🌟 Seeing stars at SKY LUCK storytime

Updates from my mini book tour in October

Nov 03, 2025

SKY LUCK has officially launched into the world 🚀

Thanks to everyone who has bought a copy so far! Please email me or tag me on social media [ @ericaleewrites ] with photos of your book in the wild—I love to see it!

I started my mini book tour with a cozy storytime with my close friends and their kiddos at Bel Canto Books in Long Beach.

My lovely friend Niharika also bought copies of the book to gift to friends at a picnic she organized in Los Cerritos Park (hullo, how amazingly supportive is she!?) and she invited me to read my book out loud to everyone who gathered. Highly recommend hosting an outdoor storytime on a nice sunny day. It was so dreamy!

I also took a road trip up the California coast to host Saturday morning storytime at Godmothers in Summerland. I had heard about the picturesque shop on Instagram because of its very buzzy opening (it’s co-founded by former WME literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Megan Markle, Prince Harry, and Oprah Winfrey were among the guests at the star-studded launch party.) The venue was picture-perfect. A lovely respite along the Pacific Coast Highway, between Santa Barbara and Carpinteria, if you ever find yourself in the area.

At each event, I invited the children to make “star faces”—paper crafts in the shape of shooting stars, with a prompt for them to write down things they’re grateful for and reasons why they’re lucky. They wrote things like “my house,” grandma and grandpa, and boots!

Upcoming Events

Please spread the word and bring your little ones to these upcoming storytime events this month around Los Angeles—a triple header next weekend!

Saturday, November 8

Vroman’s (Pasadena) at 11am

Sunday, November 9

Casita Bookstore (Long Beach) at 11am

Monday, November 10

pages: a bookstore (Manhattan Beach) at 10:30am

A Nice Surprise!

My first picture book, WILD GREENS, BEAUTIFUL GIRL 野菜姑娘 , is part of the first batch of 18 curated books in the Little Tricky Books pop-up library at @woolloomooloo.fujin, a cafe in Songshan District in Taipei, Taiwan. The collection showcases books about Taiwan in English, including picture books set in Taiwan, academic-leaning books to learn about Taiwan, and fiction and non-fiction for both adults and young adults.

On the shelves of Tricky Taipei's pop-up library

On My Radar

Story Sunbirds—a kidlit collective aiming to cultivate an inclusive children’s literature community rooted in justice, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism.
Moonbow—a bimonthly arts and culture publication about children’s literature for adults.
IBBY-UNESCO Collection of Remarkable Books in Indigenous and Endangered Languages—IBBY and UNESCO join efforts to protect linguistic diversity in the field of children’s literature by launching a global call for submissions, open until December 15, 2025.
Bay Area Book Festival—a cultural celebration and a critical gathering space where activists, authors, and audiences can unite around today’s most urgent issues and uplift marginalized voices. (May 30-31, 2026).

Buy My Book!

If you haven’t already, please purchase SKY LUCK directly from our publisher Blue Dot Kids Press, or one of your favorite local booksellers.

Buy it here!

💫 SKY LUCK is all around you

A magical story about the power of abundant thinking

Erica Lee Schlaikjer 🍉 史光芬

Sep 30, 2025

Today is officially the book birthday for SKY LUCK!

If you haven’t already, please purchase directly from our publisher Blue Dot Kids Press, or one of your favorite local indie booksellers.

Buy it here!

A dark desert night. A boy yearning to count his lucky stars. A reassuring uncle with an abundance mindset. The story encourages young readers ages 3-7 to be mindful of the “sky luck” that is always around them, whether at dawn or dusk, in the moon or a satellite—and to not compare their fortune with someone else’s.

The Essence of the Story

In the book, a boy feels bummed out that he can’t find any shooting stars like the other children. He believes he has run out of “sky luck.” But his uncle tells him that sky luck is infinite. He says:

“Want to know the secret to feeling lucky? Pay attention to what’s already here, not what’s missing.”

That line—the key takeaway of the story—actually took me the longest to write. My editor, Summer Dawn Laurie, pushed me to hone the essence of the uncle’s wisdom.

In her first round of feedback on the original manuscript, she requested: “Could you expand the discussion between uncle and boy after the elder introduces the idea that Sky Luck is infinite?”

It was valid feedback. Something I contemplated for a while.

Sky luck is infinite and all around us…and so what? What exactly was I trying to say?

Illustration from “Sky Luck” by Dagmar Smith

To me, “sky luck” is a metaphor that goes beyond the celestial wonders of the natural world. It’s a spiritual outlook about cultivating gratitude and a sense of wholeness, even when (and especially if) you feel like you’re missing out.

I remember years ago learning about a psychology study from Dr. Richard Wiseman, who wrote The Luck Factor, concluding that luck is not purely random chance but can actually be influenced by your own attitude and behavior. People who consider themselves “lucky” tend to be more open to opportunities, more resilient, and more optimistic. A lot of it has to do with noticing the unexpected things around you—being observant and seeing the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

I wrote back to Summer: “Since the boy is worried about the scarcity of sky luck, I want to emphasize the notion of infinite abundance, not just thinking positive. Mindfulness, in this case, can help us appreciate what we usually take for granted.”

Together, we tossed around a few variations. Sky luck is infinite and/but…

…we take it for granted.
…you just have to remember to look for it.
…sometimes it’s hard to recognize.
…it can look different every time you see it.
…if you don’t pay close attention, you miss what’s right in front of you.

None of these lines felt quite right, and so the manuscript sat still, waiting on revisions.

Eventually, I saw the gorgeous character sketches by our very talented illustrator Dagmar Smith. She chose to draw the uncle with a prosthetic leg:

Early character sketches by Dagmar Smith

That one small detail helped me better connect with the uncle’s point of view and backstory. Clearly, this was a man who had gleaned powerful insights from his limb difference. What could he say, that would be helpful to a boy who felt unlucky? This became my writing challenge.

A Creative Breakthrough

I figured the uncle would know something about being grounded and grateful, considering he has to radically accept his body the way it is, whether he was born without a leg or suffered a traumatic injury. His posture and demeanor seems confident and steady. I imagined he would impart a sense of trust, belief, or faith to his anxious nephew.

I wrote back to Summer: “Attached, please find my edits! I think I finally got it right. Paired with the character sketches, it feels even better now. I was able to hear the uncle’s voice in my head.”

Here are the lines that I finally wrote, which made it into the final edit:

“Sky luck is all around us, even if we don’t see it. Think of how gravity keeps everything in the right place. You feel it, you know it, you trust it.”
The uncle’s voice got whisper-quiet. “Want to know the secret to feeling lucky? Pay attention to what’s already here, not what’s missing.”

Dagmar’s character sketch inspired me to remember that our lives are full of possibilities, no matter what form or shape they take, and there’s no use comparing our own experience to someone else’s. We have to trust in the beauty and magic that surrounds us. (No one questions gravity, after all.)

I hope the story reminds you to count your own lucky stars, however they show up for you.

🌟 Watch and share the book trailer on Instagram, lovingly made by my motion-designer husband Nader Husseini:

ericaleewrites