Bring joy to your bedtime routine as you snuggle up close and share this delightful story, Choose to Live in Joy, with your child.

This inspirational picture book will teach your child to appreciate the "little things" they do each day. Bright, colorful illustrations and rhyming text will immediately engage your child and help foster a love for reading!

Your child will identify with the characters as they make connections to activities they have experienced in their own lives. The text, characters and illustrations were inspired by traditions and memories of author's own family.

Choose to Live in Joy

will encourage children to develop a positive mindset, have compassion for others, overcome disappointments, appreciate nature, try new things, and, most significantly, recognize the importance of family!

This book includes a parent/teacher guide with before, during, and after reading suggestions for making reading time interactive and engaging for children.

Encourage the children in your life to identify the "simple pleasures" that bring them JOY!

Purchase Now on amazon

This inspirational picture book will teach your child to appreciate the "little things"

they do each day. Bright, colorful illustrations and rhyming text will immediately engage your child and help foster a love for reading!

Your child will identify with the characters as they make connections

to activities they have experienced in their own lives. The text, characters and illustrations were inspired by traditions and memories of author's own family.

Choose to Live in Joy

will encourage children to develop a

positive mindset, have compassion for others, overcome disappointments, appreciate nature, try new things, and, most significantly, recognize the

importance of family!

This book includes a parent/teacher guide with before, during, and after reading suggestions for making reading time interactive and engaging for children.

Encourage the children in your life to identify the "simple pleasures"

that bring them JOY!

Purchase Now on amazon

The Inspiration for Writing "Choose to Live in Joy"

After my father passed away, while my mother was going through his things, she found a poem that he had written down called "Choose to Live in Joy."

At first, we thought it was a poem he had written himself, which was very out of character. However, after some research, we realized it was a poem that he had copied down from another author. Still, very out of character for him.

Staci's Mom and Dad

as illustrated by Chiara Civati

"Live in joy" became sort of a healing mantra for me and my daughters. I wrote this book to honor him because he felt that spending time with his family was life’s greatest simple pleasure.

He was very close with his seven grandchildren, so I wanted to include all of them in the story to honor the special bond they had with their Pop Pop. Each couplet in the story has some significant memory attached to it either from my childhood, or from my girls and my nephew's childhood.

After my father passed away, while my mother was going through his things, she found a poem that he had written down called "Choose to Live in Joy."

At first, we thought it was a poem he had written himself, which was very out of character. However, after some research, we realized it was a poem that he had copied down from another author. Still, very out of character for him.

"Live in joy" became sort of a healing mantra for me and my daughters. I wrote this book to honor him because he felt that spending time with his family was life’s greatest simple pleasure.

He was very close with his seven grandchildren, so I wanted to include all of them in the story to honor the special bond they had with their Pop Pop. Each couplet in the story has some significant memory attached to it either from my childhood, or from my girls and my nephew's childhood.