“Zola had a brain that bounced like a ball, full of colours, dreams, and ideas tall….”

So begins The Magic in My Mind, a book written by Monisha Jacobs to encourage children with learning challenges to read.

Inspired by her eight-year-old daughter Zen’s journey with dyslexia, she wanted to create something that would help children “feel confident, understood, and proud of their unique learning styles”.

“I wanted Zen to see herself in a story that celebrates how creative her mind is and I also wanted to bring more awareness to dyslexia,” said Ms Jacobs.

“A lot of kids have dyslexia. I just wanted to remind them that they are unique. They're creative.”

She recognised that Zen’s “learning was different” from an early age but could not pinpoint the reason until she took her for testing about a year ago.

“By [age 7] they should know the letters in the alphabet. She kept getting letters B and D mixed up. She used to get the letters M and W mixed up and sometimes even now when she writes, the letters are backwards.”

Her daughter is fortunate that the teachers at her school, Somersfield Academy, are “amazing” and she has a tutor and “a lot of reading tools”.

“I’m learning more about dyslexia as I go on and through teaching her,” Ms Jacobs said. “I am really on top of it. It does help her a lot and her reading has improved tremendously.”

It was that hands-on involvement that ultimately led her to realise that a book might support her daughter’s confidence and her learning as well.

“My daughter, she had no idea what I was doing. I actually surprised her and wrote the book and she got all excited: ‘My mummy's an author! My mummy wrote a book about me!’”

The Magic in My Mind is a picture book for children aged four to ten that follows Zola, a young girl who discovers her imagination is her “superpower”.

“The story is fun, positive and meant to build confidence in children who learn differently,” said Ms Jacobs, a para-educator at Somerset Primary School.

“In the back of the book, it has some fun activities for the kids to engage with. So it’s not just a story.”

She began the project in March and completed most of the work over the summer holidays. She finished the book by late November.

“It was one of my goals to write a children's book but I couldn't find anything to write about. So when Zen was tested and her results came back positive, I took it as my inspiration. It didn't take me long to write the book because it was based on real-life experiences.”

The real challenge was getting the book published. As a first-time author, Ms Jacobs was treading a new path.

“I was trying to find a publisher. I was looking at local authors’ books and looking at their publishers. I was reaching out to them. I got some response, I got no response — the process was a bit tedious. I ended up self-publishing the book because I couldn't find a publisher,” she said.

Her hope is that The Magic in My Mind brings awareness to dyslexia, “a lifelong, neurobiological learning disability affecting reading, writing, and spelling due to difficulties with language processing”.

“It's a fun, vibrant, colourful book. I wanted it to be that way to connect with kids. I didn't want just a plain, boring book. I wanted lots of colours — it'll be eye-catching if they see a pretty book on the shelf. But it's not directed just towards kids with dyslexia, it’s also to bring awareness.”

Public feedback has been great and Ms Jacob is already thinking about her next publication.

“I’ve had adults who actually reached out to me and said that they found out later on in life that they are dyslexic and as a child they’d had a rough experience in school and they couldn't figure out why. That was an eye-opener and rewarding.”

• The Magic in My Mind is available for $30 at Brown & Co. Follow @themagicinmymind on Instagram. For more information visit www.themagicinmymind.org or send an e-mail: magicinmymindbook@outlook.com