A once-reluctant reader has transformed into a prolific writer.

He has Shel Silverstein to thank.

Derek Etherington self-published his first book in October of 2025, and he's already working on two more.

The West Lampeter Township resident wrote, illustrated, and designed the children's book "Moonbeams and Rhyme Dreams" under the pen name Derek Allen. The work is available on Amazon and through his website, http://www.derekallenbooks.com.

"I think it's a book that will grow with kids," Etherington said. "It's lighthearted humor. It's something that will keep even the most reluctant readers engaged. I think anybody can find something in this book that they would like. It's clean humor. It's relatable for all ages. There's humor in there that at surface level is light, but there are some deeper lessons and meanings in the poems too."

It took two years and approximately 1,000 hours to produce the hardcover book, which features 50 poems and embellishments, such as foil and embossed lettering on the cover and digital designs on the pages. It's an endeavor he never envisioned while growing up in Billerica, Mass.

"I was always a reluctant reader as a child," Etherington said. "My mom (Rita) used to read Dr. Seuss to me every night, and I loved the illustrations and the little poems. Through my early elementary years, I wasn't really that interested in reading."

While he was in third grade, a classmate's parent came to school and read Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

"It was the first time I had heard anything like that, and it was just the funniest thing to me," Etherington said. "I went to the library after hearing it and checked the book out for weeks."

He became a voracious reader but never considered writing a book until two years ago. "I woke up in the middle of the night. I was sick," Etherington said. "I was just getting over the flu, and I woke up at 3 a.m. with these silly, absurd, hilarious rhymes in my head. I could see the characters. I could hear the rhymes, so I just stayed up writing them down. It was flowing through me for hours."

His wife, Stephanie, woke up later that morning and was astounded. "Those are amazing. You should keep writing," she told her husband. So he did. "By the end of the weekend, I had 25 poems written, and they just kept coming to me," said Etherington. "Six months after that, I started thinking about putting them together in a book."

Etherington channeled his inner kid. "It's written and drawn from a child's perspective," he said. "I wanted my 8-year-old self to have a book that he would like. As a kid, it was these types of stories that I really enjoyed writing, so I realized I could put something together that kids would enjoy and parents would like to read too."

"Moonbeams and Rhyme Dreams," written for children between the ages of 6 and 10, has earned rave reviews from his two most important critics: his son, Bryce, 6, and daughter, Adelyn, 4. "They love it. They love the characters especially," Etherington said. "The art is what captivates them, which is pretty consistent with what I hear from that age range. They can pick up on some of the surface-level humor, but they really like the colorful, vibrant characters. They take stickers to school, and they like telling people their dad's an author even though that's not my full-time job."

Etherington, who works as a project manager, has written 400 poems since his middle-of-the-night epiphany. He plans to release his second book in the spring of 2027 and the third one 18 months after that. Those works will complete the trilogy and contain 50 poems, just like the debut. That will not be the end. He has plans to take characters from the trilogy and insert them into picture books and has also written holiday poems.

"I don't see myself stopping," Etherington said. "I've tapped into this new passion I never knew existed."