David and Emberli Pridham - Inspiring Creative Kids

If Not You Then Who? The Inventor in the Pink Pajamas is written by David and Emberli Pridham and presented by Dominion Harbor, a leading intellectual property firm. David is DH's CEO and an expert on patents. The couple resides in Dallas, Texas with their three young children Brooke, Noah and Graham. As our Authors of the Day, they tell us all about this book.

Please give us a short introduction to what The Inventor in the Pink Pajamas is about.

The Inventor in the Pink Pajamas is about an imaginative 10-year-old girl – Brooke - who has an eye for inventing! Inspired by her grandfather and their mutual delight in how inventions come to be discovered, Brooke looks for ways to improve the world around her!

What inspired you to write this book?

Our children inspired us to write this book! We have 3 children under 4 years old and one of our favorite activities is to get out an educational book and read to them. They love to learn and especially when they have fun in the process! Our oldest – Brooke – always asks what does daddy do for work? So we wrote a children’s book about it! My husband David runs an intellectual property licensing firm here in Dallas and this book goes hand in hand with that! We want to make the intellectual property and inventing approachable so that every kid knows that they can invent and own their ideas.

Tell us more about Brooke Fairly. What makes her tick?

Brooke is a curious young girl who's just trying to navigate through life and just wants to know more about the world around her!

Brooke was inspired by her grandfather. Why did you pick someone that close to her as the inspiring figure, instead of famous inventors etc.?

My grandmother was a writer and she wrote a motivational book before she died called, “Challenging the Road Ahead .” It is about a walk that my grandparents literally took from Texas to Indiana where my grandparents are from. With that said, she told me that I should one day write a book and inspired me to do so.

Brooke's Grandfather (David’s dad) is an inventor listed on several patents for his work on sonar for submarines for Raytheon.

For both David and me, our Grandparents have always played a special role. Growing up both of us learned so much from our grandparents and it was something we wanted to share with others.

Besides writing, what other secret skills do you have?

I have always been into the arts whether it be design, fashion and or event planning! I love it all!

David loves to cook and he cooks all the time. He’s actually quite amazing, especially with any type of Italian food.

Please tell us more about the illustrations in this book.

I know as a kid giant picture books were a big deal, so we wanted to make sure the book was loaded with fun bright colors and large format. We wanted to make it relatable to kids as well, so we actually used a lot of illustrations from our everyday life. For example, Brooke, our daughter, loves to play soccer and she loves to help me make cookies too! Many of the illustrations were inspired by our 4-year-old daughter Brooke.

Why do you find it important to inspire kids, especially little girls, to try and invent stuff?

When I was a young girl I felt like I had a lot of good ideas but I just didn’t know how to go about developing them. Growing up in a male-dominated workforce was and still can be intimidating for young girls. We want to inspire little girls to follow their dreams.

With a technology-filled world, becoming self-motivated can sometimes be hard to do. With our book, we try to inspire kids to use their imaginations to spark curiosity at a young age. We also want to encourage young kids to know that you can make a difference at any age. No dream is ever too big, or dreamer too small.

You are an expert on patents. How much of this knowledge have you written into the story?

We wanted to show that patents just reflect inventions that we use in everyday life. The US patent system is the best in the world and allows for anyone to own and protect their ideas.

Which backstory of a household invention is your personal favorite?

The Teddy Bear invention was pretty neat! Growing up I always loved my teddy bear and it’s cool to learn how a teddy bear actually came about!

My personal other favorites are the accidental inventions that come out of experimenting. For example, Noah McVicker invented play dough in the 1930s to clean coal stains from wallpaper! Who would’ve thought!

Who are you speaking to in the book? Who do you imagine your audience to be?

We are speaking to children of all ages but it’s also a fun read for adults too! (Emberli)

What was your greatest challenge when writing this book?

We have our hands full with our 3 children! So just finding the time to complete the book project! David worked on coming up with interesting inventions to include!

Do you consider yourself a disciplined writer? Do you have a schedule that you stick to, or is it more in the moment?

I would say for me it’s more in the moment and using our real-life experiences to use in our book! We wanted our book to be relatable and familiar to kids in everyday life! (Emberli)

What are you working on right now?

The response to the Inventor in the Pink Pajamas has been overwhelming…. We are excited to announce we are working on a sequel that will be out this summer….

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

To discover more of our work we have partnered with weeva.com and amazon.com

Also Social Media Instagram!

@emberbrooke

@ifnotyoubooks