Tiffany Rosenhan says that she and Elise Caffee met over Denmark.
Caffee, who ran the Instagram account 3KidsTravel, reached out to Rosenhan in a DM to ask for travel tips. Rosenhan, author of the YA novel “Girl from Nowhere,” had just returned from a trip to Denmark with her daughters, and Caffee was also a mother of young daughters at the time.
Little did either of them know that that Instagram message eventually would turn into both a friendship and partnership — a partnership that led them to co-found a publishing company, Jumelle Press, and, in a somewhat full-circle moment, write and publish a children’s book together about two young girls who travel across Europe.
They also never could have foreseen the events of earlier this year, when Caffee tragically died following an accident in Mexico in March, leaving behind her husband and three daughters.
But now, months after Caffee’s death, the book that she and Rosenhan wrote together has been published. “Pippa and Poppy’s European Adventure,” a children’s picture book that’s illustrated by Heather Tycksen, was released Tuesday, and Rosenhan says she believes the book reflects Caffee’s legacy.
“I’m really proud of it, and I hope people like it, but mostly I hope it helps cement her legacy in what she preached,” Rosenhan told the Deseret News. “She practiced what she preached.”
Brought together by travel — and twinhood
Apart from their love of travel, Rosenhan and Caffee had another unique characteristic in common — they were both identical twins.
So when Rosenhan got the idea to write a children’s picture book about twin girls who travel together, she reached out to Caffee for help.
By this point, they had moved beyond Instagram messages and become friends, often meeting up for workout classes or to go hiking together. So it wasn’t a stretch to begin meeting regularly to work on a book, too.
But while Rosenhan knew Caffee as a travel blogger, making her a natural fit to co-write “Pippa and Poppy,” she didn’t realize until much later that Caffee also had experience working in the publishing industry — an industry that, independently, Rosenhan had begun to develop an interest in.
Rosenhan’s novel “Girl from Nowhere” was published in 2020, but progress on the YA spy thriller’s sequel had stalled while her husband went through some health challenges. He had suffered a stroke, resulting in brain trauma and epilepsy, and Rosenhan essentially became a full-time caregiver.
Her husband has since recovered, but it was a long road to get there — he had to relearn many basic functions, including reading, writing and even talking. While Rosenhan cared for her husband and put writing on pause, she found other ways to stay involved in the book industry, including speaking about writing at schools and other events, as well as consulting and editorial work. This work gave her a new perspective, and she began “falling in love with the process of building a book from the ground up.”
When a friend, Maria Lichty, a popular food blogger, told Rosenhan that she was interested in publishing a new cookbook, Rosenhan told her, “I’ll publish your book.”
After her conversation with Lichty, Rosenhan reached out to Caffee and asked, “Hey, what if instead of doing ‘Pippa and Poppy,’ we start a publishing company?”
“OK, sure,” Caffee replied, according to Rosenhan.
And Jumelle Press — named for, fittingly, the French word for “twin” — was born.
Bringing ‘Pippa and Poppy’ to life
As it turned out, starting Jumelle Press wasn’t an either/or proposition with writing “Pippa and Poppy” — they did both.
“Pippa and Poppy’s European Adventure,” which was released Tuesday, is a “Where’s Waldo?”-style adventure, full of clever rhymes and watercolor illustrations that capture the spirit of cities across Europe.
The idea for the book originated with Rosenhan, who said that she had a vision of “these two identical twins that kind of see the world,” with inspiration coming from photos of her daughters when they were young and “would still wear hairbows.”
One of the first lines that Rosenhan came up with for the book was inspired by a trip to Florence with her daughters: “While Pippa climbs to the top of the Duomo, Poppy waits below licking lemon gelato.”
But Pippa and Poppy were also inspired by Rosenhan’s relationship with her twin sister. “Pippa’s like the hard-working one and Poppy is the one who’s like, I’m going to chill,” Rosenhan said, joking that her sister was more like Pippa while Rosenhan was more like Poppy.
As Caffee and Rosenhan worked together to flesh out the book, they decided to only have Pippa and Poppy travel to cities or countries that they had visited themselves, including London, Amsterdam, Athens and Paris. And Caffee made sure to organize the book so that it would make “geographic sense” as a route that the two girls would travel.
