SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

“Dark­ness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness, on­ly light can,” a quote from late civ­il rights icon Dr Mar­tin Luther King, in­spired Michelle Borel, a 38-year-old au­thor, wife, and moth­er of four, to use her tal­ents as a writer to pro­mote pos­i­tive fam­i­ly val­ues.

A for­mer stu­dent of St François Girls’ Col­lege, the cer­ti­fied mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er, ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty and mar­keter, re­cent­ly com­plet­ed her lat­est book, Mag­ic Words with Max. The 30-page pub­li­ca­tion con­tains fun ac­tiv­i­ties and ex­plores words that are po­lite or used in ex­press­ing kind­ness.

Not on­ly does the main char­ac­ter, 8-year-old Max, use mag­ic words, but his moth­er and fa­ther par­ent by ex­am­ple in and out of the home. The book us­es rhymes, which make it fun and easy for chil­dren.

Max is mod­elled af­ter Borel’s 16-year-old son, Eli­jah, and in the book, his in­ter­ac­tions with oth­er chil­dren and his par­ents, and what he does in gen­er­al, put the spot­light on pos­i­tive so­cial val­ues.

“I’m al­ways in­spired to see chil­dren learn and con­tin­ue to de­vel­op,” said Borel who cred­its her teach­ers for help­ing her dis­cov­er and de­vel­op her tal­ents.

Borel, the daugh­ter of Rox­anne Browne-Phillip and Jean Borel, lists bak­ing and paint­ing among her tal­ents, but top­ping her list is writ­ing, es­pe­cial­ly po­et­ry

“I car­ry a book with me every­where and al­ways en­sure I squeeze read­ing in­to my sched­ule,” she said.

Her ear­li­est stint at writ­ing was as a con­tribut­ing po­et in 2002 in the Book of Laugh­ter & For­get­ting, fol­lowed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Who’s Who in Po­et­ry in 2012. Her first col­lec­tion of po­et­ry, Soul­spec­tion, was pub­lished in 2016, and in 2018 she won the Bo­cas Lit Fest Peo­ple’s Choice Book of the Year award. She has al­so con­tributed chap­ters in col­lec­tive books soon to be re­leased.

Borel came up with the idea for her lat­est book af­ter looked at her moth­er give her one-year-old his bot­tle.

She re­called, “She would not al­low him to start to drink un­til he said, ‘Tank ou­uu Nan­ny.’ I can, there­fore, pre­serve and share good ex­pe­ri­ences, know­ing that it takes a so­cial­ly sound vil­lage, on­ly to help raise a so­cial­ly sound child.”

On her ex­pe­ri­ences as a writer, she re­vealed, “Pub­lish­ing ben­e­fits my soul just by the birthing process of cre­ativ­i­ty be­ing com­plet­ed. I feel ex­tra mo­ti­vat­ed as cre­ativ­i­ty con­nects us to our Cre­ator. Then, to see chil­dren from around the world read­ing and en­joy­ing my books is an in­de­scrib­able feel­ing.”

Borel’s next book, to be pub­lished in May is Now I’m Two, while Dance with Em­ma and Re­spon­si­ble Rosana! are al­so on the front burn­er.

Mag­ic Words with Max is al­ready avail­able on Ama­zon. The Kin­dle ver­sion is $5 and pa­per­back $12, with a hard­copy ver­sion soon to be re­leased lo­cal­ly.