Shelly's Christmas Magic comes out Friday

Book three comes out Friday.

I've been quietly excited about this one for months. Shelly's Christmas Magic started with a question I kept circling back to: what would Christmas look like to someone who had never seen it before?

So that's where Shelly starts. She's out past the sand watching all the lights go up across the water, and she has no idea what any of it means. She just knows it looks important.

Grandma Cora helps her work it out. Not with one big explanation, but the way grandmas usually do it, a little at a time. Faith. Family. Friends. Being kind. Making somebody else happy.

And then Shelly does what Shelly does. She doesn't wait around for Christmas to show up. She and her friends decide to make their own, right there on the beach.

They use what they can find. Driftwood, shells, sea grass, a lot of imagination and some truly questionable music.

It does not come out perfect.

That's the part I care about most. Every kid has made something with their own hands and then felt that little sinking feeling when it didn't look like the one in their head. I wanted them to see Shelly's crooked, sandy, held-together-with-hope version and love it anyway.

There's a new friend in this one too. Her name is Ollie and she's clever. Sunny's around, being Sunny. That's all I'm going to say.

Thank you for sticking with Shelly. I think this might be my favorite cover we've done.

See the book