Each night when Santa Clarita Valley resident Christine Suhre was a little girl, her mother used to tell her to get ready for Lily White’s party.
Now it wasn’t an actual party Suhre was getting ready for. It was a party that happens each night when children go to sleep, where they’d visit with friends and pets and have wonderful treats.
“When we wake in the morning, we know we had a great time, but won’t remember it,” Suhre said. “Fortunately, a child can revisit that party every night.
“What a great way to tell a kid to go to sleep,” she added, chuckling.
Suhre had forgotten all about the party, only being reminded of it years later when a friend said it to her on a phone conversation.
“So I did some research on it, and I found out that … the original poem was anonymously written by a father in the late 1800s for his daughter who didn’t like going to sleep each night,” Suhre said.
It was then that Suhre came up with her own version of the poem, which was geared toward both girls and boys, adding in her own vision of what the party might be like.
“I rewrote the story in its entirety in verse and illustrated it,” Suhre added.
She published “Lily White’s Party,” a children’s book that brought the story to life, including a free narration of the book done by Suhre’s daughter, stickers and even an invitation to go to the party the next night.
“Since the pandemic has hit and affected all of us, I can imagine the anxieties that children have when they can’t play with their friends as they did a year ago, … and they don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring,” Suhre said.
Hoping her story could offer children some relief from the current circumstances, Suhre decided to offer anyone who purchases the book an extra copy free of charge, which she said can be gifted, donated or kept as a backup.
“I just think it’s kind of important for kids to feel good when they go to sleep,” she added. “If I can help out and give something good to people, I’m just really pleased with that, really I am.”
