Hello dear blog friends! It’s time for another joyous book birthday!!! I met the author of FUNCLES when she reached out for feedback in the summer of 2024…right before the eye surgery that left me with seriously impaired vision (which fortunately was corrected in December of 2025. I was only able to give her verbal feedback…and we enjoyed a lengthy Zoom chat. Yashika Mody revised her story…and went out on submission with it. How thrilled I was when she emailed me in February to say that she had a book deal…and her book would be launching in the UK in October and in the US in November…and so of course, I knew I’d want to share this wonderful book with all of you!

Happily, Yashika agreed to stop by to give us the inside peek at FUNCLES.

ME: Welcome Yashika! I’m thrilled that we can join you in celebrating the launch of your new book, FUNCLES! Will you tell us a little bit about it?

YASHIKA Thank you so much for inviting me, Vivian. I’m so happy to be here.
FUNCLES is a warm and funny picture book that celebrates community, cultural tradition, and the many shapes family can take. It centers around the cultural tradition of calling trusted elders in one’s community ‘Uncle’ (and ‘Aunty!’), and exploring what this sense of extended kinship teaches us about community and belonging.

ME: What inspired you to write this story?

YASHIKA: This story is inspired by (and dedicated to) my oldest son and his love for his community Uncles and Aunties in Singapore. In Singapore where I am from (and in fact, in many other countries and cultures too), it is a cultural norm to call elders in your community with respectful terms such as “uncle” and “aunty.” So, when my son was beginning to learn and understand language, he would hear me and my husband call the elders in our community uncle and aunty and he quickly picked up on this cultural practice. Everyone he met became his uncle or aunty and became a part of his own community.

It was so cute to watch him take this love for his community across the world: on a trip to London, even the guards at Buckingham Palace lovingly became known as “Red Guard Uncles!”

Inspired by how community can have such a strong impact on a child, I wrote FUNCLES as my personal ode to culture, community connection, and joyful storytelling.

ME: Any challenging moments or humorous incidents on the path to publication?

YASHIKA: It has been such a fun and wild ride with this manuscript! FUNCLES was the first picture book manuscript I ever wrote, and I went through multiple rounds of revisions with critique partners and editors. This is such a special, full-circle moment for me to be on your blog to celebrate its release today because this manuscript was actually critiqued by you in the early days! You offered such helpful advice about how to make it more impactful and resonant with kids, and I’m ever so grateful that you were one of the first to take a look at this idea and guide me through those early editorial revisions.

FUNCLES was also the manuscript I queried with, and it helped me land my first literary agent! We eventually parted ways (in hindsight, all for the better!), so I decided not to lose any momentum and submitted directly to publishers using Bitsy Kemper’s amazing list. Lantana Publishing was on that list, and their mission to uplift diverse voices—along with their sincere passion for representation—felt like the perfect fit for me as an author and for this story.

Less than six weeks after submitting, I received a wonderful note of interest from them! I was still querying agents in parallel, so when Lantana’s official offer came in, I updated an agent who had requested more material. We accelerated our discussions, and thankfully, everything fell into place—this special manuscript that had been through the wringer helped me land both my debut publishing contract and my current agent, who I couldn’t be happier with!

ME: Oh Yashika…I love this story behind the story and I know everyone will love reading about your path to publication (and being a little part of it!). It’s stories like this that give us all hope!

Here is a little bit about the author:

Yashika Mody is a picture book author who lives in sunny Singapore with her husband, her two ever-hilarious and ever-sweet sons, and her playful Westie puppy (who is a doppelganger of Snowy from Tintin!). Inspired by her diverse upbringing as a Third Culture Kid, she loves writing funny and heartwarming books about culture, community, and family. FUNCLES is her picture book debut and her next picture book will be releasing in 2029 (stay tuned for more details!). Visit her at: www.yashikamodywriting.com.

And a little bit about the illustrator:

Adriena Fong is an illustrator born and raised in Singapore, where she spent her childhood dreaming up magical worlds. With a deep love for storytelling of all sorts, she hopes to spark a sense of warmth and wonder in her work. Visit her at https://www.adrienafong.com/.

Preferred sales order links
If you’d like to purchase a copy of FUNCLES, you can support independent bookstores by ordering through Bookshop.org. It is also available across major retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, and Target.

And here are social media links that will help you connect with Yashika!

Website: https://yashikamodywriting.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yashikamwriting/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/yashikamwriting.bsky.social

Thank you all for spending your precious time with us! I Today is Election Day. – I’ll be casting my vote…it’s the one thing we can all do.