A New Story Begins Above the Clouds: Cloud GirlToday, I received a manuscript I had been looking forward to reading—Freya’s new story, Cloud Girl, a project we are working on together through Moms’ Playground.

At first, I imagined it might be a short picture book, but I was surprised when I opened the manuscript. It is already 34 pages long and has grown into a wonderful fantasy chapter book for children.

The main character, Samantha, is a mysterious girl who has lived high above the world on the clouds for many years. She loves looking down at the beautiful world below, but deep inside, she is lonely. What she wants most is something very simple:

A friend.

One day, while floating above Long Island, Samantha notices a girl named Ji-Won at a school below. Although she is frightened, Samantha decides to leave the safety of her clouds and enter the human world.

But the world Samantha enters is very different from what she expected. She discovers a strange school where children’s freedom and individuality are restricted in the name of keeping them safe. Behind it all lies a mysterious darkness. Together with Ji-Won and another child named Brutus, Samantha begins to discover who she really is and why she has come to this place.

Each of the three children has a different gift. Brutus has strength and courage, Ji-Won has wisdom and the ability to think and plan, and Samantha carries a special light that can guide others through darkness. As their adventure unfolds, they begin to understand their own strengths and learn how much they need one another.

This is one of the things I especially love about the story. Not everyone needs to be strong in the same way. One child may be physically strong, another may be a deep thinker, and another may have the ability to bring light to others. The children struggle when they are forced into roles that do not fit them, but they begin to grow when they discover and use their individual gifts.

And now, my part of the journey begins.

Freya highlighted several scenes that she imagined as illustrations, while also giving me the freedom to choose other moments that I find visually inspiring.

Samantha among the clouds, endless skies, a glowing locket, forests and rivers, three children on an adventure, and the contrast between light and darkness—as I read, images were already beginning to form in my mind.

The story is not finished yet. Freya says she is approaching the climax, which means I don’t know the ending either! Perhaps that is one of the most exciting parts of beginning this project now.

While Freya continues writing the story, I will begin slowly creating its visual world alongside her.

This is the moment when words begin to meet pictures and, little by little, become a book.
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I’m very excited to see where Cloud Girl takes us, and I hope to share parts of this creative journey here as the book comes to life.

Mr. Sprout’s Story — A New Picture Book in ProgressRecently, I started working on the illustrations for a new picture book, Mr. Sprout’s Story, written by my friend Emilia Zielinska-Bien.

At the heart of the story are a tiny plant named Mr. Sprout, a four-leaf clover, and three siblings. The story begins when an older brother leaves for summer camp and asks his sister to take care of his precious little plant. One day, a four-leaf clover unexpectedly joins Mr. Sprout in his jar of water—and from there, things do not go quite as expected.

I won’t share too much of the story yet. I think it will be much more fun to discover what happens when the finished picture book is ready.

For the illustrations, I plan to focus less on the human characters and more on Mr. Sprout and the four-leaf clover themselves. I want to give these little plants personality and emotion, almost as if they were characters in their own right. Using watercolor, I hope to capture the delicate transparency of water, tiny roots growing inside a glass jar, soft sunlight, and the quiet beauty of new leaves. I would like these simple elements of nature to become a small, magical world seen through a child’s eyes.

Writing a story for children as an adult is not as easy as it may seem. It requires more than simply using easy words or creating a cute story. In some ways, we have to leave our adult perspective behind and return to the curiosity, worries, imagination, and wonder we once had as children.

I think Emilia has successfully done just that. Through the simple experience of caring for a tiny plant, she has created a story about responsibility, mistakes, worry, trust, and the love between siblings. What I especially appreciate is that these ideas emerge naturally from the story rather than feeling like lessons being taught.
Now it is my turn to create another layer of the story through pictures.
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I’m looking forward to seeing how Mr. Sprout and his little four-leaf-clover companion will gradually come to life in watercolor, one illustration at a time.

It has been quite some time since AI began to enter our everyday lives in a meaningful way.
Today, using tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to help write documents no longer feels unusual. I use them often myself. They are especially helpful when I need to write an email, summarize something, or search for information. I also use AI for many practical purposes—finding directions, researching something I want to buy, or working through a complicated problem.
Sometimes, I use it for my blog as well.
When I don’t have enough time to develop a piece of writing, when I can’t think of the right example, or when I need additional information, these powerful tools can feel like rain after a long drought.
There is no question that AI has made writing my blog easier and more convenient.
But at some point, I began to notice something.

I felt as though AI was slowly taking away some of the pleasure of writing and publishing my own thoughts.

So today, I tried to write almost entirely on my own.
AI can give us polished answers quickly and easily. But I’m beginning to wonder whether having everything become so easy necessarily helps us think more deeply, discover unexpected connections, realize something new, change, grow, and move forward.
Perhaps what concerns me most is motivation.
When a better answer is always available within seconds, and when we can produce something impressive without struggling with it for very long, it is wonderfully convenient. But the more accustomed I become to that convenience, the more I sometimes feel that my desire to think, struggle, and create for myself becomes a little quieter.
And so, whenever I feel confused by this rapidly changing world, I find myself doing something very simple.

