Can You Keep a Secret?

Kid’s Books
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Okay. Come closer. I need to tell you something. Something I have not fully processed yet and will probably be telling this story at dinner parties for the next ten years. Are you ready?

My First American Coloring Book almost didn't make it.

Not because of the content. Not because of the illustrations. Not because of any of the big, dramatic reasons you might imagine when someone says "a book almost didn't make it." No. It almost didn't make it because of blank pages. Blank. Pages. The enemy of children's books everywhere. Showing up uninvited. Multiplying like something I refuse to name.

😰 THE PROBLEM

Every time I uploaded the file to the platform, it kept adding extra blank sheets. Just… there. At the end. Staring at me. Unbothered. Unasked for. Completely ruining my page count and my sense of calm.

I checked the file. I rechecked the file. I stared at it for a long time like that would help. I uploaded it again. More blank pages. I uploaded it with slightly more attitude. Still blank pages. The platform did not care about my attitude.

📋 A TIMELINE OF EVENTS

📤Upload #1. Confident. Optimistic. File looks great. Extra blank pages appear. Fine, probably a glitch.

🔄 Upload #2–5. Less confident. Still optimistic. Trying different things. Same blank pages, different energy.

🤔The Spiral. Googling things. Reading forums. Questioning every decision I have ever made. Classic publishing experience.

💬 The Chat. I contacted support. A bot appeared. Or a human. Genuinely unclear. Definitely having a bad day.

💡The Revelation. The answer emerged. I will tell you what it was. You are not going to believe it.

Photo of the extra pages

🤖 THE SUPPORT CHAT. PROBABLY A BOT. POSSIBLY A HUMAN. NOBODY KNOWS. SUPPORT (BOT? PERSON? ENTITY?)

🤖Hello! How can I assist you today? 😊

✍️ME (INCREASINGLY UNHINGED)

My file keeps generating extra blank pages at the end and I cannot figure out why. I have uploaded this many times.

🤖SUPPORT (WARMING UP TO THE CHAOS)

I understand your frustration! Have you checked that your page count matches the required specifications?

✍️ME (SOMETHING SHIFTS)

…What do you mean by required specifications, exactly.

🤖SUPPORT (THE MESSENGER OF TRUTH)

The platform requires one additional blank page for the barcode as part of the printing process. This needs to be accounted for in your total page count before upload.

✍️ME

…I see.

An extra blank page. For the barcode. As part of the process. Which I would have known if I had put in the correct number of pages from the start. Which I did not. Which is why this entire thing happened.

I had put in the wrong page count. That was it. That was the whole mystery. The blank pages weren't haunting me out of spite. The platform wasn't broken. I had simply, quietly, confidently entered the wrong number and then spent a significant amount of time fighting the consequences of that like they were someone else's fault.

The platform needed one extra blank page for a barcode. I had not accounted for this. I had accounted for everything else. Just not that. Go figure.

🎉 THE PART THAT MATTERS

It's fixed. It's coming. The book is real and it is on its way.

One blank page. One barcode. One very humbling lesson in reading the instructions. We made it. 😂

My First American Coloring Book survived its near-death experience at the hands of a page count error and a bot-human hybrid having a rough shift. 101 illustrations, bold and simple and made for little hands, are coming your way very soon.

The barcode will be there too. It has earned its blank page. I respect it now.

Stay tuned. We are so close.

Humbled, relieved, and ready,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

✦ MY FIRST AMERICAN COLORING BOOK · FOR TODDLERS · COMING SOON ON AMAZON ✦

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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