Military Mom With NK Ties Publishes Children's Book

Erica Skoutas is a Groton, Conn., military mom. That’s her most important job, she’d say. But she’s also a writer, a children's writer who has a special take on how best to help children cope, especially children of military personnel who may have to deal with issues like deployment and loss. 

Not formally trained, her degrees are in psychology and criminal justice, Skoutas just took notes after those nights when she would put down the book she was reading to her kids and began making up stories that her children – Ryan, Samantha and Brandon – not only loved but helped to imagine along the way.

“If it was a hit with the kids, if they started adding to the story, I’d write them down,” Skoutas said.

Skoutas grew up in Johnston and her husband, Peter, grew up in North Kingstown. They moved to Groton a few years ago, after some years in Southern California. It was in Groton that Skoutas took the story notes she'd written and turned them into five completed stories, created her own publishing company, found an illustrator – Shelley Kornatz of Boston – and now, has her first book published, “Mommy, Are There Monsters?”

She said she was inspired to create stories "for children to help them understand and deal with the challenges that all children, especially military children, face.”

Of the five stories she has completed, she said, topics include tackling fears, death and dying, and, most personal to her, military deployments and moving away.

Skoutas has been marketing  books all on her own and while the self-publishing deal means automatic sales on Amazon, she just learned that Barnes and Noble picked up her book.

“It’s a small business, but it’s spreading,” she said. “I always thought it was a good story, now others are seeing it is, too.”

Skoutas has been reading, “Mommy, Are there Monsters?" to Groton school children and the response, she said, has been “amazing.”

“They laugh, they raise their hands … It’s a hit. It’s really taking off,” she said.

Her main character is based on her 6-year-old daughter Samantha, who she describes as “a free spirit and often found daydreaming or drawing,” and it addresses a real-life situation with her eldest child.

“She often needs reminders to do her chores and clean up her messes, as any child does at age 6,” she said. “In my book, the daughter is afraid of monsters and when she asks her mother if there are monsters, the mother tells her the only answer she could think of.... ’There must be monsters.’ The book goes over situations throughout the day where Princess Samantha was not doing what she was supposed to be doing and the mother says, ‘It must be monsters because my Princess would have listened.' This book eases a child's fear of monsters in a playful way while reminding them of their responsibilities of chores and the notion that no matter what they will always be loved. At the end of the book mom tucks Princess Samantha into bed one more time and says if you see the monsters tonight, tell them, ‘I love them.'"

To learn more visit her Blumonkeypublications website.

To buy the book on Barnes and Noble, click here. 

But if you want a personalized message and author signature, click here and follow to the ‘personal message’ box on the web page.