Allison Antonio has spent her whole life telling stories, but it wasn’t until the birth of her son that she decided to actually write a story down and have it published.
Antonio was born and raised in Niverville and has lived here for almost her entire life. She attended Providence University College, then got her Bachelors of Education at the University of Winnipeg.
Her husband Matthew is a youth pastor at the Niverville Community Fellowship and together the pair have one son, Wesley, who is the inspiration for her book.
Telling stories and working with children have always been passions for Antonio. While attending university, she worked as a substitute childcare provider at Growing Minds. Whether she was babysitting, working, or playing with her nieces and nephews, she was always telling stories.
“Growing up, I really liked Robert Munsch,” Antonio says. “I loved that his stories made kids laugh with their silliness. I learned a little bit about Robert Munsch, and how in his stories he often wrote about a kid he knew. He would take a child’s interest or something they said and turn them into stories. So that is something I would often do with the kids at daycare or school.”
After Antonio got her degree, she began teaching in the Hanover School Division and found that her passion for stories was a perfect match for teaching her Grade One students how to read.
“It’s so exciting to see the joy that kids have when they can read a word on a street sign or in the hallways of the school!”
Over time, Antonio found another children’s book author whose work she both enjoyed and appreciated—namely, Mo Willems.
“The simplistic drawings and expressive speech bubbles made Willems’ books really accessible to my beginning readers,” she says. “By the end of Grade One, they could pick up one of his books and read it all by themselves.”
After her son Wesley was born, during maternity leave, she noticed how attentive to him her dog Arthur was. Arthur would follow Wesley everywhere, bring him a ball to play with, and put his paws up on the edge of the bathtub while Wesley took a bath.
Watching their interactions inspired her to write a book taking to heart the lessons she had learned from her two favourite authors, employing the silliness of Munsch and simplicity of Willems.
“What’s a Wesley? is a story from Arthur’s point of view as we brought Wesley home for the first time,” Antonio says. “Arthur tries to figure out what a Wesley is, and why it sounds and smells so funny. The book goes through different guesses that Arthur makes about Wesley based on what he looks and smells like. For example, he smells Wesley’s diaper and thinks it is a skunk. Included in the book is a list of sight words, comprehension questions, and pictures of the real Wesley and Arthur.”
As Wesley and Arthur continue their lives together, Antonio hopes to write more books about their bond, with the pair exploring their world and learning about each other.
