MANSFIELD — When Teana Sykes came up with the idea to create a children’s book, she had her four daughters in mind. They always liked the idea of journaling, however, when Sykes would purchase the books, she found that her daughters’ only interest was the cover art.
“They want all [of] the journals simply because of what the cover looks like,” Sykes said. “If it’s got glitter, if it’s got unicorns, if it’s got girls on it, they pretty much want it. But when they got home, their journals are usually empty… And ultimately, they really didn’t know what they wanted to write about.”
Sykes recently released her first, of what she hopes to be many, children’s activity book “Squad Goals: A girl’s guide to prayer, self-care and money management too!”
The activity journal has 40+ pages of fun including a four-week self-care routine, prayer strategies, affirming vocabulary word searches, coloring pages, imagine pages and money management activities.
“I wanted to be able to impart a little bit of myself into a book that I knew that my daughters could use, and perhaps other young people in their age group could benefit from it,” Sykes said.
One of the biggest takeaways young girls can get from this book is money management, Sykes said.
Working with finances in her day job has made Sykes passionate about money management. Toward the beginning of the pandemic, Sykes started her own financial literacy group called “Tea Talk” where every Saturday for 10 weeks she would get on Facebook Live and educate members of the Mansfield community about budgeting, credit, student loans and debt remediation. Sykes wanted to extend that education to young children.
“[When I introduced the book] I said ‘we want young people to encounter money,’” Sykes said. “I want them to earn it. And we wanted them to be exposed to it early and often. The more that they can handle money now and exercise the muscle of discipline early on, the easier will be for them to manage more.”
Each week as young girls check off activities, they will see how much money they’ve earned or lost as a result of the activities they perform. They can also assess whether it’s been a good week or bad week and what they could have done to make it better.
“They’re essentially trading their time for money, which has been established by them and the adult in their life early on,” Sykes said. “So, between that combination of trading time for money, while reinforcing the activities that we really want them to do anyway—including chores—to me, it’s a no-brainer. I would buy it, but I would hope that other parents would as well.
With her first book being a success (reaching number one in new releases under Children’s Christian Emotions and Feelings Fiction in its first week) Sykes hopes to create similar books in the future for young girls and other demographics. She and her husband are working on a second book at the moment, but this one will be catered to young boys.
As someone who used to always come up with ideas but never saw them through, Sykes is proud to see her vision come to life.
“There’s power in stepping out on faith,” Sykes said. “As scary, as it was to even put my creation out there and share it with my community and not knowing what the response would be, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at every turn. There are more people for you than against you. And if God has purposed something on your heart to do, you should do it. Life is short and the biggest mistake we can make is believing that we will live forever.”
