There's a moment Harpreet Bahia keeps coming back to. She's at a book signing at an Indigo store in Ontario-her son Kabir, brimming with pride, sitting at the table beside her. A little kid walks up, picks up the book, and Kabir leans forward and starts explaining it. Not because anyone asked him to. Just because it was his story too, and he wanted to share it.
"That, for me as a mother," says Harpreet, her voice still carrying the warmth of that memory, "was everything."
That book is Daya's First Airplane Ride-a touch-and-feel board book about a little boy taking his very first flight, his older brother Kabir by his side every step of the way. It sounds simple. But the story behind how it came to exist, and what it's quietly doing in the world, is anything but.
It Started With a Baby and a Bookshelf
When Harpreet's first son was born, she did what many new mothers do-she read to him. Every day. And in that daily ritual, she began paying close attention. What made him look up? What made him reach out and touch the page? What held him?
"I just grew with him while he was reading," she says. "I started doing more research on touch-and-feel board books, sensory components, ways to engage them more."
What she found was a gap. There weren't enough board books that truly grabbed children-that gave them something to do while they listened, something to feel and open and move. So she decided to make one herself.
The airplane theme came naturally. Harpreet has a lot of family in Vancouver, and the kids would fly out often. Daya's first flights were to British Columbia-a detail that adds a quiet poetry to the fact that the book is now making its West Coast debut at Indigo and Coles locations across the Lower Mainland.
"BC is so special to this story," she says. "That's literally where the inspiration began."
A Little Boy Who Looks Like Your Child
Daya's First Airplane Ride follows Daya from the moment he packs his bag to his first breathtaking view above the clouds. He's nervous, the way any child is before something big and new. But he's also curious, excited-and he has Kabir.
The sibling bond is central to the book, and it's real. The characters are drawn from Harpreet's own family. Kabir, the older brother in the book, shares his name with Harpreet's son. The father wears a turban. Kabir wears a patka. They are a Sikh family doing something completely ordinary-getting on a plane-and that, quietly, is the point.
"It's so nice for my kids to be able to go to a bookstore and see themselves on the shelf," Harpreet says. "Now they know they can be the main character. And if it's somebody from a different culture picking up this book, they develop empathy-they understand that we all do the same everyday experiences."
She pauses, then adds: "That makes a big difference."
It does. In a children's section still dominated by a narrow slice of childhood, Daya's First Airplane Ride asks a gentle but powerful question: what if every child could find themselves in the story?
The Touch-and-Feel Difference
Ask Harpreet why a board book, and she lights up.
"Kids love moving the conveyor belt," she says. "They love opening the little window on the airplane, feeling the textures. And as parents, we're so often saying don't touch that-but here, we're saying please, touch it, open it, feel it."
The sensory dimension isn't decorative. It's developmental. Touch-and-feel books engage children at multiple levels simultaneously-tactile, visual, imaginative-and Harpreet designed Daya's First Airplane Ride with this in mind from the very beginning.
The result is a book that works across ages. A two-year-old can touch and explore. A four-year-old can follow the story and talk about what it means to feel nervous about something new. "It grows with the family," she says. "That was really important to me."
The payoff has been real. One parent reached out to tell Harpreet that her daughter, boarding a plane for the first time, turned to her and said: Mommy, I'm doing what Daya did.
"That," says Harpreet quietly, "is part of the reason I made this series."
The Document That Sat on the Laptop
Here's what people don't always know about Daya's First Airplane Ride: it almost didn't happen.
"I had a document on my laptop," Harpreet admits. "And I was sitting with it for so long. My second had just been born. I was on the fence."
It's a feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has ever had a creative idea and talked themselves out of it-convinced themselves the timing wasn't right, the idea wasn't strong enough, the world didn't need another voice.
"We're so easy to talk ourselves out of something so great," she says now. "We can't always see how great it will be."
What finally shifted for her was a decision to stop waiting for certainty and just begin. She founded Touching Tales Publishing House-a boutique publisher-found an illustrator named Marco, sourced her manufacturing in Asia, tested materials, and slowly, carefully, built the book she'd imagined.
"I took my time with it," she says. "And what I've learned is: you put in the time for a reason. That's how you produce the best quality."
Building a Home, Not a House
When Harpreet eventually went looking for publishers, she found an industry that often treated new authors as liabilities rather than partners. Traditional publishers wanted safe bets. Vanity presses wanted thousands of dollars upfront. Self-publishing meant going it entirely alone.
She decided to do something different.
Touching Tales Publishing, the house she founded, describes itself as "a warm home with open doors." That's not marketing language-Harpreet means it literally. The house charges no upfront fees. Contracts are built around fairness to the author. Creative control stays with the writer.
"I was a starving artist," she says simply. "I see that in a lot of the people who come to me. So I love finding ways we can help each other."
Currently a team of five, Touching Tales is intentionally small and intentionally personal. Every manuscript is read, every author is known. The house is focused on children's books for now -including a forthcoming series from author Harprit Gill on financial literacy for kids, written in a rap style-but plans to expand into adult fiction and other genres by 2027 or 2028.
"We're building our footing," she says. "Learning the ropes. And growing as a team."
What Comes Next
Daya's First Airplane Ride is the first in a four-book series called Daya Discovers. Each book takes Daya somewhere new for the first time. Next up: Daya's First Hike, followed by Daya's First Day of School-each one a small story about a big feeling, each one rooted in the idea that children navigate new experiences best when they feel seen, prepared, and accompanied.
That's the thread running through all of it, really. The book. The publishing house. The community events Harpreet is building toward-open mics, storytelling nights, gatherings that bring readers and writers into the same room.
"Books are our first window into the world," she says. "When we read about first times, it helps us with our own first times. That's what I want kids to feel: that it's exciting, that it's okay, that they're not alone."
She's asked, toward the end of our conversation, what she'd want to say to anyone sitting on a story they haven't written yet.
She doesn't hesitate.
"Everyone has a story to tell. Someone is looking at you and wanting to navigate whatever you've been through. Take the jump. Trust your gut. Follow your passion."
Then, almost to herself: "And just get started."
