I'm Right Here was written for one child, and then it was written for all of them.
I am Jennifer Kretschman. I write children's books under the name Wren Solenne.
The book started with Harley. He came home to me after a hard beginning in the hospital, and I found myself doing the same thing a hundred times a day. He made a sound. I answered. He reached. I was there. That is not nothing. For a baby who has already been moved, handled, monitored, and separated from someone, being answered is the whole world. I was able to visit him during his 30 day NICU stay only a handful of times. One of those evenings I scrubbed up, and entered the nursery where I heard a baby wailing in the distance. I remember my heat breaking for that poor little baby who clearly was in pain. “That had better not be Harley",” I thought as I rang the bell to be buzzed in through the huge double doors. As I rounded the corner that cry got louder and my heart started beating through my chest. I looked towards the crib he was in the last time I visited. It was empty. I turned towards the nurse caring for a little one who pointed towards the other hallway, towards that shrill cry. My maternal instinct told me to hurry, to get to him, he needed me. I turned the corner and there he sat, alone, swaddled in the cold hard crib, his bright red face was peering through the beanie and the stiff hospital blanket. I rushed to him and picked him upand pulled him close to me. “Im so sorry sweet boy. Im sorry. Im right here. I’ll always be Right Here.”
I went looking for a book that said that plainly, with no lesson attached to the end of it, and I could not find the one I wanted. So I wrote it.
Why this work exists
I have spent more than twenty years inside the systems that serve children. I hold a Bachelor of Social Work and a Master of Public Administration. I have been a child protective services investigator, a permanency worker, a support for former foster youth moving into housing of their own, and a district leader in student attendance and engagement for a large urban school system.
I have sat with families on the worst day of their year. I have read the case file and then met the child. What I learned from all of it is not complicated. Children do better when someone stays. Caregivers do better when someone hands them something useful instead of one more lecture.
That is what OneFoundProject is for.
What we make
Picture books for children in foster, kinship, adoptive, and guardian families, for babies who started life in a hospital, and for any child who needs to hear that someone is still there. The books are written to survive being read aloud fifty times. That is the real test, and most books fail it.
The Found Letters Club, a mailed subscription so that a child in care receives something with their own name on it, regularly, from someone who is not asking anything of them.
Sponsored books, placed directly with the families, agencies, and hospitals who cannot buy them.
Work with me
I am available for bulk and classroom orders, library and agency purchases, school and conference speaking, and collaboration with child welfare and family serving organizations. If you are a county commission, a resource family agency, a home visiting program, or a hospital, write to me directly and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit.
jennifer@onefoundproject.org Sacramento, California