PASCACK VALLEY AREA—In February 2020, Azure Bush and her mom headed to a pet store in Lodi to look at snakes for her younger brother. But after seeing a rabbit that had recently been dropped off by her owners, they instead came home with LiLi.
“LiLi looked like she just needed somebody to really pour some love into her,” said Nahndi Bush, a Township of Washington resident. “I was thinking that this would be so wonderful for Azure, with everything looking like it would be going into lockdown soon.”
The unexpected adoption later served as the inspiration behind Azure and Nahndi working together to release “LiLi Rabbit, Eat Your Vegetables!” on March 28, 2021. The children’s book, which started its production last summer and can be found on Amazon, follows LiLi Rabbit on a journey of developing good eating habits and understanding the consequences of poor choices.
“The story was coming to me as something that I wanted the parent and the child to be able to identify with,” Nahndi said. “It had to be fun and something that could be read over and over again.”
Nahndi is a physician and mother of three. Originally from Brooklyn, she graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor of arts, with honors, in sociology.
This book, she said, is her first foray into writing fiction for children.
Growing up, she said, she was a big reader and would write stories to recite to her class in grade school. She continued to write in high school, and received her certifications in creative writing and African-American studies in college before becoming an ophthalmologist.
Azure, who began drawing when she could first hold a pencil, had drawn pictures of LiLi over the summer out of boredom.
“I was in my house a lot from the pandemic and spent a lot of time with LiLi,” Azure said. “I thought she was a really good caricature to draw and how she acted — she can be so arrogant sometimes, almost like a human.”
After viewing Azure’s doodles, Nahndi came up with the idea to produce a children’s book combining her passion for writing and Azure’s love of art. To plan out the story, they first created storyboards to establish a plot.
Azure completed more than 115 drawings, including revisions, on her iPad.
“Azure started picking up expressions when the rabbit would sit up and look around, scratch herself and look scared or sleep,” Nahndi said. “When the idea finally crystallized, it started to fall into place. Writing would happen in waves — it would be like a burst of creative spirit.”
Despite being mother and daughter, Azure and Nahndi saw the project as a working partnership, and at times, Nahndi said that she was scared to ask Azure to continue to make edits for certain pages.
“I let Azure rant and rave because yes, it is hard to go back and change the picture,” Nahndi said. “As she went back, she changed it and agreed afterward that it kind of works better. It was a step forward in our working relationship in terms of me trying to put my own pride aside, but still try to let her know that if you want to go into this as a business, your client might come to you and say ‘No, that’s not what I want.’”
In addition to the revisions, Azure and Nahndi had trouble sticking to their original deadlines. The two planned to finish the book by Thanksgiving, but it was published around Easter.
Now, they have outlined a stricter time frame to create French, Korean and Spanish translations among other languages, as well as for the next book of the series, “LiLi Rabbit Learns Kindness,” forthcoming.
“It definitely brought my mom and me closer over quarantine because we spent a lot of time with each other,” Azure said. “In the next book, I want to definitely work on a character design for LiLi and make her have her own look.”
Currently, “LiLi Rabbit, Eat Your Vegetables!” has generated a couple hundred dollars in revenue, and a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to Children of Promise NYC, a non-profit organization dedicated to the needs of children with incarcerated parents. Nahndi said she wanted to make sure to get others involved who could benefit from the project.
“The person who started the organization is a close friend of mine who used to work on Wall Street,” Nahndi said.
“She had after school programs in place, all the kids got counseling and academic support — all of these things were invested in these kids so that they didn’t become a part of the system.”
Azure and Nahndi were given the opportunity to read their book to children who comprise Children of Promise NYC in May and hope to host live readings at bookstores, libraries and schools during the rest of the year and 2022.
“If you think about it, the kids’ parents are in prison because of bad choices, and many of them are not bad people,” Nahndi said. “We spent time talking about Lily’s choices. I think that the greatest change that you can make is through children, and if you can change one child, you’ll have such a ripple effect on everything around them.”
After finishing the book, Azure hopes to incorporate art in some way to her life despite still being unsure of the career she wants to pursue.
“If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it,” Azure said. “Surround yourself with people who support you — my mom definitely helped me in this.”