Homewood author Tracy Watland has written a delightful children’s book designed to share what she calls “the power of positivity.” Watland shared her story in February at the Family Reading Night for District 153’s Willow School students and parents. The book is available at Loulou Belle’s in Homewood or through Amazon books.
School student select a message from the Kindness
Can. She read her book, “The Kindness Can,” to
the class. (Provided photo)
Homewood author Tracy Watland has written a delightful children’s book designed to share what she calls “the power of positivity.”
“The Kindness Can” presents four special messages to young readers. The story centers around Grace who discovers the messages from her grandmother in a can. They are simple truths that Watland believes are easy for children to understand: each person and each action can help make the world a better place.
The grandmother’s four rules of kindness are: be compassionate, be courageous, decide to be kind and be a RAK-er, a Random Act of Kindness doer.
Watland shared her story in February at the Family Reading Night for District 153’s Willow School students and parents. The book is available at Loulou Belle’s in Homewood or through Amazon books.
It’s a story she drafted and then perfected at a writers conference about four years ago. “The Kindness Can” is her first published work. She remembers when the first deliveries came. “It was the coolest thing to take (the book) out of the box” and realize she’d met a personal goal.
Watland credits her teachers at Willow School for encouraging her writing. Teachers had students use a “story starters” box filled with ideas to give them sentences they could build a story around.
Watland loved the assignments and kept at it. She wrote at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, but says she didn’t have much self-confidence so she never shared her stories.
It was decades later that she decided to cast aside a career in sales and merchandising and start a writing career. She is focused on children’s books and is ready for the challenge.
“I’ve got a bunch of stories in my back pocket,” she said. Her next book is “The Witch’s New Britches” about a witch who goes underwear shopping for Halloween. She also wants to create little gift books with inspirational messages.
“I like creative, fun, whimsical stuff,” she said, adding: “I’m having a great time with it.”
Now, with her self-confidence firmly in tact, she is also venturing into the public speaking circuit sharing a message of reconnecting with one’s inner child.
Information on her writing and other ventures is at www.tracywatland.com.