A new take on nativity: Father, daughter publish children’s Christmas book

By: 
Keeley Meier, staff writer

Submitted photo

Brian and Autumn Driscoll published their first children's book called Have You Seen My Lamb after writing a song by the same name. 

Before his children were born, Brian Driscoll was primarily a technical and innovative person. Art and creativity were not in his wheelhouse. 
 
Then, his kids came along—starting in 2000—and he decided he wanted to focus on the technological side of digital photos. However, this new interest evolved, and he was able to discover his creative side while he learned new artistic skills: digital scrapbooking, multi-track recording and editing, acoustic guitar, songwriting and composing. 
 
Driscoll’s children started to latch onto the musical side of his endeavors. 
 
“For me, these artistic adventures were an incredible life balance against the technical, but the memories and experiences with my family were immeasurable,” Driscoll said. 
 
Eventually, Driscoll’s daughter, Autumn, found her singing voice. This led to “modest Nashville connections, collaborations, partners and insights into the making of music,” Brian said. 
 
The Driscoll’s Christian faith often inspired their song writing—which is how their song, Have You Seen My Lamb, came about. 
 
“God was planting a desire in my head to create a new Christmas song,” Brian said. “With no idea what to do with this seed, I waited for weeks for some sort of creative direction or vision, but there was nothing. Weeks became months, and months became years. Then one night before the Advent season, it all arrived in about 40 minutes. Suddenly there were words and phrases pouring in, each riding waves of melody.”
 
Brian asked Autumn to look at the song, and she contributed to melody identification and modifications along with lyric choices.
 
The song, Brian says, was a new lens into the nativity moment. Although the father and daughter pair were proud of what they had created, they didn’t have the tools to properly perform the song, even though Autumn, who is the vocalist on the song, had the voice to turn it into something special. That’s when JT Larson of Sioux Falls came in with guitar skills and arrangement abilities. 
 
“Together, with the help of a few more musicians, we were able to offer the song each year during the Advent season at church,” Brian said. “People seemed to enjoy it, and that was that.”
 
But, that was certainly not that for the Driscolls. 
 
Ideas about turning the song into a children’s book began to fill their heads, so Brian started to research the authoring process. 
 
“Thousands of decisions had to be made,” Brian said. “Traditional publishing or self-publishing? Mirror the song for a sing-along or make something unique? Find an illustrator. Storyboards and key frames. Select a publisher. Hard cover or soft cover? What about e-books? Nashville recording and iTunes distribution for the song? Paper thickness, glossy or matte, binding methods, distribution and on and on.”
 
The process took almost two years before the pair landed on self-publishing with Westbow Press and found their illustrator, Orsolya Orbán, who is from Transylvania. 
 
Autumn says seeing Orbán turn their song into actual scenes on a page was her favorite part of adapting the song to a book.
 
The book, a hardcover, was published in 2020. It tells the nativity story through the eyes of a young girl who has lost her lamb and comes across the birth of Jesus. 
 
In the “about” section of the book, the Driscolls say, “We purposely avoided the usual moral lesson for children that swings around to behaviorally “align” the imperfect character. This choice strengthened the strategic purpose of our fictional front story—to initially pose as a realistic main story, gradually giving way to the elephant-in-the-pages…the prophecy-fulfilling arrival of the Messiah.” 
 
After Have You Seen My Lamb was published, the pair decided to create a website called TelltaleArts.com as an artistic home for the book and other creations along the way, including art, music and coloring pages for kids. 
 
For Autumn, their creation is a labor of love and something she hopes others find joy in. 
 
“This book is special to me because it makes the song we wrote truly come to life,” Autumn said. “Being able to see the characters in the song on book pages is surreal. I also like that the book helps to visualize the excitement of the first Christmas. I love the thought of children reading this book and being able to sing it as well.”
 
Autumn is a student at Dakota State University studying network and security administration as well as computer forensics. Brian has spent 23 years in network security and data center management and design. 
 
When Autumn’s not studying, she’s immersed in the world of singing and songwriting and maintains a musical presence on Facebook under the name of Autumn Driscoll Music. 
Brian and Autumn are currently working on developing a career-affirming STEM journal for girls because they say they see a large need there along with many opportunities for girls and women. 
 
The song can be found on iTunes, and the book can be purchased through TelltaleArts.com
 
Brian says that the best part of what he’s creating with his kids is what he aims to show them along the way.
 
“It has to do with demonstrating to my children that, with our actual accomplishments, they too, right here in South Dakota, can do anything that a person from New York, Nashville or Los Angeles can do,” Brian said. “Be present. Watch and listen for inspiration. Collect your ideas somewhere. Run with them a little and see where they go. Surround yourself with people that inspire and encourage such things. Real adventure is in potential met—right where you are.”
 
Overall, though, Brian says that these artistic endeavors come from God and that they’re playing their part with their talents and gifts.
 
“In our view, the Have You Seen My Lamb children’s Christmas book and the song on which it is based exist because God inspired it to be so. We expect that God will use it for his purposes in the hearts and lives of children and adults, exactly in his time. And it has already begun.”
 

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