When Simone Dankenbring walked into the Sweet Home Public Library on Saturday, she felt like she was home, like she was in her “hub,” one of the most influential institutions of her life.
“I walk in and smell the books and I’m like, ‘I’m home,’” she said. “I want kids to have this joy of reading again.”
The local author celebrated the launch of her very first two books at the library this past Saturday, Feb. 22. Two more books will be released later this year, and even more books are brewing.
Co-authored with her twin sister, Syrone Harvey, who lives in Southern California, the stories follow twin teens Neecy (Dankenbring) and Nay Nay (Harvey), who reflect the real life authors in many ways as they engage in hilarious adventures.
“For me, I really wanted to be able to write about my adventures as a twin, but it became even a little bit more,” Dankenbring said.
Dankenbring technically authored books one and three, while Harvey authored books two and four, but the pair still worked together on each other’s stories.
In book one, “The Tangled, Hairy Mess,” the girls open a salon after Nay Nay gets gum in her hair, and “it turns into a major, hilarious disaster, but fun,” said Dankenbring, revealing the twins use fish scales on fingernails and pantry items as a facial mask.
In book two, “The Glitter Girls,” Neecy and Nay Nay try to earn a club badge by raising money for an old man (a.k.a. a “vintage person”) to get dentures (a.k.a. “choppers”).
“They want Mr. Otis to be able to enjoy Miss Annie’s Country Kitchen, which is fried chicken, yams and all that, so they try to find a way for him to get dentures,” Dankenbring said.
Harvey and Dankenbring were rejected by 75-plus agents until they found the one who took them on. Through their agent at Ladderbird Agency, the Neecy and Nay Nay series was picked up by Little Bee Books, and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
“We wanted to have someone that was going to get us into the big five or one of those publishers that was gonna be able to get the books out,” Dankenbring said about choosing not to self-publish. “By having an agent, that’s what happens. They can knock on doors that people that are self-published can’t.”
Through the distributor, their books can reach into bookstores such as Powell’s and Barnes and Noble, as well as Target and Walmart.
The sisters originally intended to publish one book, but the publisher wanted them instead to create a series of chapter books. According to Dankenbring, Little Bee Books discovered kids’ reading levels have plummeted since COVID, so they wanted to use the Neecy and Nay Nay stories to test how well they would sell as chapter books.
Dankenbring held launch parties in Portland and Clackamas earlier this month, where she estimates she signed her books approximately 60 times for buyers. It was a small exercise for a worthwhile cause.
“I love being able to engage with the kids and the parents,” she said.
Sweet Home’s library was a fitting location to top off the launch parties because Dankenbring was practically raised in libraries. When she was a child, she said, her mom took her to the library so many times that they had to go to a different library to find new books to read.
“I started writing when I was in first grade,” she said. “The very first story I wrote was, ‘I Love Corn.’ From there, I constantly wrote stories that I thought of, whether it was something imaginative or something that I related to.”
When Dankenbring is writing her Neecy and Nay Nay stories set in a small community called Franklin Hills, she incorporates her perception of Sweet Home through its sense of community and wanting kids to recognize the beauty of being a part of that community.
“If it means picking up trash, if it means being able to engage with those people that live there, being able to make a difference, being able to start your garden, to me that reminds me so much of Sweet Home,” she said. “There’s a message of, ‘What can I do to help my community? What can I do to help somebody?’”
She also takes pride in the stories’ multi-ethnic and multi-generational elements.
“One of the things I think that really is close to me is I want the kids to be able to see older people as someone special,” Dankenbring said. “When I’m talking to the kids, I say, ‘There’s no such thing as old people; there are only vintage people.’”
As such, Neecy always calls seniors “vintage people” because vintage is “cool,” and she wants the older population to know they’re a part of young folks’ lives.
The books, illustrated by Maya Henderson, are the first in a series of chapter books geared toward kids in grades kindergarten through fourth. Neecy and Nay Nay received positive reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal and Booklist.
“Those are some main hubs of where you want to get some really good reviews, and they have given us some awesome reviews for the books,” Dankenbring said.
Programming Librarian Kira Mikutaitis agreed to the power of a good review.
“It’s pretty much how most libraries and school libraries decide on what books we’re gonna buy,” Mikutaitis said. “Those big peer review journals help us make decisions because they tell us how is it being received by not just adults but children.”
During her launch parties at Powell’s and Barnes, Dankenbring was happy to see kids reading her paper book (as opposed to some tablet or phone) while they were standing in line. The books include a recipe or craft project, as well as “Neecy’s Glossary of Big Words,” because she’s using those big words throughout the book.
“So the kids are learning along the way how to use big words,” Dankenbring said.
The first two books are now available to check out from the Sweet Home Public Library, or they can be purchased on Amazon (search for “Neecy and Nay Nay”).
The third book, “Neecy and Nay Nay and the Green Thumb,” expected to arrive in June, follows the twins as they try to start a kids community garden. Neecy collects a lot of worms, so she finds a way to color them so kids would want to buy them.
“I did a lot of research about how to color worms safely,” Dankenbring said.
She ultimately concluded that Watkins’ natural food coloring could be sprinkled into soil that the worms will eat and eventually turn a different color.
But some hiccups arise in the story line. For example, one kid ate the colorful crawler because they thought it was a gummy worm.
“They’re learning about gardening, they’re learning about compost, they’re learning about what worms can do, but they’re also learning about community gardening together,” Dankenbring said about the third book.
The fourth book, “The Mystery Sleepover,” expected to arrive in November, follows the girls as they host a whodunnit party. They overhear some parents talking about something and determine it’s a mystery they need to solve.
“They go on this major hunt to find out what the story is, and there’s a really cute surprise afterwards.”