Sai Sailaja Seshadri

Staff Writer

@saisailu97

One of the biggest parts of a kid’s childhood is picture books. They are what children grow up with, what they learn from and are their first insight into the real world.

Jennifer Bowden, who is the wife of Coppell High School’s English teacher Matt Bowden, recently published a picture book that not only is entertaining, but also has an amazing set of morals embedded into its plot.

The Wishing Penny is about a penny that is stuck in a box with other coins and is constantly bullied by them. When a man ends up putting the penny in his pocket, it accidentally falls out thanks to a hole in cloth, and thus the penny goes on an adventure throughout the city, and eventually learns to be confident in itself.

“This is a story I’ve been telling to my daughter since she was 1, and when you have a little kid, you come up with stories like these to read to them to get them to sleep,” Mrs. Bowden said. “Now I eventually ended up publishing it, but any profit I get is just icing on the cake, I mostly came up with this story for my daughter.”

The true moral behind this story is that even a penny, unlike what most people think, has value as well, and Mrs. Bowden thinks  it shows how every person is important in their own special way.

When the story was first published, Mr. Bowden also got the opportunity to share it with his students as part of a class activity.

“I never knew what the story was in depth until I read it to my class,” Mr. Bowden said. “I found myself choking up three different times while reading it and that was when I realized what a layered story it is.”

Mrs. Bowden used Amazon’s publishing company Create Space to create and publish the book.

“I published the book in black and white, and then there is an option which allows you to decide if you want to put it on Amazon and which price to sell it for,” Mrs. Bowden said.

Create Space allows for editing, printing and designing books, and is currently a very popular outlet for self-publishing authors.

“I feel that the biggest thing is that self-publishing is a new and very easy option nowadays,” Mr. Bowden said. “There are tons of ways for people to self publish now, and the biggest thing is to just stick with it once you start the process of writing and don’t give up.”

For those who are interested in learning more about the book or purchasing it, more information can be found here.