The Birth of “Creepy Sheepy”

by Stephanie Kemme

I’ve always loved reading. The passion kicked in for me early in life with Shel Silverstein, “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”, and “Matilda”. Once Harry Potter came out I was completely hooked. My love for novels and fantasy books carried into my adulthood. It got me through pregnancies, tough postpartum periods, and through overstimulation and simultaneous boredom of parenting. I leaned on books for coping during hard times. 

Which is why once I had children, I enjoyed sharing my love of reading with them. One October night, I was reading some Halloween books to my youngest and putting her to bed. Well, this was a tough night because I must have been in and out of her room four times throughout the night snuggling her back to sleep. Finally, at 3 am, I mentioned to my three year old “let’s try counting sheep” in order to help her go back to sleep. That night, Creepy Sheepy was born on a random weekday out of sheer desperation.

My favorite books to read to my children are rhyming books (again, probably a result of my love for “A Light in the Attic”, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, and “Falling UP”. I mean, to this day I can still recite from memory “Sick” with little Peggy Ann McKay!). Anyways, at 3 am I started jotting down some ideas about counting sheep in costumes for Halloween. I knew I had something special the next morning when the nonsense I wrote in the wee hours of the morning actually made sense and sounded good! 

For some background, I always enjoyed writing poems. Granted, I don’t have any formal experience in it, but I did write a beautiful poem for my grandmother on her 90’th birthday. This poem was all about how amazing and loving she was, and the main theme throughout this poem was her beautiful blue eyes. To this day, I will never live down the fact that my grandmother’s eyes were actually brown. A fact that my family only mentioned after I recited this poem in front of 50 plus close relatives at her birthday party. Oops!

It took me 16 years to recover from this and I was finally ready to write poems again! After I wrote this counting sheep poem, I realized it would make a cute childrens book. So I started thinking about a title. I love the name Creepy Sheepy, however it actually started as Sheepers Creepers, because as much as I love a good poem, I love a good pun even more. I went back and forth between the two and finally decided on Creepy Sheepy only after I realized my children wouldn’t understand the reference. Hey, at least my friends and family had a good laugh. 

I really hope you enjoy this book as much as I do. It’s a love project for my children first and foremost, but made into a reality with the help of my great friend and Mountain Mindset Counseling Owner, Annie Kendig, who fell in love with it just like I did. If you want to see her creative process for illustrating, please stay tuned! 

Thanks for coming on this ride with us. Ironically enough, creativity must strike for me in the evening time, because I’m finishing this blog post when it’s dark outside. 

So, thank you for reading, and good night sleepy sheepy!