Silkie Sunshine is an awesome chicken with important messages

Heather H.J. Emerson has written and illustrated a wonderful series of children’s books featuring Silkie Sunshine, an awesome chicken, and important messages for our children.

Heather knows what she’s writing about because in addition to working in her local public school as a special education and behavioral health professional, she and her husband Randy have a small homestead which includes goats, chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys.

This morning I thoroughly enjoyed three of Heather’s books. The first is Silkie Sunshine and the Giant Eggs. Somehow two huge eggs get added to Silkie’s nest, and when they are hatched she is astonished that they are very large baby geese. All four babies hang out together as a family.

“Even though they were different from one another, it was love that made them all a family,” writes Heather. And yes, this book is all about family.

I loved the second book, Merry Christmas, Silkie Sunshine! The chickens even sing a favorite Christmas song. One day a big truck shows up with eight huge boxes that turn out to be the manger with Christ and his parents.

Silkie hears a voice telling him, “This is my son. He is my special gift to the world. He has come from heaven to live with mankind. He has come to show everyone how to be my child. He has come to save them. This is the true meaning of Christmas, little Sunshine.”

The third book is How are you feeling today, Silky Sunshine? It’s all about our emotions. In the introduction Heather writes, “Emotions… We all have them. Each of us, at some point, has been happy, sad, mad, scared, worried or what have you. This is okay. Emotions are not good or bad. It is the choices we make when we feel the emotion that is important.”

This book, in addition to Heather’s wonderful drawings of Silkie, features all of his possible emotions from amazement to depression. At the end of the book, she poses questions for a discussion of emotions.

On the back cover of each book you will read, “As a veteran in the public schools, H. J. is an advocate for those without voices and has written this and many other books in order to foster hope, tolerance and empathy through encouraging and uplifting stories.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.