We were lucky to catch up with Danielle jones Kristine saldana recently and have shared our conversation below.

Danielle jones, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

The biggest risk we have taken is deciding that we wanted to write and self publish a children’s book without fully realizing what that entails. We didn’t know how to write a book, how much it would cost to self publish a book, and we had no idea how to draw readers to us. All we knew was that we had a cute idea about a broken little orange crayon that travels the world. The idea came from Kristine’s daughter seeing a broken orange crayon on the sidewalk. Her daughter declared, “Watch out for Old Man Crayon!” and from that, an idea was born. We took that idea and came up with the idea that this little broken crayon was traveling all around the world looking for his missing piece. We thought it was a solid start to a story but had no idea how to make that into a book.

We initially thought about submitting our story to different publishers, but the idea of sitting and waiting to hear back was something our impatient brains could not handle. The only option for us was to self publish which increased the risk factor. Not only did we have to try and figure how to put our story into book format but now we had to pay for everything. Us being the underpaid teachers that we are, made the idea of putting our hard earned money into something that wasn’t a sure thing very risky, especially during the middle of a pandemic. So far we’re glad that we took the risk and we hope that eventually it will reach more children so they can go on adventures with Old Man Crayon.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Danielle and I met and became good friends in 2008 while working at a summer camp. Over the years we have been through many of life’s ups and downs and even though we live far from one another our friendship seemed to just grow. During the pandemic we began video chatting a lot and one day my daughter said something silly when I picked her up from school “Hey, watch out for Old Man Crayon!” while stepping over a broken orange crayon. Over a video chat we mentioned jokingly some ideas of what this crayons life’s journey must look like and that lead to us making our children series. We are proud to say we kept our vision clear, to make a book that was full of fun, facts, and especially celebrated diversity. Though we are still only in our first few years of this venture we are always so happy to hear from our readers.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

our goal has always been to create books that are full of diversity and knowledge. As two women of color, and teachers, we wanted to make something that people could read about different cultures and see how colorful our world is.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Hearing how children and families that we work with, as well as children in our own families, connect with and enjoy the books that we have written is extremely rewarding. Having kids tell us that they want to go to the same places that Old Man Crayon has been to, and how they like how all the crayons are different gives us such joy and keeps us motivated.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/campinspired
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camp_inspired/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CampInspired21/
• Other: campinsired@gmail.com