Mary Cuffy

For many par­ents, bed­time read­ing is a qui­et rou­tine de­signed to lull chil­dren to sleep. For lo­cal au­thor Al­isa Gomez, how­ev­er, it be­came the un­ex­pect­ed launch­pad for a self-pub­lish­ing jour­ney aimed at re­shap­ing lo­cal chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture.

The rit­u­al be­gan when Gomez’s son, Vin­cent, was weaned. In­stead of in­duc­ing sleep, bed­time read­ing had the op­po­site ef­fect, spark­ing high-en­er­gy imag­i­na­tion and cre­at­ing a pro­found bond­ing space. Soon, stan­dard books were not enough; Vin­cent be­gan re­quest­ing orig­i­nal tales. This prompt­ed Gomez to cre­ate One Night by Moon­light, a noc­tur­nal ad­ven­ture fol­low­ing an ocelot and a tayra through the forests of Trinidad’s North Coast.

The sto­ry was born out of cul­tur­al ne­ces­si­ty. A glance at lo­cal book­shelves re­veals a mar­ket sat­u­rat­ed with for­eign im­agery, tem­per­ate an­i­mals like fox­es, bears, and stan­dard farm live­stock. Recog­nis­ing a gap, Gomez sought to fa­mil­iarise her son with na­tive wildlife, en­sur­ing he grew up know­ing the crea­tures be­long­ing to his im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment.

This cre­ative spark re­sult­ed in a suc­cess­ful self-pub­lish­ing ven­ture. In 2022, Gomez de­buted One Night by Moon­light along­side Se­ba, Swept Away!, a fast-paced night ad­ven­ture fea­tur­ing a fruit bat and an oil­bird. True to their ori­gins as bed­time read­ings, both pic­ture books em­brace the mys­tery of Trinidad’s noc­tur­nal ecosys­tems.

In 2024, Gomez’s third book, That Amaz­ing Capy­bara, ex­pand­ed on these eco­log­i­cal themes by in­tro­duc­ing so­cial com­men­tary. The nar­ra­tive us­es the ar­rival of a capy­bara to gen­tly ex­plore the com­plex­i­ties of im­mi­gra­tion and the process of mak­ing Trinidad one’s true home.

Now nine years old, Vin­cent serves as his moth­er’s most con­struc­tive crit­ic. While he claims no sin­gle favourite, he prais­es the vi­brant il­lus­tra­tions of the first two books and thor­ough­ly en­joys the scenes in the third, where the capy­bara in­ter­acts di­rect­ly with Trinida­di­an an­i­mals.

De­signed to com­ple­ment a child’s grow­ing home li­brary, these three pic­ture books serve a dual pur­pose: fos­ter­ing parental bond­ing and in­still­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal pride. By mov­ing away from for­eign folk­lore and step­ping in­to the North Coast forests, Gomez’s se­ries of­fers young read­ers a mir­ror to their own world, prov­ing that Caribbean wildlife holds a mag­ic en­tire­ly its own.

Mary Cuffy is an ed­u­ca­tor and lo­cal chil­dren’s au­thor of the La­dy­bug se­ries. Cuffy be­lieves the best in­vest­ment we can make in chil­dren is in the ear­ly years.

Email mary.cuffy@ya­hoo.com. IG:marycuffy . FB: mary cuffy/Lo­la and the Danc­ing La­dy­bug