I take out my paper and paints.
What It Means to PaintWe have reached a time when AI can create images that are more detailed and technically impressive than what many of us could produce by hand.
And yet, when I stand in front of an actual painting, I still feel something different.
There is the texture of paint on paper, the place where water has spread unexpectedly, the direction of a brushstroke, the accidental meeting of two colors. There are traces of hesitation, movement, and time.
Perhaps this is why painting has become even more important to me.
When I paint, I do not need an immediate answer.
I do not have to undo every imperfect line. If watercolor flows somewhere I did not expect, I can simply watch it for a moment and decide where the next brushstroke should go.

Painting has begun to feel like breathing in a mechanized world.
And when a painting is finished, no matter how large or small it may be, it becomes its own little world.
It invites me inside.
There is a quiet kind of rest there. While I am looking at it, I can disconnect for a while from all the noise outside.
What Kind of World Do I Want to Paint?Sometimes I think that much of the darkness and fear we experience comes from the worlds we repeatedly create inside our own minds.
If I painted a huge folding screen filled entirely with fear and then surrounded myself with it, eventually that would be all I could see. The world I knew and endured might begin to feel as though it were made entirely of fear.
But what if I surrounded myself instead with paintings filled with light, beauty, and hope?
Perhaps, without even realizing it, I might begin to dream differently.
That is why, at some point, I began wanting to paint bright and beautiful worlds.
I want to paint something like the lively waves of a summer ocean, splashing lightly against the shore.

A place where light pours in.
A place filled with longing.
An imagined world that may not exist anywhere in reality, but where I would like to stay for a little while.
A Year of Painting Without a PurposeDuring this summer break, I painted many of these worlds.

This year, I wanted to give myself permission to paint whatever I truly wanted to paint. I experimented with different subjects, styles, and ideas simply because I was curious about them.
These paintings were not created for a particular competition.
They were not made to win an award, satisfy a requirement, or achieve a specific goal.

I painted them simply because I wanted to paint.
Looking back, I realize how much I rested inside those paintings.
They gave me comfort.
Perhaps, strangely enough, living in an age when technology can create almost anything instantly is teaching me again how precious it is to make something slowly.
Something that does not need to be perfect.
Something that can take a long time.
Something that does not even need a reason to exist.
I can take out a piece of paper, mix my paints, move my brush, and slowly create a world of my own.
Technology will continue to advance. AI will almost certainly become capable of things we cannot yet imagine.
Still, I want to keep painting.

I want to create small worlds with my own thoughts, my own eyes, and my own hands—and rest inside them for a while.
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And then, perhaps, I can return to the real world with a little more strength.
I am grateful for all the small worlds I painted during this summer—for the rest they gave me and for the comfort I found within them.
And I hope to continue painting places filled with light, beauty, longing, and hope.

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Lately, I have been preparing for December with a sense of excitement.

This coming December, I will be holding an exhibition at the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library to showcase the picture book stories of "Moms’ Playground" alongside my illustrations.

Looking back, the beginnings of Moms’ Playground were quite humble.
While our children played at the playground, a group of moms who loved art and writing found ourselves chatting and suddenly had a thought:

"What if we created a picture book for our children ourselves?"

It didn't start with a grand plan. A conversation shared while waiting for our kids at the playground became the seed, and that tiny seed grew until it finally blossomed into a book.

That is how the first Moms’ Playground picture book, ***Our Treehouse***, came to be.

I still vividly remember the joy I felt last year when the book was first released and subsequently introduced and exhibited at my local library. I was especially grateful that the library selected *Our Treehouse* to be part of its permanent collection.

It was a truly special experience for me to see a small story we created together—born out of love for our children—become a book that now sits on a library shelf, ready to meet other children and families.

Perhaps that is why I feel a different kind of emotion now as I prepare the second story for Moms’ Playground compared to when we created the first book.

​The Second Book: *Mr. Sprout’s Story*

Moms’ Playground is currently creating its second picture book, ***Mr. Sprout’s Story***.

This book tells the story of a beautiful world seen through the eyes of a boy who lovingly tends to a small plant.

The boy places two small sprouts—Sprout and Clover—side by side and cares for them diligently every day. Soaking up the sunlight, watering them, and observing the leaves change ever so slightly become sources of small, daily joys for him.

But one day, Clover begins to wither and fall ill.

The boy worries.

"Am I doing something wrong in how I care for them?"
"Did I make a mistake?"

As time passes, Sprout, too, faces a crisis. Yet, the boy, determined to save this tiny life, refuses to give up easily. He assesses what is needed, waits patiently, continues to care for the plant, and does everything within his power, step by step.

