N.B. father pens book to teach daughter about cerebral palsy

Father and daughter Jeff and Avery Somers are seen in this Apr. 26, 2023 photo holding Jeff's book "Avery and the Special Shoe." (Alana Pickrell/CTV Atlantic)

Similar to a lot of kids, seven-year-old Avery Somers’ favourite things to do are using her iPad, colouring and just playing in general.

Things that are a bit more unique include her favourite number being seven, purple being her top colour and her “special shoe” that she wears help her get around easier due to having cerebral palsy (CP).

“I couldn’t put my heel down very well and I always wanted to keep it up,” Avery explained. “So now I always want to keep it down and I want to make sure I’m doing all that I can so that I can make sure that I don’t have to wear it forever.”

Avery was diagnosed with CP when she started walking at two years old and now wears a leg brace called an AFO, which has always been referred to as her “special shoe” inside the Somers’ home.

“It definitely doesn’t slow her down, that’s for sure,” said Jeff Somers, Avery’s dad. “In Avery’s case, she’s what they call a level one and there are five levels and she is hemiplegic so it affects just the right side of her body.”

Somers says Avery’s condition is not degenerative and mostly impacts her foot.

“The first time that we heard the diagnosis, I knew very little about it and I had seen some instances or known some people and it was like the room got very small, very quick,” said Somers. “I didn’t know if it was degenerative, I didn’t know if it was going to be a wheelchair situation, I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Looking for more information and resources, the Somers’ turned to books the same way that they would for any topic, but didn’t find a lot of options. So taking matters into his own hands, Somers wrote a children’s book for Avery inspired by her journey with CP. It’s called “Avery and the Special Shoe.”

“I wrote it as a tool to help us have the conversation in our household, first of all, and then as it finished, I started to think it could be helpful for other people’s houses too,” he said.

He describes it as whimsical, fun and full of rhyming, but the book comes with a very important message too.

“We’ve been throwing around this phrase ‘what’s your special’ and I guess the idea is that there is something about all of us that makes us I guess ‘different or special,’ but the fact that it is all of us makes us more of the same than we are different,” he said.

“So I’m hoping first that it gives Avery those tools to have that conversation and to see herself that way, but then I think and I hope that anyone else who reads it can sort of replace the special shoe, in this case, which is Avery’s brace, with whatever it is they have that makes them unique.”

While Somers admits it was a big decision to make Avery’s journey so public, it was one they decided on as an entire family. The hope is that this book will make it easier for people to understand and Avery says it’s already worked.

“Pretty much everyone that I’ve met so far asks me ‘what is this [my brace],’” she said. “I’ve already managed to tell all my friends in kindergarten and grade one and then I took the book in so they could understand it a bit better than just talking.”

Not only do Somers’ words bring Avery’s journey to life, but singer, songwriter and illustrator Meaghan Smith helped tell her story through pictures.

“I am one million per cent happy with this project,” said Smith. “Personally, I just wanted to do Avery and her courage and her bravery and her playfulness justice. I wanted to do Jeff’s vision of his daughter justice.”

She says she got lost in the project, spending hours perfecting the details.

“When I originally pictured the images of Avery with her special shoe, I pictured a soft fluffy sort of feel, like a light feel, a moving feeling. She could finally move, she was light and I thought, I work a lot with oil paints, those are too heavy they wouldn’t work for this,” she said. “I also work in water colours, but those don’t feel substantial enough, somehow, for what the words were saying so I landed on wanting to try pencil crayons.”

Smith says she also related personally to the story that “Avery and the Special Shoe” presented.

“The message behind ‘Avery and the Special Shoe’ is that she’s using a shoe to help her do these things that she couldn’t do before and she thinks the shoe is magically, but really in the end the shoe is just a shoe and really she’s the one who is magic, that is a million per cent a message that I felt I could get behind,” she said.

“Avery and the Special Shoe” launches Sunday in Moncton with an in-person event at Chapters with Avery, Jeff and Meaghan all there.

“I have been studying Avery’s face for like a year so I feel like I’ve seen her in all of these photos and I’ve imagined her, I’ve pictured her, I’ve drawn her doing all these different things… it is going to be incredible to finally meet her in person and tell her how inspiring I find her and Jeff too, we’ve never actually met,” said Smith.

While not even out in stores yet, Somers says he’s already received around 50 pre-sale orders.

“I know how much work my dad has put into this and he really wants it to be the best book for me and it really is,” said Avery.

As for a sequel, Somers says that there’s another family member who deserves his own special book.

“Her big brother is one of the heroes of this story because he has been great and if there’s anybody that I would want to give an example of how to navigate this journey alongside Avery, he’s the guy that I would send them too,” he said.

“He is ready for his next. So I have to get going on the next chapter I think.”