Tales on a farm

In today’s world, teenybopper dramas are replacing cartoons and Kindles are replacing the printed page as the platform for reading books. Parents and educators complain that children are growing up too fast and can’t always find proper guidance in the media that surrounds them.

Enter Maggie Kotuk, a longtime resident of East Hampton and owner of John’s Lane Farm LLC, who took inspiration from the animals living around her and, working with her daughter, Amanda Kraus, wrote and illustrated a trilogy full of lessons for young readers.

“Both Amanda and I found that children find themselves in these life difficulties and don’t know what to do,” Ms. Kotuk explained.

Each of the books addresses different issues a child might face and provides the reader with universal and personal lessons from which to draw guidance for their own lives.

The first installment of “The Trails” trilogy is called “The True Tales of Paris and Henry” and tells of the friendship between a retired show horse, Paris, and a rescued donkey, Henry. In this book Henry is teased by the fancy show horses in the barn and Paris helps him gain confidence. “We wanted this nobody, simple, unglamorous reject to find his place by finding his courage,” Ms. Kotuk said.

The moral involves dealing with rejection. “What we wanted to bring out,” she said, “is that a person can find a great deal of satisfaction in finding their own moral compass.”

The second book, “A Beautiful Crystal,” introduces the character flaw of vanity in a new character, Crystal, who tries to separate the two friends. “Another common theme with children is when they lose or think they’ve lost their best friend. They think it’s the end of the world,” Ms. Kotuk said. As young readers read about Henry being seduced away from his best friend and how they find each other again, they are meant to learn lessons for their own lives from the characters’ experiences.

“These books have universal lessons for children,” said Ms. Kotuk, “They 
can see how characters in the book resolve issues and then use that as a model.”

The first two books were illustrated by Ms. Kotuk and written by Ms. Kraus, who also runs Row New York, a non-profit program for teenage girls that combines rowing with academic support. The third book, “Henry and Donkey-ote,” was entirely the project of Ms. Kotuk, as her daughter had to focus on Row New York.

It deals once again with loss, but on a deeper and more painful level. Paris dies and Henry must face the loss of his best friend as well as the loss of the other show horses he befriends that one by one pass away leaving Henry only with a bump on his body to remember them by.

“There is more reality than make-believe in these stories,” Ms. Kotuk said. The real Paris really did pass away and the real Henry has been covered in “grief retention lumps” ever since, she said.

Donkey-ote, or little Don, is a small white donkey that Henry’s owner buys to keep Henry happy and the third book follows their growing friendship.

Ms. Kotuk is currently working on a fourth book, this time for adults, about a donkey living the high society Hamptons life.

“I’m not an illustrator; I never studied painting, but I love doing it,” said Ms. Kotuk, who describes her illustrations as painting narratives.