Michele Gates

Mae The Courageous Caterpillar Michele Gates

Mae The Courageous Caterpillar is an interactive storybook that invites children who have suffered a loss or are going through a difficult time to join Mae on an adventure as she shares the story of a time she underwent a difficult change while facing loss, yet managed to experience happiness on the other side. It is the author's hope that this book serve as an interactive tool for children experiencing grief and or confusion due to a loss or difficult time. She hopes it helps them to know and feel that they matter, they are loved and they are not alone. Activities such as storytelling, writing and coloring are utilized throughout the book as tools to encourage and assist the reader to verbalize, in some way, what they may have otherwise not been able to. Michele, the author, feels her own heart slipped into a cocoon the day she lost her mother, to suicide, five days following her fifth birthday. Mae's story is Michele's story.