Oceanside teacher publishes children’s book

An Oceanside High School teacher has made her way into the publishing world. Talia Madden, 34, recently published a children’s book, titled “The Colors They Shared.”

“I started writing as a hobby from the time I was a kid, and it was always a passion,” she said.

Madden, a social studies teacher, almost decided pursuing professional writing as a career, but health issues early on altered her path. “I began studying English when I went to college,” she said. “And I considered on some level entering into that field. But when I was 16, I was diagnosed with lupus and this was at a time when I needed good healthcare because of my lupus diagnosis. I became really fearful. And I decided to get a job where I could guarantee having access to healthcare that would allow me to pay for my medical bills.

“I switched to history education, which I’m grateful for and I love what I do,” Madden added. “I can’t imagine not being a teacher. But I completely abandoned writing as an option and possible profession, because of those fears associated with how I can pay for my medical bills.”

Lupus is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body’s immune system attacks tissues and organs. Madden has two young children, Maya, who will be four, and Jake, who will turn two years old soon. Madden said her children brought her back to her passion. “Having my daughter, I am always telling these bedtime stories. And they kept getting more complex and more interesting, as she got older,” she said.

“I started thinking about the kids in my class, and what colors do they like? And I turned it into a story. And the story kept evolving night by night, and Maya kept asking for it. This past summer, my friend in early education overheard me telling her the story and she said, ‘What is that story?’ And it was just something I made up, but she said I should write it down. At that moment, I decided to go to a coffee shop with a notebook and started storyboarding. I started researching the process of creating this book, and that’s where it started.”

Madden enlisted friends and family to help with the copy-editing process. She was able to find her illustrator, Lisa Wee, online. “I would never consider myself an illustrator,” Madden said. “I decided to find someone who captured what I envisioned in my head. Since I couldn’t be the one to do the drawings, this person had to have my vision and she did.”

The book is available on Amazon, and Madden is working on getting the book into local stores.

She is spreading the word about her new book and thanked the friends and family who pushed her to self-publish. “I could have just written it for my kids, and I’m thankful for the people that believed in me when I didn’t have the strength to believe in myself,” she said. Madden’s husband, John, a guidance counselor at Oceanside High School, and Dr. Beth Zirogiannis, the school’s director of English, were among those who encouraged her.

Madden explained that the book follows six friends who try to determine what color their school tree house should be. They discover that they all have opinions on what color they want and are all stuck on that color. Ultimately, they decide to incorporate each other’s color ideas.

The book’s core lesson focuses on teamwork and collaboration, and Madden spoke about the deeper message the book holds that all readers, young and old, can understand.

“Yes, it’s a story about kids painting a tree house, but it doesn’t mean just that,” she said. “It’s the idea of being a solution and empowering our children. This book is a story of empowerment for young kids, that they can be the creators of the change. As an educator, I’ve seen that our children are unbelievable problem-solvers, but we don’t ask them to solve problems.

“In the book, these kids identified a problem and had to work to find a solution. But got stuck in their own mental space on how to find a solution. If you go even deeper with adults, have we as a nation shown that we are able to work together to find solutions? We all have a common goal, we all identify problems but, like the book, when it’s time to create solutions we become stuck in our ‘colors’ that we can’t come up with the solutions. It’s a message to kids and adults — to kids, you are ‘solutionaries’ that deserve to be empowered, but also to adults, learn from your children.”

Madden discussed why the book is important to her, which circles back to the passion she had at a young age. “This is because of 16-year-old me. This was something I stopped doing and didn’t pursue and now I’ve come back to it,” she said. “That’s what a passion does, it’s so much deeper than what you can control.”