As a child, I have always been the storyteller in my family. Later as an adult, I photographed more than 700 weddings, and spent twenty years telling the special stories of newlywed couples and their families through my lens. When I became a father, I loved telling stories to my children in bed every night. Stories I spontaneously made up for them.

In 2017, I closed one big chapter in my career and closed my photography studio with it.

I have worked as a professional semi truck driver since then. I lost my job during the Covid-19 pandemic and ended up staying home with my children for eleven months. It was then that I found an online course at Bookfox (thejohnfox.com), and from John I  learned how to write children's picture books. The rest is history. This is my first book and I plan for about a dozen more books to follow.

This book summarizes many of the qualities and values my wife and  I try to instill in our children. Family, honesty, love, work ethics, friendship, standing your ground, DREAM BIG, responsibility, accountability, respect and more.

Most of the time I have no clue what I will tell my kids in bed that night until we turn off the lights and snuggle. It was one of those nights I came up with the story of Polly. 

Originally, it was a male polar bear cub. But then in national news we had so many events taking place against women's rights. Not only their reproductive rights but in general women's rights were under an unprecedented assault, so it felt like my duty to show my support in any way, shape or form, to stand in solidarity with them. I do this as a son of an amazing woman, as a husband and as a father.

Choosing the name for the main character was not hard. Since my mother's name would be hard to pronounce for most English speaking readers, I named her after an amazing woman who treated me like a son when I met her at my work place in Minneapolis almost 30 years ago. Polly was it. 

Polly was very funny, very hardworking, very caring, very honest, very compassionate.

I named my main character after her and never looked back. I am sure she is looking down from the heavens and smiling, probably proud of the young man who she treated like her own son. Of course I dedicated this book to the incredible humans I helped bring to this world, my three precious children, Mark Altay, Maria Elif and John Cihan Çukurova.

Maria loves drawing and she is really talented, she's got it after her mama. Mark loves drawing too, but as he's getting older, he's leaning more towards photography, he's really good for his age, no clue where he gets it from ;)

John just turned two and here I offer special thanks to my incredible illustrator, Petra, for coming up with the idea to include some of my kids' artwork in the book. We did it! Two pieces from Maria, one from Mark and an image of John's palm print. Look for them in the book!

One person I cannot leave out is my wife's cousin Maria Rasmussen. Since I am not a native English speaker, writing literature in English is not one of my strengths. Maria has always been there for me and I am forever grateful.

I hope you enjoy my book and look for more to come. It would help me cross my message and get my book in front of a greater number of families and children if you took a minute to leave a stellar review on Amazon, if you did in fact enjoy it. 

Gökhan Çukurova 

(Pronounced GOH-kun CHOO-KUU-roh-vuh)

"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

Mark Twain