Remember Us With Smiles by Gary Jansen ~ Review and Interview

Genre ~ children’s fiction

Release date ~ May 31, 2022

Page count ~ 32 pages

My rating ~ 5⭐

My review:

So sweet and so fitting reading this as a parent of a teenager. It’s not about how much you spend or how far you take them, it’s the little things, too, that mean the most.
I’ll always remember, but will she? Perhaps when she has children of her own she’ll look back on our time together with understanding of how quickly the years just fly on by.

Barbara Bongini did a lovey job illustrating this gem.

*Thanks to Loyola Press, the authors and NetGalley for the ARC. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

Book blurb:

Remember Us with Smiles is a tender story of a family remembering together both the fun and the challenges of growing up. It reminds readers to savor even the humblest of moments because they provide the foundation for a lifetime of memories. A book for children of all ages, young children will be introduced to the concept of seeing something extraordinary in the commonplace, while older children will be encouraged to commemorate milestones in their own lives. Remember Us with Smiles will leave families with the reassurance that when they remember their lives together with a smile, joy forms the bridge connecting then to now, now to the future.

The lively and colorful illustrations by Barbara Bongini bring to life family visits to the park, bedtime stories, and car rides for ice cream, as well as stormy nights, sicknesses, and scares. “We are inviting parents to imagine how they can help their children and grandchildren see yesterday through the lens of appreciation,” says co-author Gary Jansen says, “because when a family spends time together, what feels ordinary in the moment often becomes something to celebrate in the future.”

Author bio:

Gary Jansen is a popular speaker and the author of several books, including The 15-Minute Prayer Solution, Station to Station, Life Everlasting, and the memoir Holy Ghosts. Jansen has appeared on A&E, the Sundance Channel, the Travel Channel, Coast to Coast AM, CNN.com, and NPR. His writing has been featured in the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, Angelus, and Religion Dispatches. Jansen worked at Penguin Random House for 25 years where he was the editor on several New York Times bestsellers. He is now the executive editor of acquisitions at Loyola Press.

Interview

You are already an established non-fiction author ~ what made you want to write a
children’s fiction book?

I loved reading children’s books to my kids. I look back on those times as something
extraordinary because they gave us time to be together and talk about what we had just read.
After writing for adults for a long time, I wanted to do something that would bring families
together and to appeal to children and adults. So, the book is based in part on a game we played
with our kids when they were growing up: The Remember Game. “Do you remember when…”
and each of us would finish the sentence, and we would all respond. It helped keep us all
entertained on long car rides!

What was your inspiration for writing Remember Us With Smiles?

My wife and co-author, Grace, and I were going through some challenging times with one of our
teens. I wrote her a letter of encouragement that essentially said, times may be uncertain right
now, but remember all the simple and good things we’ve experienced with our kids—the walks
we went on, the times we went out for ice cream, all the living room forts we built with our
children. After she read the letter, Grace said this could be a book. And I think a lightbulb went
off for both of us. We had talked to several parents who were also struggling with the teen years.
You can be so close to your children when they are young, and then that separation starts
happening as they get older. That’s all part of growing up. You want your children to become
more independent, but melancholy also goes along with that. So we wrote the book as a story for
little children so they could have a conversation with their parents about the things they did
together as a family. But, it’s also a book for parents and grandparents to help them through
difficulties, to help them remember the good times because sometimes our memories can really
help when times get rough. Memories can inspire us to keep moving forward. 

Why did you choose the title?

The title was inspired by an episode of the old Little House on the Prairie TV show. Grace is a
huge fan of the books and the show and someday wants to write a book on Laura Ingalls Wilder
and the lessons we can learn from her books. Well, there was an episode called “Remember Me
with Smiles,” and it’s a phrase that has a very special significance for Grace because she would
quote it often after her father passed away. It’s a phrase that celebrates the past. It’s important to
live in the present, but the past is what binds us to the people we love. It’s that history, those
moments of togetherness, that are the foundation for the present moment. The book was
originally about a mom and her son but morphed over time. It became a story about a family, and
that’s how we landed on Remember Us with Smiles. 

Did you struggle writing a different genre than you’re used to?

Writing this book was so much fun. One, I got to work with Grace. Two, it went through many
different transformations. It started as a book about a mom and son walking through a park and
remembering some of the times they spent together. As it morphed into a story with four
characters, there was a lot of dialogue. But it became difficult to illustrate all the nuances
conveyed in the words. Something was missing. And then our editor suggested we strip out all
the back-and-forth conversation in the book. When we did that, the book became profoundly
emotional, and we all started to cry—me, Grace, our editor, and our early readers. And we decided at that point that less was more. We made the right decision to trim the words and allow
the illustrator Barbara Bongini’s gorgeous art to help tell the story more fully through the
pictures. We keep receiving all these lovely notes from readers who tell us how the book moved
them emotionally.

Do you have plans for another children’s book? If so, when can we expect it to be
published?

Oh, I would love to write a book for Halloween. It’s one of our favorite holidays, and we loved
reading Halloween books to our kids when they were growing up. Those books always had the
best colors—dark blues, purples, oranges. I published a memoir years ago with Penguin Random
House called Holy Ghosts about growing up in a haunted house, so it would be fun to write a
spooky and entertaining story that kids could read with a flashlight on a dark and stormy night.

Connect with Gary ➡ Goodreads ~ Twitter ~ Website