RPS Student Publishes a Book

In her book The Purple Dot, Remi Axelson addresses the complicated topic of divorce in a way elementary students can easily understand it — which was easy for her to do since she is an elementary student herself!

A second grader in Richfield Public Schools, Remi (short for Reming), felt alone and different when her parents got divorced in 2020. She didn’t think anyone else was like her or understood what it felt like. After talking with her family, Remi worked with her dad and her “bonus mom” to write The Purple Dot.

“I wrote the book because my mom and dad were divorced and I was really sad,” explained Remi. “I want kids to look in this book and see ‘somebody else is like me’ because I felt like nobody was like me.”

The book explores not only how it feels to have your parents get divorced, but also addresses the other unique family structures kids have, including single-parent families, families with two moms or two dads, kids who live with their grandparents, kids who are adopted, and kids with stepparents. 

Remi plans to write more books that explore some of these other family dynamics, starting with the orange dots. “All about the orange dots, about the two moms,” she said. Then other dot books: “The yellow dot has two parents, step-parents are a green dot, I want to write all about the dots.”

Writing this book has helped Remi and others to feel connected. “I learned that I’m not alone because when we read this book at school, a teacher even said his parents were divorced and he spent more time with his mom than his dad. He asked what color he would be and I told him maroon.”

Writing the book took a few weeks. Remi’s dad coached her on good storytelling and her family collaborated on it. “It was easy to come up with the idea,” Remi explained. The hard part was waiting to get it published! “It was hard because it took a long time to get it printed because it was printed wrong twice!” But the third time's the charm and you can now find her book on Amazon and Kindle.

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, you can stop by Remi’s book signing event at The Protagonist in Richfield on February 18 from 1-3 p.m. They will have copies for sale and for every book sold at the event, a second copy will be given to libraries in the Richfield Public Schools.

Want to learn more? Check out Remi’s interview on FOX 9.