Where it began
First came a little girl who experienced the world differently.
When my first daughter was young, we began noticing that friendships seemed harder for her than they did for the other girls around her. There were misunderstandings, social situations that went sideways, and moments that left her confused because she genuinely did not understand why things had gone wrong.
In time, she was diagnosed with ADHD and autistic traits. The diagnosis helped us understand more of what she was experiencing. But it also made me notice something else: where were the girls like her in the books we were reading?
I could find stories about all kinds of children, but finding a girl whose brain worked differently — without making that difference the only thing about her — was much harder than it should have been.
Then our family grew
A few years later, we started searching all over again.
When my second daughter was born, we knew almost immediately that something was not quite right with her breathing. She was eventually diagnosed with primary ciliary dyskinesia, or PCD, a rare lung condition.
Health challenges became part of everyday life. Hearing difficulties meant hearing aids became part of her everyday life too. And once again, I found myself standing in front of bookshelves asking the same kind of question: where are the children who live like this?
Not necessarily a book explaining hearing loss. Not always a story about being sick. I wanted adventures, mysteries, funny stories and ordinary childhood moments where a character could simply be wearing hearing aids because that was part of who she was.
Representation matters most when a child doesn’t have to search so hard to find herself.
The bigger pattern
Then I started noticing who got to be the hero.
The more I looked, the more another pattern bothered me. Girls and women were still too often the ones waiting to be rescued, protected or chosen.
But girls are also the rescuers. The inventors. The leaders. The adventurers. The scientists, athletes, artists, troublemakers, builders and wonderfully strange kids who decide to do something nobody expected.
That was the spark behind MOLLERIS. I wanted one place where parents could more easily discover books and other things that quietly expand a child’s idea of who gets to take up space in the world.
What MOLLERIS became
Not a lesson. Not a checklist. Just better things to put in front of kids.
MOLLERIS is first and foremost about girls and children with disabilities. We also look for thoughtful representation across race, culture, family, identity and background because the real world is broad, interesting and varied.
We are welcoming to LGBTQ+ families and children, but MOLLERIS is not built around any single identity or political label. The focus is simpler: girls should see themselves as capable, children with disabilities should get to exist in stories beyond their disability, and no child should grow up believing that only one kind of person gets to be the main character.
And not everything we feature needs to carry a message. Sometimes a notebook can simply make a girl want to write. A shirt can make a kid feel strong. A book can be wildly entertaining while casually showing a world that includes more kinds of people.
