Grandmotherly Guidance Gets Girls Published

Fifth graders Juliana Fresch, Emory Wardlaw author tale of remarkable canine exploits

With the children’s books authored by children on the rise, Preston Hollow fifth graders Juliana Fresch and Emory Wardlaw enjoyed their 2-year co-authoring and publishing project with a little help from Emory’s grandmother. 

Now for sale on Amazon, Dogs To The Rescue, is the story of best friends Emma and Angel, whose dog, Sniffer, alerts people at a seaside park of an impending earthquake. 

“We were playing with Bear,” Juliana said of Emory’s inspirational new dog. “We were just obsessed with him. That’s kind of what made the story happen.”

The girls, then students at The Lamplighter School, were also inspired by one of Grandma Lavelle Carlson’s children’s books.

“We were bored and playing on this app, Book Creator, and we wrote this little story,” Juliana recalled. “And I thought why don’t we send it to your grandma?”

Carlson came over on Thursdays and Fridays after school to mentor the aspiring authors.

“It was a very nice experience for me,” Carlson said. “My whole world has been built around young children and observing what they can and cannot do. It has been great to go beyond what I normally do to watch young girls take words and work with them.”

Emory noted, “Our art teacher from our old school, Lizzie Bumpas, helped us through half of it, but then she had to focus on just teaching art.”

No problem. Carlson, a retired speech/language pathologist and children’s book author, suggested her illustrator Natalia Logvanova. 

“We sat here and talked and made notes,” Emory explained. “The illustrator would draw, and we would color it in, decide what colors we liked and what words we decided we wanted. We took pictures of us in some areas, doing what we wanted it to do.”

Juliana now attends The Hockaday School, and Emory, Episcopal School of Dallas.

“I felt like we were really hands-off,” mother Lisa Wardlaw said, laughing over the moms’ roles. “There was a period where they were meeting every week here to work on it. To be honest, I had nothing to do with it. It’s just a work of love between them and their art teacher.”

Juliana’s mom said to the girls, “I think it taught y’all a lot about trial and error.”

“You invest all this time to try to make one thing perfect, and maybe it ends up being more perfect but in a different way,” Jessica Fresch said. “I was shocked when I could go on Amazon and press ‘order.’ Oh, my god, it’s real!”

Carlson still has lessons for her mentees.

“One of the things I haven’t discussed with them a whole lot is marketing,” she said. “You write a book, but you still have to sell it.”

Carlson is encouraging them to do a book signing, which she would attend. 

“We talked about what we should do with the money we earn,” Emory said, adding she hopes some book sales might support a dog adoption event. “Because we’re both 11, we don’t need that much money, besides college funds.”