Harvard Law Alums Publish Childrens Book About Fatherhood

A pair of Harvard Law School alumni and current legal scholars have published their first children's book this week in anticipation of Father’s Day, meant to help fathers and their kids explore their emotions together—and to help dads learn how to tell their kids they love them out loud.

The book is titled “You Are My Favorite Story,” and is available via Fair Share Publishing. It’s written by Shani King and N. Jeremi Duru, two former Harvard Law classmates and current law professors. Both have written books in the past, but this is their first collaboration, and Duru’s first children’s book. Illustrator John Jay Cabuay brings the book to life with vivid colors. 

“You Are My Favorite Story celebrates the small moments that define fatherhood, the ones that feel ordinary until you realize they are everything,” the book description on Fair Share Publishing’s webpage states. “It validates what so many fathers already feel and do, while giving beautiful language to emotions that can be hard to name out loud.…It naturally models emotional vocabulary and connection in a way that feels like a gift rather than a lesson, making it as valuable in classrooms and school libraries exploring family and social emotional themes as it is at home on the nightstand.”

King, who has written children's books before, told Harvard Law Today in a joint interview with Duru that the idea for the message came far before the idea for the book. 

“‘Have I ever told you?” is something that I’ve asked my kids for years,” King said. “It allows me to get away with telling them that I love them, that I believe in them, and that I love being their dad every day. On a random day years ago, I wrote a love letter to them and posted it online. That letter eventually became my first book. Years later, I wrote another love letter to them, but this one was from the perspective of a dad.” 

Instead of posting this one, though, King reached out to Duru, an old classmate and constant friend with whom he had regularly discussed the joys and struggles of fatherhood.

“Shani emailed me out of the blue one day and asked me to take a look at and share with him my thoughts on a short piece of writing he’d done,” Duru told Harvard Law Today in the interview. “It was essentially a poem he’d written that involved a father speaking to his child. It was beautiful.”

The authors say their goal for the book is to help dads find a way to tell their kids they love them, as fathers sometimes struggle with that kind of emotional intimacy. 

“I grew up being told I was loved, and as I have raised my children, I tell them I love them all the time, but it is not as easy for some fathers to be expressive in that way,” Duru said. “I hope this book sends the message that it is healthy and feels really good to tell your children how much they mean to you and that you love them. And for fathers who struggle to speak in this way with their children, I hope that in reading the book to their children, they can begin to feel more comfortable in being expressively loving.”