East Hartford basketball coach ‘writing the book' on setting a positive example

You know the saying: don’t judge a book by its cover.

“Don’t let the tattoos fool you,” Zoe Mercado said of her high school basketball coach. “He’s a big softy.”

That may be tough for East Hartford girls’ basketball head coach John Myette to overcome on a hard practice day. His latest project hasn’t helped either.

See, Myette isn’t just a basketball coach, he’s added children’s book author to his resume, too.

“It’s so cute,” said senior Comfort Boateng, who said she read it to her younger cousin recently.

“It came from a night where I was, as a parent, as a father, I was worried,” Myette said. “Thinking about what my daughter's future was going to look like, how can I prepare her?... If you don't have time or money, what’s the best thing you can give a kid, and it's my words.”

Those words for his 6-year-old daughter, Skylar. She is the inspiration for every page of the book, from the characters to the title: "The World is in Your Sky."

“What's great about the poem is it's all positive affirmations, self-empowerment, self-esteem,” Myette said. “Seeing her as such a young girl walk like she's six feet tall because she now has a positive association with this book.”

The positivity extends from there: Myette, a school social worker, said he reached out to one of his former students to help him with the illustrations. He has kept the book and basketball mostly separate, but the lessons cross over from page to practice.

“There is little moments of trials and tribulations,” Myette said. “And you'll see the character…she has to figure out how to overcome those moments and it’s the same thing in basketball when you make a mistake, what are you going to do? Are you going to put your head down or are you going to get back?”

So if you’re going to judge any book by its cover, at least pick the one he wrote.

“Every day I ask my daughter, I say ‘What three things are you?’ And she goes ‘I'm strong, smart and beautiful,'" Myette said. “There's one page in the book that the character says ‘I'm strong, smart and beautiful’...Just a reminder to every little girl or any kid that reads the book that those three things are all you need.”