Meet my guy Oliver, better known as Ollie on his popular Facebook page Ollie’s World. Like most two-year-olds, Ollie is very impressionable during this formative time of his development; and his reactions are 100% real…honest… and sincere. However, unlike most two-year-olds Ollie was born with Caudal Regression Syndrome, a rare condition that affects the development of the lower spine and organs. On Ollie’s World, Ollie’s mom brings awareness to his condition and shares personal videos that highlight his resilience and unbothered, everything is just great spirit and demeanor. We all can benefit from taking a page out of Ollie’s book, and I highly recommend that everyone check his page out.

During a routine visit to their neighborhood Target store one day, Ollie was stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a huge advertisement on the wall starring a child that looks like he does. In the feature photo, you can see the moment after he spun his wheelchair around and stared in awe at the ad.

Caption That!

(what do you think Ollie was saying?)

What a powerful picture! Ollie’s mom said, ” he couldn’t stop looking at it.” She also said, “I could immediately see that he knew he had just seen a boy like himself. Something he has never seen before.” It’s no surprise to me that when she shared this picture in a post on Ollie’s World, the photo was shared more than 33,000 times by the following day.

Writing a children’s book that depicted smart and strong females who are striving for academic excellence was at the forefront of my mind and was one of the driving forces when I was writing VALEDICTORIAN. I wanted my children to have more books that represented them and our culture, so I decided to be a part of the solution.

If you have something to contribute that will empower, encourage, or simply represent your culture or community… then Ollie and I are in 100% agreement that you should make it happen.