Shreveport mother publishes children’s book to save family memories
Dr. Claire Caraway of Shreveport lost her father, David Allison, in 2022 when her daughter, Margaret, was only 4 months old.
“It truly breaks my heart to know that she won’t have any memories of him,” Claire said.
To help bridge that loss, Claire’s mother and David’s widow, Jane Allison, taught herself how to write and illustrate a children’s picture book and has released “Yellow Is My Favorite Color” in David’s memory, with plans for other books about him.
I ordered a copy from Amazon and discovered a bright, joyful rhyming story about the ways the color yellow shows up in our world. A great gift for a child, the book’s value goes well beyond its pages. As we celebrate Mother’s Day, “Yellow Is My Favorite Color” reminds us how stories tie families together, how creating can help us through devastating pain and how the tender love of a mother and grandmother takes many forms.
“My dad had such a unique, playful personality, so remembering him through a rhyming children’s book is perfect. This first book is general enough for any child to enjoy, but still reminds me of Dad,” Claire said. “He really would have everything yellow if he could…There are just so many stories, memories and quirks about him that can be told, and I’m excited to see more books in the future.”
Beyond the memories the books evoke, Claire, married to Ben Caraway, loves the way it will connect their now 19-month-old daughter to David. “It is very meaningful for me to have something tangible for her,” she said.
David, a pharmacist at Oschner LSU Health for many years, had a keen sense of humor and always kept Dr. Seuss books around. He wrote poems with quirky rhymes to encourage his daughters, Claire and her sister, Mary Grace Allison Conant, when they were on church trips or in college. He was a voracious reader of the Bible and books of all topics and always had highlighters and Moleskin journals in his pharmacy coat pockets to record not only information on drugs and hospital procedures but recipes, pithy sayings and other things he found interesting.
“I am writing the books in rhymes because I don't think you can write about David any other way. It was the way he wrote,” Jane said. “At first, I was just going to have these printed for our family, but people kept asking me how they could buy copies, so I published through Amazon.” She is now working on “Big Davy’s Haircutting Adventures,” “Big Davy Goes to the Grocery Store,” an ABC book; “Big Davy’s Favorite Restaurants; and a biography, books that she hopes will mean something to her family.
She found her first attempt at writing and illustrating a children’s book to be a healing project. “Creating this book and the others has been great therapy for me during the past year as I work through the grief process.”
Learning about art:
“Writing has been the easy part. The illustrations are challenging because I have such little art experience, It's a good thing we took lots of photos because I have them for reference… This was almost a test to see how self -publishing works. I set myself some deadlines to push myself to do it…I didn't know anything about digital art and had never heard of Procreate or the Apple Pencil until a year ago.” And what her charming drawings might lack in expertise they more than make up for in a zest for her subject.
More about the author:
Jane is a native of Mississippi who moved to Shreveport in 1982 to work at The Shreveport Times and then spent time as a freelance writer and training coordinator for the Louisiana Small Business Development Center. She has loved children's literature since her days of listening to Captain Kangaroo read books like “Caps for Sale” and “Make Way for Ducklings.” She and David met at the Singles Department at Broadmoor Baptist Church and were married in 1985.
Jane’s creativity is a gift, Claire said. “I was so happy to hear her plans to write children’s books about my dad. When she retired years ago, she was really able to invest in her writing with her ‘Kickstands & Farmstands’ blog and recently she picked up the new hobby of painting. It’s almost as if all those years, she was working toward this project.”
Get a copy of “Yellow Is My Favorite Color” and enjoy its big heart—and consider what you might create as a legacy for your family or friends.
Columnist Judy Christie is the author of 18 books, including the fictional “Gone to Green” series and the nonfiction “Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.” Co-authored with Lisa Wingate, it is the true sequel to Wingate’s bestselling novel “Before We Were Yours.” For more about Christie, see www.judychristie.com or follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JudyChristieAuthor.
This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Shreveport mother publishes children’s book to save family memories
