The main character in my children's story "Horsing Around In The Town Of Gold Hill" is a horse! She befriends several wild animal characters that are native to the area. All of the animal characters have the ability to naturally spark wonder in children and provide potential for beautiful, funny and engaging illustrations specific to Gold Hill. Animals as characters come with pre-conceived dispositions, which is helpful when trying to minimize lengthy personality descriptions. For example, we understand from an early age that owls are wise, foxes are clever, etc… It’s a simplified way of making the characters’ traits relatable and familiar to young children. Each of the animal characters embodies physical traits that represent the five human senses we use to interpret the world around us: hearing, smell, taste, touch and sight. They encourage your child’s creativity with multiple prompts to trigger their curiosity and engage their senses. What we can do with the information we gather from our senses is a strong theme in the story. I believe it's important to expand one's boundaries of community to include the land and its wild inhabitants.
As the book's author, I see a little of myself in all of the story’s characters. The character I identify with most, though, is probably the squirrel. The squirrel’s supporting role in this story is to help the main character, a horse, get out of her own way—to encourage her to observe, pay attention, and think creatively beyond her self-imposed limits. In my own experiences as a camp counselor, art teacher, and now author, I've embraced that same role: gently nudging young people to see possibilities they didn't know were there, and to trust in their own capacity for wonder and growth.
Many children grow into young adulthood barely noticing their surroundings, moving through life on autopilot. But when we eventually perceive and understand what we couldn't before—due to lack of maturity, perspective, or experience—we gain a richer understanding of the world and our place within it. That shift from passive observer to active participant is a conscious choice: to be fully engaged in life rather than simply coasting through it.
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