Marilyn Mink Inspires Youth With First Children’s Book

By Katie McFadden

What do you want to be when you grow up? A new children’s book by local resident Marilyn Mink is inspiring youth across the country and sending a message that anything is possible. After all, “The Whole Wide World Is Just Waiting For Me!”

Marilyn Mink is a lifelong Rockaway resident who worked as an administrative assistant before becoming a paraprofessional at P.S. 43 in special education and then pursued a 14-year career as a NYS Court officer before retiring in 2019. But she always had a passion for writing, and while finishing up her career as a court officer, she began to put an idea to paper. “I have a pen next to my bed, and when an idea pops up, I write it down,” she said.

Mink has had a long-time passion for writing and reading. “I always like to write, and I just loved reading to my own kids, and when my mom got ill with Alzheimer’s, I’d read ‘The Giving Tree’ to get her over and over. She didn’t know me, but she’d always ask me to read about the tree,” she shared.

So when she started to write her own book, Mink found an audience within her own kids, Tara Mink Johnson and Thomas Mink, and then her grandkids, Ella, Marilyn and Mack Johnson. After hearing her work, her kids started to remind her of a lesson she had instilled in them. “I would read the book to the kids, and they said, ‘You should get the book done.’ They were asking for copies, and I didn’t have any, and my son was like, ‘Mom, you tell us to believe in ourselves, just do it!’” Mink said.

So after retiring, with a little more time on her hands in between babysitting her grandkids, Mink began to take putting her words down into something more permanent, more seriously. And then a sign came as she was seeking an illustrator. “My fiancé is a plumber, and he goes into the Bronx, and El Mota used to be a superintendent in a building there, and my fiancé was telling him about the book and how I didn’t have an illustrator, and El Mota said, ‘I’m a graphic artist.’ That was my sign that I was supposed to go forward with this,” Mink said.

With El Mota putting her ideas into illustrations, Mink pursued a self-publishing route about a year ago and got to work on becoming a first-time published author of a children’s book meant to inspire youth to go for their own dreams. “The idea behind ‘The Whole Wide World Is Just Waiting For Me!’ is to teach children to believe in themselves, to have a voice, and follow your dreams, and don’t let people dissuade you from that. If you believe it, you can achieve it,” she said.

From a firefighter to doctor, police officer to basketball player, a journalist to a teacher, with some of the characters named for her own grandkids, and with rhymes and repetition along the way to make it easy for kids to grasp the concept that they can pursue anything, Mink’s book is already sending a message. Making it even more personal, at the end is a page reserved for a reader to write down what they hope to become, and room to draw a photo of that dream, an addition Mink calls “a time capsule,” or something they can look back at when they’re older to see how far they’ve come.

Since the book has been released, Mink has received a positive response. “The feedback has been amazing so far. My grandson, Mack, brought the book to his teacher, and she read it, and they sent me a picture of him with a big smile on his face, after saying, ‘That’s my yaya!’ I was so happy,” she said.  “But the best is my son, who is in Florida, said a friend of his secretary told him that the book gave his son so much confidence in himself. That made me feel great. The kids are loving it, and to hear that for one kid, it gave him so much confidence, that is the whole reason for this.”

With such great feedback, Mink is already working on her second children’s book about children with different disabilities, adapting to and overcoming their differences and showing the world that they’re just as smart and capable as others.

In the meantime, “The Whole Wide World Is Just Waiting For Me!” is available for sale on Amazon. Mink hopes that more teachers introduce it in their classrooms, parents and grandparents read it to their littles, and kids who are able to read find inspiration from the book themselves.