Celebrating Emma Every Day by C. L. Reid

Society of Young Inklings is delighted to celebrate Inklings Collaborating Artist, C. L. Reid, and her debut book series, Emma Every Day, a much needed #OwnVoices story.

Emma Carter loves swimming, writing, and biking. She also loves her pet goldfish and tacos. In general, Emma loves her life. Emma is Deaf and uses a cochlear implant to help her hear and she uses sign language as well. Every day is a new chance to have fun, and Emma Carter tries to do just that by conquering daily challenges with a positive attitude and nonstop determination.

In the Emma Every Day early chapter book series, Emma experiences both common kid events, such as dancing and playing games at a party, and those unique to Deaf children, such as having to adjust her Cochlear Implant to interpret speech amidst loud noises. Accompanied by lively illustrations in an animated style and featuring a diverse cast, the text recognizes signed and spoken communication and includes manual spellings of fun words like mermaid. Each book features an ASL fingerspelling chart, ASL fingerspelling in the text, a glossary, and content-related questions.

C. L. Reid lives in Minnesota with her husband, two of their sons, and their cats. Deaf-blind since childhood, she received a Cochlear Implant (CI) as an adult to help her hear and she uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. She shared with us a little bit about what it was like to write the book series in collaboration with Capstone Publishing:

Capstone gave me the basic characters–Emma, her mom, dad, brother, and her best friend, Izzie–and the subject and theme of each story. My job was to create the story and send it to the editor I worked with.

 

But it wasn’t as simple as that! For instance, Party Problems was the first book I worked on. After I sent the editor my first draft, she shared it with the editorial team and they made comments and sent the story back to me. I made the changes and sent it to the editor again. It took several revisions before the story was ready to go to design.

 

The whole process of developing all four books took almost a year. But luckily, the editor I work with is very nice, patient, and explained concepts clearly about writing early chapter books. I never felt alone. We worked as a team.

 

We are so glad to celebrate these new books with our friend, C. L. Reid! You can pick up copies of the Emma Every Day series at Indie Bound, Amazon, or your favorite bookstore.