Oops! He Dropped the Leftovers, So I Wrote a Book

What happens when a child spills leftovers on the kitchen floor and immediately labels himself "stupid"? For author Brenda Do, this heartbreaking moment sparked the creation of It's Okay Not to Know, a children's book challenging our perfection-obsessed culture.Growing up Chinese in 1970s America, Brenda never saw herself represented in children's literature; every book featured white children. This experience shaped her determination to create characters that every child could identify with, regardless of appearance or background. So she created a world of colorful monsters with the gender-neutral protagonist leading readers through lessons of self-compassion and curiosity.Brenda draws fascinating connections between childhood messaging and adult behavior, noting how our early experiences with "failure" shape our willingness to take risks later in life. She references Stanford professor Carol Dweck's groundbreaking research on growth mindset, explaining how praising effort rather than results can dramatically expand children's potential. With just 230 words and playful rhyming text, Brenda describes it as "Dr. Seuss meets Brené Brown" - simple language conveying profound emotional intelligence.Send us Fan MailSupport the show📬 JOIN THE NEWSLETTERThe Storyteller Quest is  a weekly letter on writing,publishing, and the business of books.Subscribe, and I'll send you Traditional, Self, or Hybrid? —11 pages on what each publishing path really costs, plus a7-question worksheet that tells you which one is yours.Subscribe here.