While Rosenhan took charge of more of the creative elements of the book, including working with the illustrator, Tycksen, on the visual style, Caffee was more involved with the book’s structure, as well as well keeping on top of deadlines and making sure things worked as a whole.
“She kind of allowed my creative expression to go crazy, and she’d kind of like harness it and keep everything on track,” Rosenhan said.
They had originally planned for Caffee to write travel tips to include at the end of the book, but that wasn’t finished before Caffee’s death. Instead, Rosenhan worked with Caffee’s twin sister to come up with travel tips for families for the book.
But even after Caffee’s death, Rosenhan said she still felt her influence as they readied the book for publication.
“It feels like magic it got here,” Rosenhan said of “Pippa and Poppy.” “I say (Elise) was like sprinkling magic from heaven, cause I have no idea how I got these books to press without her.”
‘Take the trip’
Caffee’s death in March was unexpected, coming as the result of a car accident while she and her husband, Dan, were traveling in Mexico. She suffered severe burns and was flown back to Salt Lake City to be treated at the University of Utah Burn Center, but ultimately died from her injuries.
Following her tragic death, a hashtag began circulating on social media in her honor: “Take the trip.”
Rosenhan says that phrase reflects Caffee’s philosophy, both on parenting and on life in general: “Explore, see the world, try new things” — even starting a publishing company. Caffee’s perspective was, “Why not try?” Rosenhan said.
That perspective has carried on in Caffee’s family, with her husband and three daughters. In the weeks before her death, Caffee had been planning a family trip to Egypt — and it was scheduled for just three weeks after her death took place. Although it was unusual for her, Caffee had planned out this particular trip in great detail, even leaving behind an entire binder full of itineraries and travel information, Rosenhan said.
Dan Caffee’s first inclination was to cancel the trip, according to Rosenhan. But after finding the binder and seeing the level of care that Elise had put into the trip, the family ultimately decided to go.
“It’s like a gift that she left them,” Rosenhan said. “Seeing them take that trip was just healing for so many people. I mean, they have a life of recovery ahead of them, but I will say, in that moment, it was incredibly healing.”
In her work as a travel blogger, Caffee emphasized the importance of traveling as a family — even with young children. But for Caffee, the trip itself was always secondary to the time spent together as a family, according to Rosenhan.
“Maybe that means going to Egypt, maybe it means going to Zion National Park,” she said. “But getting away from your environment and being together as a family was always her emphasis.”
Though traveling with young children was difficult, Caffee prioritized taking those trips and making those memories with her family.
“We don’t know when our time is, and Elise could’ve waited till her kids were older (to travel), maybe a lot easier, and she didn’t,” Rosenhan said. “And if she had waited, she would not have built those memories with her children. … They built a family culture around travel. And that’s a legacy all three of her daughters want to carry forward, is this commitment to traveling and being good global citizens.”
The future of Jumelle Press — and ‘Pippa and Poppy’
The future is still a little hazy for Rosenhan, who says that the logistics of the work at Jumelle Press will likely have to change because Caffee is “irreplaceable,” adding that they’d often joke that “it took, like, four people to do (Elise’s) job.”
But for now, Jumelle Press, which has already published six books (including “Pippa and Poppy” and Lichty’s cookbook, “Let’s Eat Cookies”), has two more books on the way: a romantasy novel by Utah author Sara B. Larson, which will be released Oct. 28, and a children’s picture book by Utah first lady Abby Cox that’s expected sometime in the spring.
As for Rosenhan herself, she’s finishing up the sequel to “Girl From Nowhere” and getting it ready for publication, as well as working on her first adult novel, which she says will be about her great-grandmother.
She also says that a sequel to “Pippa and Poppy” may be possible.
In the meantime, keeping Jumelle Press running is important to Rosenhan, though she acknowledges there are challenges.
“None of this is easy,” she said. “From a practical perspective to an emotional perspective, it’s not easy. But I hope I can make it work and keep (Elise’s) legacy alive.”
Rosenhan says that as she moves forward, she’ll still carry with her the memories of building Jumelle Press with Caffee.
“Having a partnership like that is magic, and it’s rare, and I want to just, like, wrap it up in a bow and cherish it forever.”