8-year-old Central New York girl publishes book about father’s prison absence

An 8-year-old from Central New York has turned a painful family separation into a published children’s book, giving Onondaga County readers a child’s-eye view of incarceration that is usually told only by adults. SkyeMarie Willis wrote Counting Stars Until My Daddy Came Home after living through the three years her father was in jail, missing four of her birthdays along the way.

Willis said she was able to visit her father while he was serving time, but that did not erase the emptiness of not having him at home. Her book takes that feeling and turns it into a story other children can recognize, especially in Syracuse and across the county where incarceration touches many families but is rarely discussed in age-appropriate ways.

The project was shaped with help from her aunt, Denika Lundy, whom Willis calls her grandma. Amazon lists the book as Counting Stars Until My Daddy Came Home: SkyeMarie’s Story and names Lundy and Shawaun T. Jones as contributors, underscoring that this was not simply a school assignment or a private diary entry, but a family effort to put hard experiences into print.

Lundy’s own publishing path runs through the same theme of pain becoming something public and useful. WSYR-TV has described her as a breast cancer survivor, and her separate children’s book, Damian’s Mom Has No Hair!, was released in June 2025, with a later retailer listing showing a publication date of December 2, 2025. Lundy said her children were 4 and 2 years old when she wrote that book, a detail that helps explain why her storytelling centers young readers rather than adult reflection.

Her public work extends beyond books. In a January 8, 2026 Bridge Street segment, WSYR said Lundy is turning pain into purpose through 2Sisters4Life, a nonprofit that raises breast-cancer awareness. That mission mirrors the message in Willis’s book: children do not need to be shielded from every difficult subject, only given language and support to understand them.

The family’s writing now creates a small but notable body of children’s literature rooted in incarceration, illness and resilience. In a county where schools, libraries and support groups are always looking for tools that help children name difficult emotions, Willis’s book arrives as both a literacy project and a coping tool.