MONROE — The drawings scattered on 8-year-old Beckett Smith’s drawing table are more than just doodles — they’re stories.

Some are even stapled together in books, depicting elaborate scenes with aliens, battles, planes and ships.  

While in the car with his mother, Dr. Lara Salyer Smith, he came up with the idea of a person whose teeth would change depending on what feelings they were experiencing. 

“We wanted to make it a book,” Smith said. “I thought we probably wouldn’t because we probably wouldn’t have time.”

Salyer Smith pursued her son’s idea anyway. She asked a colleague who had published a children’s book about how to organize the project, and from there she was connected with Halo Publishing International. She said the publisher thought the book was great because it could be used in hospitals and other places where children might be scared or have trouble coping with their feelings.

A few months later, Smith’s book, “The Colorful Teeth,” made its way online to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 

The story features a boy named William who was cursed by a witch, causing his teeth to change colors that reflected his feelings. Smith said the main message from the book is that it’s OK to have feelings of any kind.

In the early stages of the book, Smith, a second-grader at St. Victor School, would sit in bed and dictate the story to his mother who typed away. Salyer Smith, an amateur artist, made the illustrations for the book under Smith’s direction.  

He said he had his mother change several of the details, for example, what William’s classroom and bedroom looked like. The original illustrations, now filled with eraser marks, are something Salyer Smith hopes to have framed.

“You should wait until the year 3000,” Smith joked. “Then they’ll be worth a fortune.”

He has plans to publish again, but this time he wants to make an activity book for children and hopes to illustrate it as well. Smith said he doesn’t have a particular strategy for coming up with ideas — he just thinks of them and writes them down on paper. He added that he enjoys drawing because he can go down whatever path he chooses.

“You can add all the stuff you want,” Smith said. “Instead of having someone draw it for you, you can control everything about it.”

Growing up reading the Richard Scary books, Salyer Smith said she always enjoyed finding the spiders hidden throughout the pages. She suggested the idea to Smith — who decided it would be best to hide teeth throughout his book.

Salyer Smith said her son was very much a part of the publishing process the entire time, including phone calls with the publisher. Smith got to see the changes made to his book when it was edited down and when some of the words were replaced. 

“At first it was kind of scary,” Smith said. “I was worried they would think it wasn’t good enough to publish.”

This was the duo’s first time ever publishing anything. Salyer Smith said she has always been creative — enjoying her clarinet, painting and drawing. At her office on the Square, Health Innate, Salyer Smith said her walls are decorated with some of her artwork. 

The entire family enjoys creating, including Salyer Smith’s other children, Emery, 13, and Owen, 15, and their father, CJ Smith, a doctor at Monroe Clinic.

“He can draw a banana really good,” Smith said of his father.

Smith said he hopes to either be an author or a soccer player when he grows up, but if he had to pick one, he would choose to be an author.