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PARADISE VALLEY BILINGUAL PICTURE BOOKS
Lola Longlashes, Willy Warmwarren, & Friends
See below for Author's Notes
Willy Warmwarren was a kind and generous bunny, with just one problem—the bully Brendan Broadfoot. No one in Paradise Valley knew what to do about the bully, but Willy and his best friend, the ferret Lola Longlashes, decide something must be done. Willy volunteers to do it.
How this common problem is solved in a non-violent and funny way will make children 3-5 and even some 6-8 giggle along with the feel-good ending. And the story rolls along to its surprising and satisfying end without boring the child with adult moralizing.
The book is especially precious for bilingual (English/Spanish) households, where there is a scarcity of good quality and uplifting stories. Because this book is actually two books bound as one. The stories are the same, but the first version is the story in English, and the second, “Un Pastel para Piero Pieancho,” is the same story translated into Spanish.
If your children enjoy cozy stories about animals, “A Pie for Brendan Broadfoot” was made for them. The illustrations are lush watercolors that enrich the story immeasurably. Like many stories of the same type, this story is set in a well-defined, safe little world all its own, Paradise Valley. Like Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood, or the environs of Toad Hall, to the carrot patch in Peter Rabbit, Paradise Valley with its Great Meadow is a cozy, safe little corner of the world where the young reader and their parents will feel secure and at home.
This book is for those who like the classic storytelling style of Peter Rabbit, Peter Cottontail, Winnie the Pooh, or Wind in the Willows, converted into a younger child's picture book.
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​Click on the link to go to Amazon book page and purchase! https://bit.ly/4p32gX0
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Look for Lola Longlashes and the Big Flood in 2026!
AUTHOR'S NOTES
A few years ago, my wife said, “You’re writing books for young adults and middle grade readers. Why don’t you write something cute for little kids, with cute art?”
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I responded, “I ain’t cute. I don’t do cute.”
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She agreed, but asked, “Why don’t you do one anyway?”
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She was not gonna let this die.
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Over the years, I tried, but I’m not great at short-form fiction, let alone little kids’ fiction. That is because I believe that the shorter the medium, the greater the skill needed. And writing for children? It requires uncommon skill, which I don’t possess.
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Then, my wife’s custom of making “pumpkin” pie out of squash made me think of a hook for a story, and I wrote it. I knew about bullies—until my freshman year, I was the smallest kid in my grade, and little kids draw bullies like picnics draw ants. You’ll notice that I not only used bullying as a main theme in the book “A Pie for Brendan Broadfoot” but also as a sub-theme in “The Bag of Worlds” for middle-grade readers.
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The story, though, takes second billing, or it should, to the art. I used a watercolor artist named Rhonda Fueston—no AI here. She did an amazing 22 separate watercolor paintings for the book, and I love ‘em.
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I also wanted to create this book in Spanish for my granddaughter, who is not quite three years old right now, and uses Spanish as her primary language (mixed with English. Oh, to have the flexible and hungry mind of a three-year-old!) For those well-meaning… people… who worry that this American citizen doesn’t speak primarily English, I guarantee that she will be fluent in both by the time she’s five. That’s just how it works.
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But to get back to the translation—I speak Spanish, but I will never have the fluency to write in Spanish. Therefore, I selected a certified and trained translator/interpreter named Raquel Galvez to translate the manuscript into Spanish. As a result, we have an English book bound with a Spanish book. I say “bound” even though it is an e-book because we do plan to publish this book as a paperback.
Amazon does not do a great job with picture books yet. They will in time, but right now, nope. So the paperback is my final goal. It’s just that I have to format differently. I can’t even use what I’ve already created and formatted for the e-book to make the paperback. I gotta put it all together again, and I’m using a professional graphic artist, Robin Redman, to create the print document with bleed and trim, etc. I’ll keep you updated on our progress.