My wife Judy’s children’s book, “The Boy Who Said Baa:A Christmas Story” was announced in early October. We hadn’t told friends and family members it was in the works because we wanted it to be a surprise. The response has been terrific, and Judy and her book have received some wonderful publicity and reviews. Many of you have asked why and how it was written, and how it came together. If you are interested, here’s the story behind the story.
As Christmas 1988 approached, Judy and I were worried.
Our first son, Ben, who was five, had been speaking in full sentences by the time he was 12 months old.
But our second son, Stuart, at 30 months, had a vocabulary of only a few words. One was “Baa,” the word he, like so many babies learning to talk, had originally used when he wanted his bottle and was now using to describe almost everything. It didn’t help that his older brother was extremely verbose and, whenever Stuart tried to talk, Ben told us whatever he thought it was that Stuart wanted to say.
Our pediatrician referred us to a speech therapist who assured us that Stuart was perfectly healthy and normal except for his delayed speech. She said that, with therapy, he would most likely be fine. That was a relief but we remained worried.
Stuart’s inability to articulate what he wanted to say was frustrating for him and us. The result was frequent meltdowns that left him in tears and us on the edge.
A few weeks before Christmas, Ben appeared in a Nativity play in which a fellow shepherd hilariously tripped on his flowing robe and fell flat on his face. The next morning, Stuart was in full meltdown mode as I left for work. Judy says I wearily joked, “There once was a boy who could only say ‘Baa.’” I don’t recall saying that — but do remember I was always grateful to escape the chaos and felt both guilty and relieved leaving her to deal with it.
Judy sat down at the kitchen table and wrote, in rhyming verse, a story that began, “There once was a boy who could only say ‘Baa’ “ about a speech-delayed little boy with a one-word vocabulary who saves a Nativity play gone awry. She showed it to me when I got home —- I loved it — and stuck it in a drawer. Over the years I reminded her that she really should try and get it published, but she had higher priorities, including raising two boys and running a household while juggling freelance writing assignments.
Fast forward to early 2023 when the media started reporting that speech therapists are seeing a huge spike in the number of language-delayed children that need treatment. The reason for the increase? COVID-19. Because of the pandemic, kids who should have been learning verbal skills by interacting with other children and adults, were instead sequestered at home, unable to communicate with anyone other than their immediate family members, causing many of them to be slow to speak.
Sensing the timing was right, Judy dug out her story and we began shopping for a literary agent specializing in the children’s picture book genre (ages 3 to 8). We were discouraged to learn that most agents stated in their profiles that they 1) were looking for books about social issues, 2) wouldn’t represent books about religion (even though “Baa" isn’t Christian per se, much of the action takes place during a — horrors! — Christmas pageant) and 3) wouldn’t even consider books written in rhyming verse. That was particularly baffling since Dr Seuss’ rhyming books, nearly 80 years after his first was published, are still at the top of the children’s best-seller list, and we knew, from having two sons and two grandchildren, that little kids love silly rhymes. After a few months of emails from agents saying her manuscript was beautifully written but not what they were looking for, we decided to publish the book ourselves, and created our own imprint, Old Wagon Books, named for the street we lived on when Stuart was a toddler.
We went online looking for children’s book illustrators and found the perfect one — Rosie Brooks, a London-based artist who has illustrated three previous children’s books including one celebrating King Charles’ coronation. It took six weeks of back and forth — Zoom calls and numerous emails — but the art was finally perfect. There were only a few hiccups along the way. Rosie, for instance drew the boy in his bedroom with a sink on the wall. Sinks are common in English bedrooms but not in American, so we asked her to lose the sink and she cheerfully complied. Rosie was lovely to work with — upbeat and happy. Her first name suits her perfectly.
Simultaneously, we started looking for a children’s book designer to combine Judy’s words and Rosie’s pictures and found him across the pond, too — in Wales. Ryan Webb was as helpful, talented, and accommodating as Rosie. How could anyone who creates children’s books for a living be anything but nice to work with?
The end-result exceeded our expectations. “The Boy Who Said Baa: A Christmas Story” is a 36-page Dr. Seuss-y silly, sweet and inspirational picture book about a child who is relegated to the unimportant role of a sheep in a Nativity play because the only word he can say is (drumroll) … “Baa.” Everything goes awry during the play. The only performance that comes off perfectly is the boy’s, whose “Baa” saves the day and reverberates around the world, bringing joy to all who hear it and giving him, for the first time, a sense of pride and self-worth. The words sing, the artwork is adorable (I hate that word but it’s appropriate in this case) — colorful and hilarious, tinged with poignancy on the part of the speech-challenged boy, until his triumph at the end,
The hard cover version is published by IngramSpark, a Tennessee-based on-demand printer that prints and drop ships books as they are ordered, eliminating the need to produce and warehouse copies we might be stuck with if they don’t sell. The paperback and Kindle versions are produced by Amazon kdp (Kindle Direct Publishing). All three versions are available through amazon.com and the hardcovers can be ordered from just about any bookseller worldwide. Someone in Australia ordered one and, thanks to digital technology which enabled the print-ready files to be sent from Wales to Florida to Tennessee to Australia, it was printed in, and shipped from, IngramSpark’s facility down under.
Will “The Boy Who Said Baa” become a best-selling kids’ book? As much as we hope it will, it probably won’t. With only a few exceptions (e.g. “Fifty Shades of Grey” which Baa most emphatically doesn’t resemble in any way), self-published books rarely reach the best-seller list. Traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores refuse to stock them (especially if they are produced by Amazon which they hate because it has pretty much put them out of business), and the New York-centric publishers, controlled by five major companies, retain a stranglehold on the industry, accepting scripts only from agents, most of whom have probably never read a kids’ storybook to an actual child — otherwise they would know little kids love stories that rhyme. Have none of them ever heard of Mother Goose? She has sold even more rhyming picture books than Seuss.
Achieving best-seller status in today’s book publishing world requires publicists to arrange for author appearances on talk shows, recommendations from Oprah, advertising, press events, and endorsements from social media influencers. The big publishers can afford those things, but we can’t. (Oprah, are you by chance reading this? Would you like a copy?) It also helps your children’s book become a best-seller if you’re a celebrity or related to one. Recent kid’s best-sellers include books by Hoda Kobh, Jimmy Fallon, Jenna and Barbara Bush, Matthew McConahay, Seth Meyers, Reese Witherspoon, Tim Tebow, Chelsea Clinton, and Meghan Markle. All are on display at my local Barnes & Noble. “Baa,” which is better-written and illustrated than any of them, isn’t and most likely never will be sold at B&N. Judy should have married a prince, been a president’s daughter or played football.
And if you’re wondering about Stuart? By the time he was five, thanks to two years of twice-weekly speech therapy sessions, his speech was age-appropriate. He’s 37 now, has multiple degrees, and is a bank executive. He turned out even better than we could have imagined.
So did the book his worried young mother wrote to reassure herself her little boy would be okay.
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