Nighttime and one restless toddler were all Frisco resident Kevin Lofgren needed for the basis of his children’s book: Dream: A Goodnight Book.

“Years ago, my daughter [sophomore Finley Lofgren] was telling me she wasn’t tired and couldn’t go to sleep, so I started naming off things she could get excited to dream about,” Kevin said. 

Even with a vague memory, daughter Finley still remembers a few aspects of their time together that night.

“I don’t remember it too well, but I remember trying to fall asleep and not being able to,” Finley said. “I called my dad and asked him to tell me a bedtime story to help me fall asleep.” 

Line after line, Kevin began to recognize the meaningfulness of this shared experience between parent and child and found himself transcribing his bedtime tale. 

“I often made recordings of our nighttime ritual of me telling stories and making up poems, and this night I was recording,” Kevin said. “When I got back downstairs, I jotted [those reasons] down for another day.” 

Then, a whole decade passed, and a global pandemic took place, allowing Kevin time to revise and eventually complete his book.

For Kevin, there was only one change needed to the original story.

“There is a line that says, ‘you can dream about a polka-dot bunny and all the reasons your friends are so funny,’” Kevin said. “Originally, that said ‘all the reasons your daddy’s so funny.’”

The word “daddy” made him realize that not everyone has a father figure in their life. So, with the desire to have his book help connect with more children, he made the small change from “daddy” to “friends.”

Supporting her dad’s revision, Finley also hopes that children reading her father’s book feel included and acknowledged. 

“By replacing ‘daddy’ with ‘friends,’ [I hope] that kids that do not have fathers feel like they can connect and not feel different than their peers,” Finley said. 

Through Dream: A Goodnight Book, son Owen, a 7th grader at Vandeventer Middle School, and daughter Finley want other children to envision their goals and feel heartened to do anything they desire. 

“I just want them to be encouraged and inspired to imagine and achieve success,” Owen said.

“I want kids to understand that it’s a good thing to have dreams and have big ideas,” Finley said. “I also want them to get that there are no limits and anything is possible. If you can dream it, you can do it.”

Agreeing with his children’s wishes, Kevin also hopes to bring joy to other families and communicate the significance of love between a parent and child. 

But most importantly, Kevin hopes to inspire children to dream big and motivate parents to help foster their child’s dreams.

“I want [children] to dream big when they’re wide awake. I hope they end up pursuing those big dreams,” Kevin said. “I [also] want the adult to remember that part of their responsibility is to nurture the dreams of that child and help their own dreams for that child to come to light as well.”