A recurring dream and a love of travel inspired a book series.
Kristen Marotte was 18 when her father, Eli, died, and not long after, she started having a recurring dream about searching for him. Every so often, the dream had a happy encounter. “I’d run to him and say, ‘Where in the world have you been?’” says the Sandy Springs resident.
In the waking world, life went on. Marotte carved a career in software sales and indulged her passion for travel. She took consumer guru Clark Howard’s tips to heart and booked affordable trips to wherever the plane was going. “I didn’t have a lot of money, but I could jump on a $300 trip to Amsterdam,” she said. “I did have a deep desire to see the world, so I made it happen.”
In the early 1990s, Marotte started writing down her travel adventures as children’s stories told by a globe-trotting bear she named Eli. “It was bizarre; I didn’t have children and was shocked at how easily the stories rolled out,” she says. “I wrote one, then another and another, and soon I had 10. The words were cute and catchy about a little bear who dropped hints about where he was—how people dressed or spoke, or what they ate—and readers had to figure it out.”
Marotte married in 1999, and a year later, tried to get the stories published. When that didn’t happen, she set them aside until her own children came along, and she dusted them off to share with her daughter and son who arrived in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
“They became our family treasure,” she says. “My kids would often get them out and read them. I took them to their school and read to classes. When my daughter started babysitting, she read them to the kids.”
Meanwhile, Marotte left the corporate world, tried her hand at photography and, most recently, became a Pilates instructor. And 25 years after the first Eli story, she decided it was time to share them with the world.
“A friend told me how he’d published a book and how much things have changed now,” she says. “You can find illustrators and self-publish easily. I just had to do it.”
She did some of the initial drawings before hiring an illustrator who perfected the image of Eli whose belly sports the flag of the country he’s visiting. She started an Instagram page and a Facebook page, and got the first book, Where in the World is Eli? Bonjour!, on Amazon. “It’s a bit cryptic; Eli talks about the Mona Lisa but doesn’t specifically say it’s that painting, so the images are important clues,” Marotte says. “The last line of every story has Eli walking into the sunset and says to follow that bear to see what the next country will be.”
The books are also a bit of a nod to her father and her dream, as well as Marotte’s love of travel.
“I got my creative side from my dad, who could draw,” she says. “The books have also had a healing part, too, even though there’s still a very deep-felt yearning there. In my dreams, I will occasionally see him, and a few times I got to embrace him. But my life has gone on.”
And the writing may go on as well, Marotte says. “I was so tickled by it when I was writing them, and I still get excited by it. If the books are successful, I’ll keep writing.”
@eli_the_flagbelly_bear
