Deborah Cholette from Orléans is the co-author of Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave along with Kalli Dakos from Ottawa. The book is available at all Indigo Chapters stores. FRED SHERWIN PHOTO

Where would we be without the innocuous bookmark? And no, I don't mean the electronic e-book kind. I mean the old-fashioned paper kind. The ones that have saved countless pages in countless books from having their top corners folded over.

You may be surprised to learn that despite their symbiotic relationship to books of all genres, not a single book has been written about a bookmark. That is until now. Orléans author Deborah Cholette has joined forces with Ottawa author Kalli Dakos to produce the first-ever children's book about a bookmark.

Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave is a story about a bookmark named Max who is overcome with fear every time he is placed at a page with a scary picture. In order to overcome his fear, he goes to bookmark school to learn some coping skills to better handle the situation.

The coping skills used in the book come right off the pages of the Navy SEALs manual � breathe deeply, make a plan and think positive thoughts.

When Cholette came up with the concept for the picture book, she was just thinking of writing a cute story about a bookmark. In fact, the original working title was simply Get Me Out of This Book. It wasn't until the book's American publisher Holiday House started editing the book that they realized the potential it had for teaching young readers coping skills.

Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave is Cholette's third published work. The other two were self-published. The Daydream Diet was a romantic comedy Cholette published in 2001. Who Stole My Body was a middle school fiction published in 2008.

The story of how Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave came about is a wonderful story in itself and a perfect example of serendipity.

Cholette was looking for a potential publisher 10 or 11 years ago. As part of the process, she checked out other authors on the various publishing company websites. While she was surfing one site in particular, she was impressed by the book titles of one of the authors.

"She had titles like Our Principal Promised to Kiss A Pig and The Goof Who Invented Homework that were very clever and original,� says Cholette.

That same night, Cholette went to the Ottawa Independent Writers' Christmas dinner at Robbie's Italian Restaurant on St. Laurent Blvd. At one point, she had to go to the ladies' room and noticed another woman was also in the restroom. When she left, she joined a table where the same woman was sitting.

"All of a sudden they started mentioning the same titles I had seen on the website earlier in the day, and wouldn't you know it, the woman I saw in the restroom was Kalli,� says Cholette. "I didn't even know she was from Ottawa, let alone that she was going to be at the dinner.�

The two authors became immediate friends and would often have lunch together. After a while they started talking about writing a book together.

"Kalli has published 14 or 15 books and she is a very lyrical writer,� explains Cholette. "So I wrote the original story and then she edited my words using her style. I think we rewrote it about 88 times before we submitted it to Holiday House. They bought it three years ago and it's taken that long to finally get it published.�

The publishers also hired Portuguese illustrator Sarah Infante to do all the artwork for the book.

"She did an amazing job,� says Cholette. "It has a European feel to it rather than an American feel. We were a little nervous at first because you don't know how the illustrations will turn out, but we were thrilled when we finally saw the finished product.�

Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave is being distributed in North America by Penguin Random House. Every copy of the book comes with its very own pull-out Max the Bookmark. It's currently available at all Indigo Chapter stores or it can be ordered online at amazon.ca. A hardcover copy is $12.75 plus shipping, while the Kindle version is just $7.51.

(This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local business partners.)