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Close your eyes with me, and think back: What were you doing when you were 12 years old? Playing with Webkinz? Categorizing your fruit snacks by color? Plotting your revenge for recess kickball? Probably not writing a book to be published by Random House, right?
Yet Emme Maribel Muñiz, 12-year-old daughter of superstar Jennifer Lopez and her ex-husband Marc Anthony, has done it again, folks: She’s destroyed all prior concepts of what a preteen is supposed to accomplish. This girl can sing Alicia Keys. She’s performed in the Super Bowl halftime show. Her baby photos cost millions of dollars. Now she’s written perhaps the most endearing children’s picture book I’ve ever laid eyes on.
To be published by Crown Books For Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, Lord Help Me is a book about prayer, inspired by sloths. Yes, sloths.
“In school I learned about sloths and how they’re facing extinction so I began to pray for them in my nightly prayers,” Muñiz said in a press release. “I wrote this book to help raise money to save sloths while also teaching other children how we can pray and ask for help, two things that bring me a lot of comfort.”
Inspired by Muñiz’s own meditations, the book walks young readers through her experiences praying to God—and the joy these prayers have brought to her unusual, dazzling life. She asks God for help with efforts as minor as getting ready for school and as monumental as animal extinction.
Jessica Morrison
The book will be available on September 29 in both English and Spanish editions, accompanying illustrations by Brenda Figueroa, an artist born in El Salvador.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to wipe the tears from my eyes before I pre-order this for every one of my boyfriend’s nieces and nephews.
