Oneonta Native Returns To Share First Published Book

By BILL BELLEN
ONEONTA

The Huntington Memorial Library had quite the treat in store for its youthful visitors on Monday, July 21. Their programming for the day centered on a special guest presentation at 1 p.m. by certified child life specialist-turned-author Raye Pietruszka regarding her newly published children’s book, “ONLY I-Love-Yous!” Based on nightly conversations with her daughter throughout her youth, this story was the culmination of nearly a year and a half of consistent and persistent work on Pietruszka’s part to put together a piece she had been dreaming of for years.

When asked about her inspiration to pursue publication, Pietruszka said, “My children inspired me just because [“I-love-yous”] became so much of a living mantra every night before going to bed. It was obviously something that my youngest was relying on as a coping [mechanism] to kind of get through sleep. I thought, well, this might be helpful for other families to use this kind of concept … A big part of my job is to help make the scary not so scary, and help them understand what is happening to reduce some of that fear, bring more of an awareness and a knowledge to help them understand on their level what’s happening.”

With these intentions in mind, she got to work. Since March of 2024, Pietruszka worked with a hybrid publisher to lay the groundwork for her book, and reached out and partnered with Abigail Hall, an artist from Scotland, on its colorful illustrations. With this infrastructure in progress, Pietruszka worked on putting together a story about a young girl named Elly with lots of worries, and the power of overcoming and seeing through these “you-know-whats and you-know-whos,” as she describes them. Whether it be the sweet words of her mother, or the warm comfort of her stuffed animals around her, Elly is able to overcome her anxieties by seeing the “I-love-yous” that surround her instead.

“It was challenging,” Pietruszka said of her effort to get “ONLY I-Love-Yous!” published. “Essentially for that full year, I wasn’t really a child life specialist in the clinical term. I was really an author. So I was writing [a] manuscript, refining it with the editor and researching illustrators and going through the drawing process with the illustrator. It was a year-long process of really putting it all together.”

Though her work as a child life specialist has at times kept her far from the city Pietruszka once called home—the past 14 years of her career being spent primarily in Saudi Arabia—the staff of the Huntington Memorial Library seemed more than happy to welcome her back to Oneonta for last Monday’s event.

Pietruszka read her book to a crowd of roughly a dozen children and adults, detailing a simplified process of how publishing works, and showing off the mistakes made along the way and how these mistakes helped her learn for the future. She answered what seemed to be an endless stream of questions for the following half hour, as a very engaged audience enthusiastically talked about aspects of the story with her.

Though her work as a child life specialist will continue, Pietruszka spoke to her newfound passion of writing for children, and of the important lens it allows an author to see through that might otherwise never be accessed.

“It feels great. I think just the ability to share something with the young ones and even for parents to create a story in their own mind or help the child create a story in their mind … I think it’s my way of giving a tool to a parent to help a child through a hard time. So it feels good to share that child life part of me through a book,” Pietruszka explained.

“Yeah, it’s not really about the fame or the ‘Oh, I’m an author now.’ It’s more about trying to give tools to kids and to their parents to get through something that might be hard … [Being a children’s author] challenges you to really think of things in a different way. The population you’re writing for and stuff like that; it’s a challenge. It helps you grow,” she said.

For those interested in picking up their own copy, “ONLY I-Love-Yous!” can be found on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites, or on shelves locally at the Green Toad Bookstore while supplies last.