The first children’s book Mary Reynolds authored was published about 37 years after she wrote it. 

“My Canada Goose Summer,” a story about a young boy learning about himself while finding strength to overcome obstacles, was inspired by Mary entering retirement after teaching English for 32 years.

“It’s an autobiographical story about me,” says the 73-year-old self-published author. “I had 125 eighth grade students that kept me young and laughing and I was missing that.” 

As a little girl growing up on her family’s farm in Alabama, Mary loved writing.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s in reading at the University of Alabama. After graduation, she began teaching writing classes to elementary school students.

Later, she taught English classes to middle and high school students. 

Her first teaching job was at a lower income school that didn’t have funding to hire an art teacher.

With high hopes, Mary took on the additional position. With a limited budget for classroom supplies, she was always efficient in finding ways to make cutesy things like a bulletin board or decorations. 

“The two things gave me really wonderful outlets for a creativity that I probably didn’t even know I had in my early days,” she says. 

One of her proudest moments as a teacher occurred when her 8th grade students won first place in every category of the Alabama Penman Writing Contest. 

Upon retiring, she and her husband moved to their current home in Plantation. With extra time on her hands, she decided to take art classes and get back into writing again. 

Mary admits she was “flying by the seat of my pants” when she decided to publish her first book. She had no clue what she was doing, but that didn’t stop her from figuring it out. 

She started out sending her work to a vanity publishing company for feedback. When they sent a final copy back, she noticed that not a single thing had been changed. 

This motivated her to try publishing on her own. She invested time into learning programs like Adobe Publisher, Illustrator and InDesign. This resulted in her publishing a second book and designing about 25-30 books for fellow writers. “Some of my best writing never actually sees the light of day,” she says. “I write more for myself, it’s personal and it’s cathartic.”