- Associated Press - Sunday, November 15, 2020

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Inspiration struck, as it sometimes does, at a Lincoln doughnut shop, the aroma of warm sugar heavy in the air.

Rob Otte, a district court judge in Lincoln, said the stop at Dunkin’ on Old Cheney Road with his five grandkids and their dads led him to write a children’s book, “Lily Discovers People are Like Donuts,” which hit Amazon’s online bookshelf at the end of October.

“I just noticed at the time that the grandkids are so different in so many different ways,” he said.

And when they ordered, each chose something different.

“Literally, it was born at that minute,” Otte told the Lincoln Journal Star.

Her brothers, who made an appearance in the book, didn’t even mind being called monster doughnuts.

Carey Goddard, a freelance graphic designer and illustrator in Lincoln, said when Otte approached her with the idea, she decided to go for it. In mid-May, she lost her longtime job due to the pandemic and had to start rethinking things.

“There always was that itch to do something else, something that really sparked my passion again,” she said.

Goddard grew up drawing her own comics, keeping a sketchbook and putting together her own stories, and always had wanted to try illustrating a children’s book.

“It’s a whole different thing when you’re putting together stories for somebody else,” she said.

Goddard said Otte gave her a lot of creative rein. She sketched the characters in pencil, then went over them with ink and scanned them in so she could add the color digitally on her laptop.

Until a few weeks ago, they still were tweaking words and making changes, adding a friend in a wheelchair inspired after seeing a boy on a wheelchair path at a city playground.

Otte and Lily both said they liked how it turned out.

“The art is not only spectacular, but it’s all Carey,” Otte said.While it says on the copyright page that the names and characters are all products of his imagination, “Lily is the real Lily,” he said, referring to his granddaughter, Lily Salem.

He enlisted her help on the story, which celebrates diversity - of doughnuts and people - imagining if people were doughnuts what kind they might be.

“I think it’s cool,” said Lily, a Lincoln fourth grader who loves reading, especially chapter books. “I haven’t really been the inspiration of anything before that has been out in the world. So this is real exciting for me and my family.”

Lily said she thought she was going to look cartoonish, but the book version of Lily ended up looking more like her than she expected. Except maybe the hair, which looks a little different than hers.

Lily said, just like in the book, she thinks that everyone is different and that we should respect that.

“Life would be boring and flavorless if everyone was the same, and there were no different types of doughnuts. It’d be the same everyday,” she said.

Otte said he liked the story and its undercurrent message of diversity, but it was more about showing the grandkids that they can do something different than they usually would and learn something new.

With extra time at home over the summer due to the pandemic, he said he had time to make a better connection with Lily, working on something real and tangible.

“I never thought of myself as an author, but I like challenging the grandkids to think, ‘Hey, I can do that,’” Otte said.

It seems to have worked.

Lily said she already has started thinking up new adventures for the book version of herself to go on. Maybe she’ll explore Florida next with her cousin, Poppy, or visit the farm. She hasn’t yet decided.

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