The story of how two Utah women wrote their first children’s book is inextricably intertwined with their friendship — and how they created the company that is now publishing it.
The book, “Pippa and Poppy’s European Adventure” (Jumelle Press), will be released in stores and online this week, months after one of its authors, Elise Caffee, died after a tragic accident in Mexico.
“I think [Elise] would love it,” co-author Tiffany Rosenhan said, tearing up a bit.
Caffee was best known for her popular 3 Kids Travel blog, where she chronicled adventures with her children. While on a trip with her husband in Cancun, she suffered severe burns in a 10-car crash that involved a truck carrying hot asphalt. The 45-year-old died six days later in Salt Lake City, where she was flown for treatment.
Rosenhan said she and Caffee had been working on the book for about six months before they ever agreed to create a publishing company.
The idea was ignited after an encounter between Rosenhan and food influencer Maria Lichty, who told Rosenhan that she was looking to publish her next cookbook.
“I was, like, ‘I’ll publish it. I’ve been wanting to start a publishing company,’” Rosenhan told The Salt Lake Tribune over coffee in Sugar House recently. “She’s, like, ‘Are you serious?’ And I was, like, ‘Yes. I’m dead serious.’”
Rosenhan then pitched the plan to Caffee: “I said, ‘Elise, what if, rather than publishing [our book somewhere else], we just started the publishing company together?’”
That’s how they started Jumelle Press, a Salt Lake City-based publishing company that Rosenhan said specializes in nurturing influencers, particularly women, to become new authors outside “the New York publishing ecosystem.”
The word “jumelle” means “twin” in French, selected in part because both Rosenhan and Caffee each had twin sisters. It’s also because the two clicked so quickly.
“We say we bonded so well, because as identical twins, you’re used to being two halves of the whole,” Rosenhan said. “You’re used to a partnership, and you’re used to a balance.”
(Jumelle Press) Tiffany Rosenhan, left, and Elise Caffee, co-founders of Jumelle Press and co-authors of the children’s book “Pippa and Poppy’s European Adventure.”
Meet Pippa and Poppy
Pippa and Poppy, the sisters in their book, are also identical twins.
The intrepid characters are modeled after both Rosenhan and Caffee and their twins.
In one two-page spread, for instance, Pippa and Poppy zip around Florence, Italy, together on a Vespa. Caffee and her twin, Kristina Buskirk, used to ride their bikes around Tokyo as 10-year-olds when their family lived there for a time. (Rosenhan said her only book regret now is that the characters, intricately illustrated by Utah artist Heather Tycksen, are blonde, not strawberry blonde, like Elise and Kristina were as girls.)
The rhyme at the end of the Florence page goes: “While Pippa climbs to the top of the Duomo, Poppy waits below, licking lemon gelato!”
“There’s always one twin doing something, and one twin wanting to eat the treat,” Rosenhan said. With her own twin, Rosenhan said, “I’m always the one eating the treat, and my sister’s always the one doing something cool.”
Rosenhan — who published her first novel, the spy thriller “Girl From Nowhere,” in 2020 — first met Caffee through a mutual friend. But the two quickly realized they already knew each other online.
Rosenhan had posted on Instagram about a trip to Denmark with her daughters, and Caffee had commented, asking for tips because she was traveling there soon.
“I’m sure I just gave her a random Google screenshot, because I’m not organized — and she would have [sent me] a spreadsheet,” Rosenhan joked.
The two grew to participate in activities together — pottery class, boxing lessons, aerial silks — Rosenhan said, but “Elise and I always bonded over books. We just would talk about what books we’re reading, and that was how our friendship evolved.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) “Pippa & Poppy’s European Adventure” by Tiffany Rosenhan and Elise Caffee.
The writing process for two
For weeks, while writing “Pippa and Poppy” in earnest, the pair would meet nearly every Thursday at Caffee’s house, figuring out which places the characters should visit.
“I would say, like, ‘Uzbekistan!’ And she’s, like, ‘I think they should go to London,’” Rosenhan said, “because she’s a travel blogger, and she knows where people typically go.”
Ultimately, they chose 12 locations — Florence and London, along with Porto, Portugal; Iceland; Bergen, Norway; Denmark; The Netherlands; Prague, Czech Republic; Athens; the Adriatic; Switzerland, and finally Paris.
As Caffee’s twin wrote on Instagram last week, several of those stops were places Caffee once personally recommended to Buskirk years ago, when Buskirk — nervous about traveling to Europe with her kids — asked her sister for advice.
“My sister’s motto has always been, take the trip. Kids are kids where ever you are. They can have tantrums, bad attitudes, and go through hard stages… so you might as well be somewhere cool while you’re experiencing them,” Buskirk wrote, celebrating the book’s release.
The illustrations take some innocent geographical liberties, like putting the Houses of Parliament in London next to the Abbey Road crosswalk. Each spread reflected what Caffee and Rosenhan learned while traveling with their children.
“It’s always a park, a cafe, a museum, and something that I want to do,” she said. “Elise was so on these, on every page — ‘We need to have food, we need to have design, we need to have something fun’ — so every single page has those elements.”
Each spread also includes a seek-and-find element, like “Where’s Waldo?”, with little items from each place Pippa and Poppy visit. That’s something they were working on when Caffee died.
“I did my best, but I’m always, like, ‘Sorry they’re not as good as they would have been if Elise was the one writing them,’” Rosenhan said.
The last time Rosenhan heard from Caffee, she had sent her writing partner an image of Pippa and Poppy in their Norwegian ski clothes. “Her last text to me was, ‘Good job,’” Rosenhan said.
Continuing with Jumelle Press without Caffee has been challenging, Rosenhan said. “It was like magic working together,” she said. “When you’re a creative, you like to think of the big picture and you like to create stories. It’s easy not to be taken seriously. … Elise always saw what I considered my deficits as irrelevant, and she valued my assets.”
Jumelle has several books in the pipeline. Next is “A Promised Vengeance,” a young-adult variation on “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Utah author Sara B. Larson (who’s written the “Defy” trilogy, the “Dark Breaks the Dawn” books and the “Sisters of Shadow and Light” books).
Late next spring, the company is releasing a children’s book by Abby Cox, Utah’s first lady, about Jennie Kearns, the widow of silver magnate Thomas Kearns who donated the Kearns family home to the state of Utah, eventually becoming what’s now the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City.
Like twins, Rosenhan said, she and Caffee “were very well balanced. … Together, we formed an excellent, really an impeccable, partnership.”
The book’s text was about two-thirds written when Caffee died, with some initial illustrations sketched out. Rosenhan said that if Caffee saw the finished product, “I think she’d be very proud of it. I think she would say, ‘Good job.’”
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