- Shelley Powers didn’t just publish her first children’s book at age 55; she built the publishing company around it.
Shelley Powers grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi. There, she helped her mother wash dishes and watched geckos crawl across the kitchen window screen, searching for their nightly meal. It was a memory that inspired her to write a 6,000-word short story in 2001 called “Larry and the Window Lizards.”
“Twenty-four years later, I decided to dust off that old short story and expand it into my first early chapter book, A Very Strange Reversal of Scales,” the first title from her new independent imprint, Creekline House.
That’s right. Shelley Powers didn’t just publish her first children’s book at age 55; she built the publishing company around it.
She began her writing career as a staff reporter at The Mississippi Press and later became assistant editor for Coast Magazine and Coast Business Journal. “I went into journalism because I loved to write and to connect with people through telling interesting stories,” she explains.
Powers went on to lead public relations for the Mississippi Arts Commission, edit educational curriculum, and ultimately become a communications director in state government, where she works today.
“Writing for public service agencies requires your words to broaden their reach to the widest audience possible, so I have worked to improve the clarity of my writing while maintaining engagement, which, in turn, has strengthened my fiction writing.”
“I’m soon to be 56; waiting is a young person’s game,” she says. “Now is the time to use my 30-plus years of experience — in writing, editing, marketing, public relations, web work — for something I want to build. Something beautiful I can share with others.”
Intended for ages 8–11, A Very Strange Reversal of Scales includes adventure, science, family humor, and even a secret lizard code to decode. At just under 100 pages, it’s structured to appeal to reluctant readers as well as classroom read-alouds.
Released in January, the early chapter book follows two brothers, Larry and Frankie, who are shrunken to lizard-size and must venture into a world full of danger, discovery, and unlikely alliances. As Powers puts it, “The biggest adventures can start very small,” which fittingly reflects her journey.
She created the brothers defined by love, loyalty, and the messy, protective bonds of brotherhood, in part, from her own three brothers, Beau, Ben, and Cooper. As the oldest and only girl in her family, she studied carefully their interactions. “They would fight and give each other such a hard time, but then they would also love and protect so fiercely.”
Powers says she wanted that same relationship. She also wanted her young readers to see characters with a strong sense of self-worth asked to face an enormous and curious world, and “who tackle it with care for others.”
Science is a subtle through-line, too. Powers is the daughter of two former science teachers. “I remember, as a young reader way back in the days of big hair, shoulder pads, and Cabbage Patch dolls, how laughing made learning stick,” she says. “Kids today are the same. They want to laugh and belong, and who doesn’t love a fun fact about frogs or lizards?”
Creekline House, the publishing imprint Powers founded to bring the book into the world, carries the motto: small stories can hold big truths. And that’s exactly what she hopes to give readers — not just fantasy but meaning rooted in the everyday.
“I will never again think validation comes from a big publishing house.” But launching Creekline House was anything but simple. Powers wrote, edited, coordinated beta readers, designed layouts, created a website, wrote press releases, marketed the book herself, and learned the necessary publishing software from scratch.
“It’s some of the hardest work I’ve done at a computer,” she admits. “But what’s most surprising after all of this is how much I absolutely love it.”
Powers is already preparing Creekline House’s second title for release this April: How to Fry Chicken & Ditch the Nightlight, a middle-grade novel set in 1980s Mississippi. “It follows 10-year-old April Ellis as she learns about facing the dark and the fears that come with growing up,” she says. Another title is planned for the fall.
“I want young readers to walk away remembering that they are braver than they think,” Shelley Powers says, “and to always be curious because the world has so much to teach and share.”
Richelle Putnam
