I Wrote a Legend of Zelda Children’s Book While My Daughter Was in the Hospital
She is now happy, healthy, and a diehard Breath of the Wild fan!
(ED. NOTE: This article was originally published in Medium, on April 10, 2019)
NOTE: If you just want to read the book, and not the story behind it, click here to download the PDF.
Hello, dear readers!
Thank you for joining me today! Meet my daughter, Josie:
Isn’t she adorable? She’s also a big-time trouper, and much tougher than I could ever be.
You see, barely a day after her birth, she was diagnosed with an ultra-rare congenital heart disease (Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia, if you’re wondering — the same condition that Jimmy Kimmel’s son suffered from, at roughly the same time).
Actually “condition” is a bit of a misnomer. It was more like four conditions. I won’t bore you with the details — actual doctors can explain it much better — but it’s incredibly rare. Only 1% of babies are born with congenital heart disease, and only 1% of those 1% get TOF.
Little Josie was immediately whisked away, and during the next six months, she had two open-heart surgeries, several other “minor” procedures, and was in and out of the NICU, PICU, CVICU… basically, every ICU she could’ve gone to.
If you’re a parent who has gone through this, you already know how brutal this experience is. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have never gone through it, if you’re a parent, you still know — out of everything that could happen to your child, this is one of the things you likely fear the most.
And with good reason — your sweet, little, innocent bundle of joy hooked up to dozens of wires, tubes, monitors, IVs, and masks is one of the most horrifying things a parent (especially a new parent) could ever see. Especially when there’s nothing you can do to help them.
You would do anything, everything in your power to help them feel better, get out of there, or even just comfort and console them.
But so often, you can do nothing but sit and wait for an update, any update at all (which is usually “not yet/we don’t know yet/keep waiting”).
Throughout these maddening, numbing, and soul-sucking times, I often turned to Breath of the Wild to keep my mind from wandering to dark places.
I’ll explore Breath of the Wild’s therapeutic properties in a future post. But for now, know that it was VERY helpful in maintaining my sanity.
Anyhow, before I knew it, I had accumulated thousands of Breath of the Wild screenshots from the dozens of hours I put in at the hospital.
So I tapped into my creative instincts and started writing her a Breath of the Wild children’s book, using those screenshots. In between doctor’s appointments, procedures, Switch time, and those precious few moments Josie was awake and we could actually hold and interact with her… I wrote.
Fortunately, Josie was eventually discharged. Her heart is fully repaired — happy, healthy, and thriving, you could never tell she was so sick. We are beyond thankful for this, and we never take her health for granted — every day with her is truly a blessing.
I didn’t finish the book in the hospital — books are hard work, and they take a lot of time to make! — but long after we went home, I kept chipping at it, one line, one image, one page at a time.
How It Came Together
The book itself is an homage to both Breath of the Wild and “Goodnight, Moon,” written in a Seussian-esque verse, highlighting the beautiful scenery of Hyrule as shown in Breath of the Wild.
Starting in the morning, then going through daytime, evening, and ending at night, Link takes the reader on a journey throughout Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule: from the Great Plateau and Hateno Village, to Death Mountain and Zora’s Domain.
For the illustrations, I enlisted the help of Haddie, my trusted graphic designer, to Photoshop the hearts and other HUD elements out, then we ran the screenshots through the Oilist app, which makes your images look like oil paintings — and it ups their resolution enough to print clearly.
Once all the prose was written, I enlisted the help of Nico Ryan, a great editor — whom I met on Medium — to go over my words and make sure they made at least a little sense.
Seriously, Haddie and Nico are awesome, and you should hire both of them right now.
Anyway, once the images and words were ready, we laid the images and text out using Blurb — which also, conveniently enough, printed the book.
Finally, after so long, I could finally give Josie her finished book for her second birthday!
The Start of Something Special
Josie has shown an interest in the Zelda-verse, constantly playing with her Zelda plushie and my Link amiibo, and having swiped my pro controller and/or Switch from me twice already.
So of course, she was thrilled at getting the book! She even pointed at the Triforce on the cover and said “Zelda!”
I get the feeling this will be a staple of story time for years to come — and after that, I hope she’ll always keep the book nearby, as a living testament to her father’s love for her, as shown in this two-year labor of love.
If you’d like to read Good Morning, Hyrule, to your little one(s), you can download a free PDF of the book here.
I hope you and yours enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Thank you, and may the Triforce be with you.
Jay Rooney is a lifelong Zelda fan, copywriter, marketing instructor, and devoted father to the most wonderful daughter in the world. His Switch code is SW-2888–2425–3008. If you like this post, or the book, check out his other Nintendo and Zelda articles on Medium — and remember to clap and/or share to spread the word!