Brookfield resident Carl Novakovich published his first children’s book, titled “The Sleepiest Monkey,” in March.
“My daughter now is 18 months old, and I wrote the story when she was three months old. When she was around that age, we used to call her a monkey because she would grab everything with her toes,” he told the Landmark. “We called her a little monkey, and she never wanted to sleep. She wasn’t a fussy baby; she just liked to be awake and be a part of the action.”
Novakovich had a habit of making up bedtime stories to get his daughter, Charlotte, to fall asleep, he said.
“I was telling her about the sleepiest little monkey who didn’t want to listen to her mom and dad and who wouldn’t go to sleep. At the time, I was an Uber driver. I had finally got her down for bed, and I was out driving Uber. It’s the middle of the night, kind of slow, and I pulled the Notes app out on my phone and wrote down everything,” he said.
Novakovich, who also published two realistic fantasy novels in 2021 — “The Tomb” and its sequel “The Horsemen” — said the book’s concept remained the same as he received feedback from his family and community.
“Like I said, I wrote it in the car at maybe two in the morning, so it had a lot of changes that it needed. I had gone through with my fiancee … With anything in my writing, she’s always my sounding board,” he said.
“When I worked with my illustrator [Ben Clark], he and I sat down and went through everything. He’s got a five-year-old daughter, so I had her read the book and give me some criticisms as well since she’s my target audience,” he added. “She built the book. The hardest criticisms I received were from a five-year-old.”
The author said he wanted the book to be a jumping-off point for children readers to learn new words, something he said his own daughter enjoyed.
“I did put some complicated words in there, and [Clark’s daughter] was very direct,” he said. “She said, ‘I’m five years old. I don’t know what “poise” means!’”
Now that “The Sleepiest Monkey,” which is available for purchase online, has been published, Novakovich said he’s hard at work on his next book for an older age range of kids.
“I have a niece who’s seven, and once this book came out, she was like, ‘OK, where’s mine now?’ Now I have to write her one,” he said. “I have a bunch of different ideas for children’s books that I thought of throughout the years that I thought would be fun to do but didn’t have the push until more recently.”
Novakovich’s next book will center on a princess made of bubblegum who needs to protect her kingdom, he said.
“I’m working with the same illustrator who did ‘The Sleepiest Monkey.’ He and I are coming up with different ways to make it somewhat of a children’s graphic novel,” he said.
Down the line, Novakovich said he hopes to get his book into the hands of the Linda Sokol Francis Brookfield Library and local bookseller New Book Joy so that residents can buy it in town.
