Hayley Rose, an author who was born and raised in Santa Clarita, has been pursuing her career of entertaining and educating children since 2002.
She grew up having intimate story times with her father. Her father made sure to go from bed to bed, reading one-on-one to each of his daughters.
This experience in her childhood formed the meaning of books to her.
“A book when you’re a child is really bonding,” said Rose. “For me, reading is all about the experience.”
When Rose’s parents died years later, in her time of grief, she turned to gratitude.
Rose says her thanks every night before she goes to bed but recognized that there are many ways to express gratitude.
She took her experience as an author and combined it with the desire to spread the idea of consistently expressing gratitude.
“Gratitude is scientifically proven to rewire the brain and make you happier, and coloring,” said Rose. “I also suffer from anxiety and coloring has a lot of attributes that pair really well with gratitude, so they both helped to build self-esteem. They both help calm you, they both help to redirect to positive happy thoughts, so I marry those two together.”
Rose worked to create, “The Thankful Series,” a series of books that are a combination of gratitude journals and coloring books.
“I added self-esteem prompts, affirmations, again to rewire the brain to make you happier,” said Rose.
“The Thankful Series” consists of fantasy characters such as mermaids, unicorns and dragons to further appeal to children and create a sense of familiarity as they adapt to learning a new habit.
“If you can get kids to practice gratitude at an early age and make it fun for them, you’re rewiring the brain to make them happier,” said Rose. “What a great world we would live in — happy people everywhere, right? So, I mean, that would go further in life. They’d have better self-esteem, they’d be connecting more.”
Currently the series has 11 books.
“The Thankful Series,” features the following in the books: daily gratitude prompts, dreams and goals prompts, “what I love about myself” prompts and daily affirmations.
Rose said the best ages for the books are from 6 to 12 years old and recommends that the kids follow the activities daily to make it a habit.
She also said the books tend to sell better in person, as the meaning of them is able to resonate more versus an online platform that doesn’t have that human interaction.
She hopes that by practicing gratitude at a young age, kids can learn to be more in tune with their feelings and grow up understanding their emotions.
To purchase a book from “The Thankful Series,” visit booksbyhayleyrose.com/books.
