Korey Outerbridge was in Iraq when the idea came to him: He needed to write a children’s book. “We had phone tents when we deployed, for soldiers to call back to the states,“ Outerbridge said. Crossword-puzzle and race-car magazines lay scattered about the phone tents. Soldiers would thumb through them while they waited to contact to their families, the 29-year-old Newport News native recalled.

Korey Outerbridge was in Iraq when the idea came to him: He needed to write a children’s book. “We had phone tents when we deployed, for soldiers to call back to the states,“ Outerbridge said. Crossword-puzzle and race-car magazines lay scattered about the phone tents. Soldiers would thumb through them while they waited to contact to their families, the 29-year-old Newport News native recalled.