About the Author
Jessica Vana studied aviation at the university termed “The Harvard of the Sky” by TIME magazine. She graduated as a Commercial Pilot with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Science. She was asked to recite one of her poems about aviation at the U.S. Pentagon on September 11, 2002. She gave the formal invocation at a 2008 U.S. Presidential Rally and has won writing awards including Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Excellence in Writing Award.
A true aesthete, Jessica loves to curate beauty in all she does. In 2012 she released her first children’s book: Adelina Aviator. She also wrote adult small group curriculum for several years and was interviewed on national radio (KLOVE) discussing one of her projects. You can find several of her published articles in The Christian Standard. Jess and her aviator husband reside in South Carolina, where she classically educates her five children at home and writes poetry and picture books for children in the wee hours over dark chocolate and shocking amounts of strong coffee.
My Passion
Picture books for children used to be full of tenderness, earnest affection, and playful yet potent assurances of a parent’s devotion to their child. Today’s books, however, are cheapening in language quality, overall aesthetic, and substantive artwork. Modern children's books have shifted from unfettered sincerity to ironic or hyperbolic flattery, oversimplified content, and half-sentence clichés. Equally tragic, where children’s books of the past celebrated kindness, virtue, and untethered play, today’s books are saturated and encumbered with the overt burden of social and political agendas while touting the hollow promises of self-love. In short: the books are no fun anymore. The souls of children are parched and hungry for promises of the unconditional love of a steady and sacrificial parent, not for trite cliches and empty flattery. Let us nourish them with something in bright and beautiful contrast: poems and stories of light, airy, unpretentious goodness; pages full of wholesome, purehearted, unaffected parental love.