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Mina Javaherbin is the award wining author of GOAL! and The Secret Message. Her books have been translated into fifteen different languages, have won a few awards to date and are also nominated for more. Her latest deal was the sale of the rights of The Secret Message to be translated into Japanese.

Mina is also in the midst of a deal for her third book. She is not giving us any more information about it at this point, but we’ll keep you posted. When I asked her to write a little blog for us this is what she shared.

My father was one of those fathers who wore a suit in the morning and worked about ten hours a day.

But we still ate together. He read to us, he helped us with our homework and he took us on vacations. He was the sort of dad who taught us how to ride a bike, how to swim and he took us to sporting events.

I turned out fine.

But so did many other children who did not have a present father, had a part time father, or lost their fathers early on.

By this I’m not bringing down the value of fatherhood and I’m not playing down the influence a father can have on a child’s life. On the contrary I want to look at fatherhood in a new light. I really want to point out that this father and child deal works both ways. Children are resourceful, resilient and full of lessons and joys.

A father would be robbing himself of one of the most precious and peaceful parts of fatherhood by not spending play time, reading time, eating time or any sort of time with their child.

The most love a father can give himself in life is the time he actually spends to teach his daughter how to swim, to teach his son how to ride that bike and to take his children to the park to shoot some hoops.

Although as parents we are obligated and most of us actually do try hard to keep our children fed and healthy and see to their education and more, but the most important part of all this is the joy we gain by feeding them, educating them, playing and laughing with them.

There are selfish motives involved in parenting and I wish we are all selfish enough mothers and fathers to indulge ourselves in these delights fast and often as our children grow up so quick.

With all the challenges in our daily lives let’s not forget to enjoy fatherhood.

Read, laugh, play and seriously consider being goofy! Our children truly enhance our lives as we enhance theirs by the time we spend together.

Here is the Author’s Note from The Secret Message published in Nov 2010 by Hyperion/Disney.

“When I was a child, growing up in Iran, I begged my father every evening to tell me the story of the parrot and the merchant. It was a tale he told from memory. I still remember the fantastic scenes that played in my imagination as he spoke.

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