When Sprout finally revives, the joy the boy feels goes far beyond the simple satisfaction of successfully raising a plant.

Rather than a manual on how to grow plants, *Mr. Sprout’s Story* is a pure and beautiful tale that follows the heart of a child who has come to love a tiny living thing.

Sometimes, we learn how to love by caring for something very small, and we realize the preciousness of life through the fear of losing it. We also discover that even when everything seems to be going wrong, if we wait and continue to care, we can once again find that little spark of green.

Through this book, I hope children can experience a beautiful world where—even with just a tiny plant—they can feel worry, patience, and love, and ultimately rediscover hope.

So, *Mr. *Sprout’s Story* is, perhaps, the story of a tiny sprout, but at the same time, it is the story of a child who, for the first time, loved a small living thing with all their heart.

​Work is currently underway on Moms’ Playground’s **second picture book, *Mr. Sprout’s Story*.**

This story is about a tiny sprout named Mr. Sprout.

By following Mr. Sprout’s journey—starting as a small seed, encountering the world, and gradually growing—we wanted to show the immense potential and dreams hidden within even the smallest, most fragile beings.

“A tiny sprout with big dreams.”

True to this short phrase on the cover, the book tells the story of a small being growing in its own unique way. Viewing plants and nature through a child’s eyes, it captures themes of growth, patience, curiosity, and hope with a tone that is both heartwarming and gently humorous.

I am creating this book in collaboration with Emilia Zielinska-Bien. Rather than a simple division of labor where one person writes and the other illustrates, the process of exchanging ideas and imagery to build a shared world mirrors the very spirit of how Moms’ Playground began.

​And another story: *Cloud Girl*

At the same time, I am also preparing a new picture book titled ***Cloud Girl***.

*Cloud Girl* is a collaborative project—written by Freya Nikiforakis and illustrated by me—that centers on the themes of kindness and imagination.

It is still a bit too early to reveal the book in its entirety, but both the story and the illustrations are gradually taking shape.

I expect to be able to share a clearer picture of what *Cloud Girl* will look like before long.

I, too, am very excited to see how this little story, which begins above the clouds, will ultimately come together.

From the playground to the library

As I prepare for this December exhibition, I find myself frequently thinking back to the beginning.

The casual conversations mothers shared while watching their children play,
the lighthearted thought, "Shall we try making a book, too?"
and the time spent drawing and refining the story, page by page.

Back then, I never imagined that those moments would turn into a book, lead to another, and eventually be showcased as an exhibition in a library.

That is why I hope this exhibition will be more than just a display of finished artwork on a wall; I want it to show how a small idea transforms into illustrations, a story, and finally, a book.

The journey began with *Our Treehouse*, continued with *Mr. Sprout’s Story*, and now, another story—*Cloud Girl*—is beginning to emerge.

There are stories yet to be finished, and new ones yet to be born.

Perhaps that is the very thing I most want to share through this exhibition:

that a picture book isn't created overnight, but is built up over time through small thoughts, illustrations, and the connections between people.

I feel truly grateful and amazed to see how the little story of "Moms’ Playground"—which started at a playground—is growing little by little. I am slowly preparing for an exhibition at the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library this December, where I can share the drawings and books I’ve created so far, as well as the stories that lie ahead.

The second *Moms’ Playground* book, *Cloud Girl*, and the December exhibition are all gradually taking shape.

I plan to document this process here on the blog, step by step.

A Young Author’s Summer Project: Tommy the Tardigrade Is Now Published!
I am very happy to share some wonderful news. Daniel Chen’s new picture book, Tommy the Tardigrade: A Tiny Survivor’s Amazing Adventure, has officially been published on Amazon!

This book is especially meaningful because it represents Daniel’s summer journey of curiosity, patience, creativity, and perseverance.

The story was inspired by real scientific research on tardigrades, fascinating microscopic creatures also known as water bears. Tardigrades can survive extremely dry conditions by entering a special state called a tun. Daniel took this remarkable scientific idea and transformed it into the story of Tiny Tommy, a little water bear who discovers how to patiently survive when his soft, wet home suddenly dries up.

What makes this project even more special is that Daniel wrote the story and created all of the illustrations himself. Throughout the summer, he researched tardigrades, developed his story, planned each scene, and carefully worked on his illustrations. Step by step, scientific facts became characters, pictures, and finally a completed book.

Through Tommy’s tiny adventure, young readers can discover the amazing world of tardigrades while also learning some very big lessons about patience, resilience, adaptation, and never giving up.

Watching Daniel work patiently through the entire process has been inspiring. Publishing a book requires much more than a good idea—it takes the determination to keep revising, creating, learning, and finishing what you started.
Congratulations, Daniel! I am so proud to see another summer project become a real published book. 📚✨
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Summer 2026
Young Storytellers Series
Written and illustrated by Daniel Chen