Get Ready to Fly!

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by Barbara Scofidio 

Shorty: What do a teddy bear, a first plane ride, and a childhood dream have in common? Groton’s Lori Sullivan has brought them all together in her delightful children’s book, Murray’s First Plane Ride. Did you know the idea came to her mid-flight? Find out how Lori is winning over kids and parents alike—one boarding pass and bear hug at a time—and learn what’s next for Murray as he takes off coast to coast!

   Groton resident Lori Sullivan has wanted to write a children’s book since college—and she has come up with a winner: Murray’s First Plane Ride. 

    The book, which she self-published, is an easy, breezy story that will allay the fears many little ones feel when they take their first flight. It comes with a companion teddy bear dressed in a powder blue t-shirt with a big M on the front. The concept is nothing short of brilliant, and you can just picture the pair on the shelves of every airport Hudson newsstand across the country. 

   Murray is already for sale available on Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other web sites, as well as locally at Little Bee Book Shop in Ayer, the Barn Door and Country Butcher. In January, it became available on the West Coast, at The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs. 

   Clearly, Lori and Murray are about to take flight. 

   But Lori, who has spent her life working with children in educational settings, realizes that success as a children’s book author rarely comes overnight. Her focus since the book was released last August has been to build an online social media presence (under the name “Tell Me a Story, Lori”) and to gain credibility as the number of book reviews mount. The rest will follow. “It's been a huge learning experience because I don't know anything about sales or marketing and I'm not great at social media. I'm learning as I go about algorithms and all these things that are important, and about approaching bookstores.” 

   She regularly does public readings, including at the Groton Public Library, where she engages the children with Murray’s story, punctuated by a surprise appearance by Murray the teddy, and leaves them with cute takeaways such as their own boarding passes. 

   It’s almost as if Lori’s entire career has led to this moment. As a child, she remembers playing “school” with a friend in her enclosed screened-in porch, and how a local sanitation worker would pile up books and workbooks that were discarded by the local school on the front seat of his garbage truck, then drop them off at the house for them to use in their “classes.”  She also recalls going shopping with her parents as a little girl and asking to buy—of all things—workbooks. 

   Armed with an undergraduate degree in elementary education from SUNY Cortland and a graduate degree from Framingham State University, she has worked in a variety of educational settings, including as a paraprofessional in the Groton Middle School and a substitute teacher at the Children’s Center at Groton until Covid hit. 

   After losing both of her parents within 11 months of each other, she says, “I think the biggest thing that pulled me out of that was the children, because they're so sweet, innocent, loving, and they would bring their books and want to sit on your lap and cuddle up next to you and just read.” 

    She and her husband also raised two children of their own, now in their 20s. “It’s been a dream of mine to write a children’s book for 40 years. I'd been sitting on the idea but then life got busy raising kids and being involved in all the things they were involved in. And now, as an empty nester, I'm revisiting something that I kind of, you know, put on the back burner for some time." 

   She has a folder of book ideas but, she says, this one came to her on a plane, “and once it started in my head, it just went. It was like I did the book in the day.” She had been noticing children's behavior when they had to fly. “Many of them seemed anxious. They could have been bored, tired, or just out of their element in general. But I thought, ‘Maybe they just don't know what to expect. Maybe they're afraid.’” And that is where Murray can help. 

   Next steps include a workbook with vocabulary from the book, coloring pages and other exercises to keep children occupied on a plane—or anywhere. She has also started writing the next Murray book, about the vacation he will take once he lands. 

   Creative projects come easily to Lori, who is also known around town for her local landscape photography, which she started doing just for fun. While taking an online graduate class through UConn, she was asked to choose a medium in which to submit work, and picked photography because she already had so many existing images. “I had to decide what I was going to do with all those pictures and what format I would present them in, and I decided to make a calendar. We live in such a beautiful town and beautiful area.” And that was the birth of her Groton calendar. 

   “The initial calendar was sold at Grotonfest, and all proceeds were donated to a charity at the time. And then there was such an interest in it, I continued making it for probably seven or eight years. And then I had the idea to turn the images into the note cards, and watermark stationery and postcards.” 

    Her next steps center squarely on growing visibility and sales for the book. “It's very exciting, but It's a little overwhelming, too,” she says. "I’m on the East Coast and I’m on the West Coast, and now I just need to fill in everything in between.”