e-book for Kindle. The hardcover is also available through IngramSpark, which makes it easy for libraries and schools to acquire for their collections.

How can people learn more about the book?

You can visit the author’s website www.saanamlalwani.com and follow her on Instagram @saanamsbookcorner. She will be sharing upcoming events, teaching connections and more as she continues to learn from teachers, kids, and parents who are reading the book.

You can follow Literary Safari at www.literarysafari.com and on Instagram @literarysafarimedia.

That’s it for now! If you are local, come on by to the award ceremony and the fair — and spread the word. Would love to see you there!

Laura