When Andrea DeMarchi was a child, she made up books and pretended to publish them. She had her own teacher's desk, played school at home and, in her spare time, imagined she was an author.

Over time, she became both. DeMarchi, who is entering her third year as a kindergarten teacher at Ravenscroft, recently published her fifth children's book.

Her previous four books were inspired by true events from the lives of her four sons. Her newest book, “Mommy, Tell Us Why”, explores coping with grief after the death of her husband in 2019.

"My hope is that others who are going through something similar might find comfort in it," DeMarchi said.

DeMarchi wrote her first book in 2011. “Mommy, I Did Nothing Wrong” was inspired after one of her sons reached into a fish tank full of feeder fish, took one out, put it in a box and declared it his pet.

"It was a cute, endearing story," DeMarchi said.

Her second book, “Never Give Up”, was inspired by another son, who lost his vision at age 9. After giving up his first love, soccer, he discovered a passion for cross-country running and has since completed several marathons and other challenging races.

DeMarchi said she was lovingly tough on him as he adjusted to losing his vision, encouraging him to find something he loved.

“A Powerful Lesson”, her third book, tells the story of her now-26-year-old son, who was among the early patients to wear a cranial remodeling helmet to correct head shape abnormalities in infancy.

"They are much more advanced now," DeMarchi said. "But it was so barbaric the way they used to do it."

Because the treatment was relatively new at the time, DeMarchi remembers the stares and comments from strangers whenever she took her son out in public. Instead of responding with anger, as she said her father wanted to do, she turned those moments into opportunities to educate others.

"I wanted to teach these people like I would my students, and I was going to respond to every mean comment with kindness and education," DeMarchi said. "Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, people would thank me for educating them, and I was very proud that's how I chose to handle it. That was a powerful life lesson on how to deal with people who aren't always kind."

Her fourth book, “Mommy, I Can't Sleep”, is exactly what it sounds like: the story of a son who appeared at her bedside several times each night to tell her he couldn't fall asleep.

"Joey needed a book," DeMarchi said with a laugh. "And Joey never slept."

DeMarchi was inspired to write books for her children after reading “Love You Forever”, the beloved children's book by Robert Munsch, published in 1986. The story follows a mother who sings a lullaby to her newborn son. As the years pass and the mother grows older, the roles reverse, and the son sings the lullaby to her.

"After I read that book, I thought, 'Why don't I make one for my own kids?'" DeMarchi said. "I love getting that message out there to other students and children."

DeMarchi reads her first four books to her kindergarten class at Ravenscroft. While her sons are honored to have books inspired by their lives, her students are still a little too young to fully appreciate what it means.

"Kindergarten is very interesting because they're so sweet," DeMarchi said. "When you tell them you wrote a book, they're just happy about everything in life. Whether you wrote a book or not, they're happy either way."

DeMarchi uses writing as a therapeutic outlet. The time it has taken her to complete each book has varied. “Mommy, Tell Us Why” took seven years to finish. “Mommy, I Can't Sleep” took six. Others were completed in a single sitting.

The hardest part of writing, she said, is simply getting started.

"If you keep having great ideas, but you don't do anything with them, you'll never get started," DeMarchi said. "The second-hardest part is when you're writing about something that's a very difficult, deeply personal story. You have to find the courage deep within to put it out there."

DeMarchi also has ideas for books that don't involve her children. She has a rough draft of a book for adults about perseverance. She envisions it as a coffee-table book filled with uplifting sayings and beautiful photographs for people to pick up whenever they need encouragement.

She keeps a notepad nearby to jot down ideas, sketch outlines, crumple up pages, throw them away and start again.

She writes, edits, revises and returns to each manuscript until it feels just right. In the past, she had opportunities to sign books around the country, but that was never the reason she wrote these deeply personal tributes.

"I didn't do it for that reason," she said. "I just did it for my kids."