RALEIGH, N.C. — A Raleigh mother and daughter duo have teamed up for a five-book series focused on a skunk.
Carol Moser and her mom, Alexandra, are the creators of “Stan The Skunk,” a collection of humorous stories where the parent and child take turns reading.
Carol wrote the book, while her mother illustrated it.
How did you start your business? What was your inspiration?
Carol Moser: It was early days of the pandemic, schools were closed, and I really wanted to give my 4 year old a good start in reading. Unfortunately, many of the early readers we found were either too daunting for him or so simple that they didn’t have an interesting plot to keep him engaged. I also saw how frustrating and tiring it was for a brand new reader to try and make it through an entire book by themselves.
That’s where the idea took shape – a series of books, with real plots, that would let children practice reading in small, attainable steps.
I decided on a co-reading format, where the child reads short sections and the adult reads longer sections where the story’s plot progresses. So kids get their practice but they also get to sit back and listen to a caring adult read a funny story.
How did you develop the book?
Many of the characters and plots were dreamt up as quick stories I would make up on the fly for my kids, usually in the car. What was really fun was when they started contributing ideas to those stories. That’s how Stan The Skunk was born. My oldest son suggested it would be hysterical if a skunk could surf on top of our car.
I expanded the stories and wrote them in a co-reading format so that an adult would read a big chunk of the story and then the child could tackle their smaller, manageable section. From there, I worked closely with my mom, who is a watercolor artist. We worked through each of our 5 books to come up with illustration ideas that would make my boys laugh. That was our benchmark for success — making my boys laugh!
We worked together for about one year and by then my oldest was in kindergarten memorizing sight words as part of his school’s reading program. I saw the opportunity to incorporate those key sight words into our books as well, which really brought the whole series together.
When did you know you had something that was really resonating with young readers?
I decided early on that my measure of success was a book that was funny enough to keep them reading, and achievable enough that they finish feeling accomplished and a little more confident as a new reader. I saw this right away with my own boys who laughed and hooted through the books!
Now that we’ve launched the series, it’s been so wonderful to hear from families who are having happy early reading experiences with our books. Moms have told me that the shared reading experience feels fun and I’ve heard from families whose children insist on reading their favorite Stan book over and over again. The feedback has been incredible.
What challenges have you faced?
Self-publishing a book, or 5 books in our case, is a tremendous amount of work and there was so much we needed to learn about the process. The writing and illustrating of books is just one part of publishing. There was finding the right platform to self-publish, learning the software to generate print files, figuring out pricing, marketing, and more. It was a challenging process but well worth it!
Where can people find your books?
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs out there?
The thing that motivated me every step of the way was imagining how my children and other children would react to the books. It’s not something that you put in a business plan but I think big, lofty endeavors need daily reminding of why you were excited to start it in the first place.
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