ALUMNI Feature: Regis Alumni Sisters Author Children's Book to Honor Father

Alumni sisters, Sarah (Donnelly) Cotty (R81) and Rachel (Donnelly) Ipsan (R86), have realized their long-held dream of authoring a children's book based on the lessons and characters their father, John Donnelly, created for their bedtime stories. The book is titled "The Triplets Meet the New Kid (A Nina, Nancy, and NoNo Lesson on Kindness." Read the Q&A with Sarah and Rachel about their journey to bringing this dream to life

How did this project come about for the two of you?
As co-authors, it started by Rachel wanting to write a children’s book honoring three characters made up by their dad.  It would feature Nina, Nancy & NoNo but the timing never seemed to work.  Then Sarah retired in 2019 and asked if we wanted to do it together.  We knew we would have fun doing this project together and we were excited to revisit our childhood.

We wanted our first book to focus on peer pressure/bullying, so the theme of kindness came very easily. Regarding the process, we were fortunate to find an excellent local illustrator who captured our vision of each girl.  She recommended a publishing consultant since we wanted to self-publish and they were vital to our success.

Tell us more about your inspiration to write this book.
In addition to honoring our dad, we wanted to share with everyone the lessons and values he taught us with these bedtime stories. We wanted the three characters to have a different reaction to the situation so that readers could relate to any one of the three girls.  For this first book, we show how each girl reacts to a new kid joining the class mid-year. Our parents practiced what they preached, and we wanted to do them justice by telling these stories.

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Can you share how your Catholic school experience, faith and family impacted you?
In addition to attending weekly Mass and Catholic school, we always had family dinners where we talked about our day. From those dinners, our dad would incorporate a lesson at bedtime using Nina, Nancy, and NoNo.  The story always ended with learning a lesson from NoNo. All eight of us kids were raised to treat others as you would want to be treated. We knew we wanted to center our books around those beliefs.

Are there any specific moments or teachings you recall that influenced your writing?
Sarah had a specific memory of a new student introduced in the middle of the schoolyear.  Kids were very mean, and it stuck with her.  This memory instigated the theme of the first book and seemed timely to incorporate our lesson on kindness.

How are you hoping this book will impact its readers?
We wanted the book to be interactive by hiding a secret message on how to treat others.  Once kids find all the secret messages hidden in the book, they can win an award and become part of the TEK Club.  This stands for a secret message on kindness revealed at the end of the story. Our hope is that kids find it fun and start to live the message.

Were there any major moments of affirmation throughout the writing process?
As we were writing this book, we realized kindness was needed in the world now more than ever.

What’s next for the Triplets?
Our goal has always been to turn the Triplets book into a series with different lessons.  We are currently working on a second book about sportsmanship.  It confirmed that we wanted to share the importance of how our parents raised us to be kind to everyone even if your main goal is to win the game.

We envision bringing this series of books into schools and libraries.  We’d also love to implement a “TEK of the Month Club” program which would award a trophy for acts of kindness.   The Catholic School System fits this program perfectly because it teaches the values we were raised with.

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VISIT: NinaNancyNoNo.com