By Katie Vasquez
These days, Michael Shoule doesn’t read to his teenage children, Nate and Emma, as much — but that’s how his career as an author started.
When Nate was born, Shoule would read to him at night, but found a lot of the books became stale.
“There I am, holding a six month old in my arms and thinking, this baby’s not listening to me,” said Shoule.
While attending a Boston College reunion in 2007, inspiration struck.
“I’ll get a book about Boston college. I’ll read that to this kid every night and it’ll be fantastic. It’ll be something that daddy wants to read to my son and I went to the bookstore and there was nothing there,” said Shoule.
So he decided to write his own, and penned “My Daddy loves Boston College Football.”
“I thought there was a market for a book about things that me as a dad wanted to do with my kids,” said Shoule.
Shoule didn’t stop there. He now has seven books, six of which celebrate a different college football team and one story about the Bronx Zoo.
“I included my kids in the book then to try to kind of keep them a part of the story and a part of the whole endeavor,” said Shoule.
Despite the different settings, one theme remained the same.
“I really wanted to write things that dads wanted to read to their kids,” said Shoule.
His two kids now say the books hold fond memories, both on and off the page.
“I appreciate going to the football games. It was fun for me. and it was a good time to spend with my dad,” said Nate.
“I remember that my dad would read it to us with me and my brother and my mom, and he showed us that we were all a character in the book so it helped me relate more because I can’t really relate to football,” said Emma.
He strives to give dads everywhere that chance to create a special bond.
“I was just hoping that this would be a little bit extra incentive for the reading part of it, and for the dad to get involved in that aspect of their child’s upbringing.”
In the future, the American Martyrs parishioner hopes to write more children’s books as well as stories about faith.