Brian Ballantyne

Safi the Snowflake is a short Kindle book I have written with my 6-year-old son Gabriel. We often read bedtime stories together on my Kindle (the little light is handy when I want to keep the room dark and sleep-inducing), and by making the font size larger it is perfect to help him with learning to read. I thought it would be fun to use Kindle Direct Publishing to put a story of our own on Kindle.

The story was inspired by watching snowflakes fall outside the window. We started out with a central snowflake character, and then alliterated "snowflake sisters" thus giving our snowflake a gender (female). Gabriel and I then took it in turns to describe her. I asked Gabriel what we should call her and he said "Safi". We googled Safi and it means "pure", which seems perfect for a snowflake. However it is traditionally a male name, indeed one of my friends has a son called Safi; nevertheless Gabriel liked the name Safi and wanted to keep it.

Gabriel next drew some pictures of Safi and her home. He then had the idea to cut out the picture of Safi and stick her on the window, with the snow falling outside. We then lay her on the snow for another photo. The ending is a "happy ever after" but more in the style of Oscar Wilde's children stories, albeit not as beautifully written. Hope you enjoy it.