VANCOUVER, Wash. — Quin Zahniser is a typical 12-year-old who loves playing soccer, hanging out with his friends and playing his favorite video games.
"Fifa '22, Forza and Minecraft," Quin says.
He is also an author of a new children's book about his life growing up with a cleft lip and palate. Cleft lip and palate are birth defects that occur when a baby's lip or mouth do not form properly during pregnancy, and according to his parents, Quin was born with an extreme case.
"We started thinking about it when I was 9, a couple days after my surgery." he said.
After one of the five surgeries he's had since birth, Quin says he was sitting in his room and started to write. What he had felt, endured and gone through over the past nine years spilled out onto paper. He eventually turned it into a 28 page book called Smile^z.
Quin's multiple surgeries, dental procedures and speech therapy help tell his story.
"I really like it because it tells everybody what cleft is and it explains everything about it."
The book also touches on the personal side of how his cleft lip has impacted his life. One page in the book reads, "When I was 8, I asked the doctor 'When are you going to fix my nose again. It's crooked and people tease me.'"
"I got bullied a lot, so I didn't really feel good," Quin said.
That bullying helped shape the message of book. His parents, Mike and Kelly have always tried to reassure him along the way.
"(Mike) always tells Quin," Quin's mom Kelly said, "'You were born with your lip just like everybody was born with their lip' and that's the message that (Mike) tries to tell Quin to tell the other children so that they can understand we all look different, but we're all here and we're all the same and we're all trying to get through life."
That is the main message written in just the first page of the book.
"Even though we all look different, we should all be treated the same."
Quin said writing the book "was pretty exciting."
"It was more for him to understand what he went through and then as we progressed through it, very little is edited from his original writing," Quin's dad, Mike Zahniser, said.
Quin hopes his book helps other children or parents of children born with a cleft lip understand what he went through and what lies ahead.
For every book sold, Quin will donate a book to a child born with cleft lip.
Mike estimated that they've sold close to 200 in the first few weeks since the book was released, but won't know the full amount until after the first month of sales are complete.