Reassuring, calming, but sometimes also invasive, the pacifier can become the object of frustration for children as for parents when the moment to separate from it is painful. A stage that Charlotte Attry, a French mother living in Berkeley, went through with her children: “I have two children who were “pacifier addicts”“, She emphasizes, laughing. “This thing really took up a lot of space: my daughter, to whom a friend had told her that Santa Claus wouldn’t come by if she always took the pacifier, told us that she had resigned herself to going without gifts …”
“Pacita the pacifier fairy” is directly inspired by the personal experience of Charlotte Attry and proposes to remedy this impasse: “We were on vacation with some friends, whose daughter was also having a hard time parting with her pacifier. We then invented the character of the fairy Teat: in exchange for the precious object, she leaves a letter and a book for the child. Seeing this, my daughter also wanted to receive a letter from the teat fairy …”Pacita is therefore one of the main characters of the book: this little fairy collects pacifiers from children all over the world. In the book, she visits a little tiger who decides to grow up and who sometimes regrets letting Pacita take her precious pacifier.
Writing books is not a first for Charlotte Attry: the journalist, who has worked for a long time in the youth press and has produced numerous social reports for “Ça se discuss” and “C’est ma vie”, has already published a practical guide to menopause, with other topics planned in the same series aimed mainly at women over 45. “Pacita” is on the other hand his first book in English.
She did not embark on the adventure alone: her husband Jérémie Febvre is co-author of the book. “My husband is a musician, which counted a lot in the writing: I started to write, then Jeremy added his musicality to it, suggesting a different arrangement of the sentence, words whose feet fell better, a bit as if we were writing a song.”The illustrations are the work of Olivier Huette, a French artist. The release of the book was a long-term job: started in 2016, the book first paid the price for the bankruptcy of the French publishing house that was to publish it. Charlotte Attry’s move to the United States led her to review her copy to adapt it to the American market: she then enlisted the services of Sophie Lawson for the English translation. “And since I don’t do things by halves, my husband and I set up our own publishing structure to get this book published. So I managed all the book making part, which takes a lot of time.”Initially scheduled for May, the book will finally be released on September 1, COVID obliges.
Already awarded a Mom’s Choice Award, “Pacita the Pacifier Fairy” is just waiting to meet its audience: “As I like to accompany people in the different stages of their life, we had the idea of adding pages for parents after the story, with advice from a psychologist. On the site of the book, you can also download model letters that children will receive from the Fairy.”Distributed in big chains like Barnes and Noble and Target, Pacita will undoubtedly help many children to cross this essential stage of their development, as the children of Charlotte proved. Only personal downside, according to the author of the book: “While reading the book, my children also discovered that unfortunately the Fairy Teat was just a legend!”
