About the Author

Hi everyone! I’m Amy, a speech-language pathologist and proud mama of 2. Given my years of work in early language development, I'm excited to combine my professional knowledge with my personal experiences to create a series of engaging and educational bilingual Mandarin-English books for our youngest readers (0-5).

When I think about how I got here, there were two separate events in my life that led me to this point:

2014: Freshly out of grad school as an early intervention speech language pathologist in San Francisco, I had the privilege of working closely with many Chinese-speaking toddlers and their families. However, I noticed a significant gap in available resources catered to their needs. I often found myself improvising by using English board books and translating them myself orally, and relying on translation apps. 

2020: When I became a mother, my husband and I made a conscious decision to raise our children bilingual. However, I could barely find any bilingual board books out there. Most Chinese books didn’t have Pinyin (Romanization system for Mandarin Chinese), which non-native readers like myself rely heavily on. I also noticed a lack of books that highlighted API (Asian Pacific Islander) characters and culture (shoutout to the amazing creators out there that are changing that!).

Then, during the summer of 2021 while on a family staycation in Hawaii, the idea suddenly hit! Bilingual board books! Written for babies and toddlers! Parent/caregiver tips! API representation! After that, I became obsessed with making this happen. All the magic took place during my kid’s nap times and at night when he slept.  I just started writing and iterating, making sketches and storyboards, following all the fellow mama authors on Instagram, and Googling things like “How do I self-publish my own books?” and "How do I start a business?", etc etc etc, repeat repeat repeat.

Fast forward to now, it’s finally happening (!!) and I could not be more proud and excited. My hope is that these books will not only be fun, engaging, and educational for your little ones, but will also serve as an invaluable resource that empowers parents and caregivers to provide enriched language environments in a fun, natural, and easy way.

Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey. Beach Day Press is truly a labor of love, and I hope you and your children enjoy reading these books as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Amy