Valerie Silva and Hillary Craig collaborated in a self-publishing book called ABC Life in the Womb designed and written for parents to share or give it to their children to read. It is available in paperback and hardcover. They hope it is the first of many books.
It is dedicated to “God for every life created in your image,” as well as to “every child who reads this book to know how precious you are to your creator.”
Silva and Craig first met during a volunteer training session at the Hollister Pregnancy Center in 2014. Silva has worked at the center for seven years as the office manager and fundraising coordinator. Craig has been a volunteer helping out with graphic art and photography.
Each letter in the alphabet tells a story of life in the womb. From “A is for arms. Baby’s arms are visible at 6 weeks” to “M is for mother. For 9 months, mother and baby share a special bond,” all the way to “Z is for zoom. As we zoom in on the intricacies of a baby’s life in the womb, we can see all the special characteristics that God has created.”
Because of their Christian belief and pro-life stance, they gravitated toward one another when Silva began to think about writing her first book. It is promoted as “a fun and exciting alphabet book for kids to learn how babies grow and develop in their mother’s womb.”
“God gave me the vision for that title of the book,” Silva said. “I’d always been interested in writing children’s books, but He gave me that vision and a few months later I contacted Hillary and asked her if she would illustrate it. After I had worked on a lot of the writing we would talk back and forth and pray about it. The process would change and some of the letters changed.”
Craig said they would meet every few weeks to discuss the direction of the book.
“We would meet at Ohana [Shave Ice] to have these brainstorming sessions to figure out what kids really want to learn and would convey the message we wanted to bring to the community to people that are questioning what’s going on in our culture right now,” Craig said. “We hit some hot topics with some of the letters, specifically gender. We talked about everything from conception to chromosomes, where you either have an XY or an XX, you’re a boy or a girl from conception.”
Craig said they used a number of medical journals for their research.
“It’s not something we just made up or found on the Internet,” she said. “University of California San Francisco was a major source for us.”
She said in the beginning they wanted to use only pro-life sources, but they found much of the information they were seeking wasn’t available there.
“We had to go with medical sources that were not necessarily pro-life,” she said. “It was kind of amazing. We thought, this is awesome, because we were using sources that you would typically not go with.”
“What Hillary means it wasn’t a pro-life organization,” Silva said.
Prior to publishing the book, Silva said she contacted Focus on the Family, Heartbeat International and other Christian organizations to get the book to them for their feedback and to help spread the word. The book took about a year to complete and was published in January, using Amazon’s KDP. They also promote it on Facebook and Instagram, as well as connecting to several pro-life influencers appearing on podcasts and radio programs.
Craig handles most of the social media promotions and said the response, particularly on Facebook from children, has been amazing. “I’ve been getting messages where people will be posting about our book and we have no idea who they are,” she said. “Their kids are reading the book and talking about how much they love it. A lot of them will read it for the camera. They’ll point out fun facts in the book. Adults have said they have learned a thing or two from the book.”
The two recently started a new business called Little Life Stages to promote the book and other projects they hope to start.
“Little Life Stages will set the tone for other books that could help children and families,” Silva said. “We really felt strongly after the book took off, but we want to tone it down because we feel the Lord wants us to focus on this project by getting it into pro-life pregnancy centers so they can give it to their clients and do fundraisers. We have a couple [centers] in California that want to do fundraisers in August.”
Craig said she and Silva likened the book to a seed of the pro-life message for children.
“We’re planting the seeds in the children of today so they will grow up affirming life for their children,” Craig said. “God is watering it and the time of harvest will produce his fruit, but we just marvel at the saplings now.
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