Books · The Fruit Tree Books
Kids who've never seen themselves on a page, finally on the cover.
A picture-book series where the kids look like the ones I work with. Kids who flap, kids who roll, kids who talk with their hands or a device or their eyes. Every book is built around what makes that kid phenomenal, never around what they can't do.
The idea
A story that works for the kid, and lands for the grown-up reading it.
The disability is context, never the problem the plot solves. The plot is a regular-kid plot, getting the fruit, making a friend, surviving a loud birthday party, and the kid solves it their own way. The goal is the exact moment a child looks at the page and says, "that kid looks like me." Feeling seen isn't a theme of the series. It's the product.
Underneath, every book carries something for the adult reading aloud, modeled in how the grown-up characters behave, never printed as a moral. The parent watches a better version of the hard moment they lived last Tuesday, and closes the book having learned something without being lectured.
The back page
Every book ends with a single page called "For the Grown-Ups," in my teaching voice, with one practical tool from the method that connects to the story you just read.
Reduce the demand. Identify, acknowledge, redirect. The hand-raise breath. Guide, don't do it for them. One page, one tool, no jargon. Which quietly makes every book a piece of caregiver education.
A first look at the shelf
The opening titles.
Book One tells the pond and the fruit tree story the whole series is named for. Here's a taste of what's coming with it.
The Fish and the Fruit Tree
Book One, the story the whole series is named for. A pond, a fruit tree, and a fish who can't climb like the other animals, until everyone sees the fish had its own way to the fruit all along. The gentle truth underneath: there's more than one way to the finish line, and the fish was never broken.
Boop
A boy whose hands move faster than his words learns the difference between a boop, a push, and a helping hand. A warm, funny story about impulse, gentle touch, and figuring out where your body ends and a friend begins.
All the Ways I Talk
A treasure hunt where the only way to find the prize is to learn all the ways one girl communicates, with her hands, her face, her device, her whole self. A celebration of every kind of voice, because talking was never only words.
When I Flap
A boy whose body tells the world how he feels, and the friend who learns to read that weather instead of asking him to stop having it. A tender story about stimming, acceptance, and being truly understood.
Where Does the Mad Go?
A child discovers that big feelings are energy, and energy can move somewhere good. Along the way, the book teaches the hand-raise breath right off the page, so a kid and a grown-up can take a calming breath together.
Too Loud
A boy builds himself a volume knob for a world that's too loud, and learns that knowing what your body needs is a kind of strength. A gentle story about sensory overload and speaking up for yourself.
Let Me
A grandmother learns the hardest, kindest thing: to sit on her hands and let the slow, wobbly, completely successful buttoning happen on its own. A loving lesson in guiding someone instead of doing it for them.
Saturday Pancakes
A boy runs the kitchen while the grown-up happily plays sous-chef, and a real breakfast gets made by real, capable hands. A warm story about independence, everyday skills, and being trusted with something that matters.
The New Friend
The Buddy Program in book form. A new friendship that's a real friendship, not a good deed, where both kids walk away having gained something. Because the exchange always goes both ways.
More than thirty stories are written, with new ones for everyday kids, siblings, and the parents too. This is just the front of the shelf.
A special one
Things I Wish I Could Tell You.
Some of these books are personal. This one is in honor of my dad. Two voices on facing pages, a father and a son narrating the same silences from both sides, and one quiet truth underneath. They loved each other the whole time, and the unsaid got billed to the last room.
It's for the men, and the people, carrying things they've never said out loud, and for anyone who still has time to say them. The phone weighs nothing. Later has a closing time.
Where it stands
Being illustrated now. Coming soon.
Book One prints first, with print and digital editions to follow as the art comes together. Some titles will live in a little free library, free to the neighborhood, so kids who have no connection to this community grow up with these characters as normal.
Others will be available to buy, and the most giftable ones help fund the Client Support Fund. Want to know the moment the first one is ready?
How the books fit the mission
- The back pages are caregiver education, the same method as the app and certifications
- The little free library is charitable programming under the Foundation
- Every story is session methodology in narrative form
- The whole series lives in the warm, sincere register of Your Friend Jake
The kid who finally sees themselves, and the grown-up who finally feels seen too.