Cheryl DesBarres had a passion for reading at a young age.
She read to her children and encouraged them to read to her. And she believes the younger a child learns to read the better prepared for a world of curiosity and education they will be.
It’s that passion for literacy that led the Bradford, Ont. native and current Brookdale resident to write her first children’s book, Where Is Benjamin’s Buzz?
“I’ve wanted to write a book and through the years I’ve collected little stories I had written and they were tucked away everywhere,” DesBarres said. “I started the book a long time ago but could never seem to finish. It was tucked away. Then you find it and do a little bit more. I must have started again five or six times.”
When DesBarres and her husband, who drives a transport truck, moved to the Amherst area two years ago, she found those little pieces of the bigger story and decided to finish the project.
A home-care worker, DesBarres has always believed in helping others. The book, to her, is a way to help young people develop a lifelong passion for reading and education.
The book is about a young bee who is upset because he can’t run yet.
“The story is about him trying over and over again to buzz. He keeps practising. He starts running and fluttering, but he can’t buzz. He gets tired and gives up and goes to bed,” she said. “He tells his mother who tells him he has to have patience and that he’s still too young.”
When he wakes up, he flutters out of bed and goes outside to practice when he hears his buzz. He runs to his mother asking if she heard it.
“In the end he gets his buzz,” DesBarres said.
Putting together the story was one thing; getting it published was another. She was able to find an illustrator from India and spent many hours working with her to get the images to match the text in the book.
She also looked for a publisher and found Amazon. The book was published in November and is available on the popular retail site while she also has copies at her home.
When the first boxes arrived at her home, she was excited to open them.
“It felt like Christmas,” she said. “It was perfect. I was worried because I didn’t know if I was going to get what I wanted, but when I opened the first box and realized it was exactly what I hoped it would be I was so excited. I think I may have had a few tears.”
With her first book done, she has several other books in the planning stages. The next book will be about Luna the Cow, but she hasn’t decided on a title yet. She hopes to have it ready within a year. That book will feature Luna, a cow that wants to go to school, and her friend Sadie.
She loves children’s books because it rekindles memories of her two boys when they were children. Since they were babies, she read to them every single night.
“They couldn’t talk yet, but I was reading to them. When they got a little older, they started reading back to me,” she said. “That’s how they learned to read. I truly believe if you read to your young child, until they can read back to you, you have set them up to a world full of education and curiosity,” she said.
DesBarres said she would take her boys, who are now in their 30s, to a Chapters store and spend an entire afternoon there. Today, both of them always have a book they are reading.
People wanting to buy the book can go to amazon.com or they can contact her via e-mail at [email protected] and through her Facebook page. Books are also available through her Instagram account..
Locally, the book is $10 while on Amazon it costs $12 - although the retail has offered the book at a lower cost.
