Marlee Kostiner founded Garden Wolf Publishing House to create the books she wished she’d had as a kid: beautifully illustrated, compelling stories that treat kids’ inner lives as worth taking seriously—with real tools built in for the parents, caregivers and educators guiding them through it.
Marlee is an award-winning journalist, writer, editor and researcher, and a passionate advocate for neurodiversity inclusion and mental health support. Everything she’s learned raising two kids and researching child psychology and parenting methodology shaped her first book, NaMOOste—and still shapes everything Garden Wolf publishes today.
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”Aristotle
Thanks for reading—I’m glad you’re here. I want to go a little deeper into why Garden Wolf exists, because the reasons matter more to me than most business origin stories probably should.
I’ve had a big imagination since I was a kid, filling journals and notebooks my parents still have stashed away somewhere. Encouragement from my parents and a few great English teachers built my confidence, but when I was finishing high school, I chose journalism over creative writing—it felt more practical. It turned out to be a perfect fit anyway: I discovered I loved research and editing almost as much as making up stories.
I spent most of my career as an editor. I loved the work, but a few years in, I realized I’d stopped writing altogether. I told myself I just didn’t enjoy it anymore. I think, if I’m being honest with myself, I was scared I wasn’t good enough.
The pandemic forced the question. I’d spent five years building a women’s lifestyle site from the ground up as editor-in-chief—in a lot of ways, my dream job, with people who trusted and believed in me. But working 9-to-5 with two young kids at home during COVID changed things. I burned out fast and realized I needed control over my own schedule if I wanted to actually be present for my family. So I left, and started my own editorial consulting company, planning to keep doing what I’d always done: strategy, development, editing. Instead, new clients kept asking me to write for them. Having started a new business, I had to say yes to any opportunity, even if it wasn’t what I’d pictured myself doing. I rediscovered my love of writing, and got my confidence back along the way.
That confidence also gave me the push to finally do something I’d been thinking about for a while: publish my own children’s book. I could have self-published it quickly and cheaply, but I wanted the finished product to reflect real professionalism—to sit on a shelf next to traditionally published books and hold its own. I’m a perfectionist, and once I commit to something, I go all the way. So I built Garden Wolf Publishing House to do it properly, with the bonus stamp of credibility you get with a publisher’s logo on the back of the book.
For a while, Garden Wolf was supposed to be a home for all of my own book ideas. But since publishing my first book, NaMOOste, I haven’t had time to publish any more of my own books. Because somewhere along the way, this business found its real purpose: publishing children’s books for other people, and helping bring their passions and expertise to life.
Most of the people I work with now are psychologists, psychiatrists, scientists, educators and nonprofits—but really, I work with people who have expertise, lived experience, and passion to say something that matters. I love working with people who aren’t professional writers, and who can’t find a place within the traditional publishing model. I still hold the same standard I started with: professionalism, credibility, quality and impact are paramount. I just apply it to other people’s dreams now, and help make them real.
I never imagined myself here, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. I get to learn from incredibly inspiring individuals from all walks of life, and know I’m helping them create something that will make a real impact on kids and families. I pinch myself daily that I get to do work that’s at once creative, meaningful and important. I’ve never felt more grateful and fulfilled; I’m so fortunate to do work I love and believe in every single day.
The mission of Garden Wolf Publishing House is rooted in mental health and social-emotional learning, because it’s personal. After a string of hard years in my late teens and 20s—depression, a real crisis of confidence—therapy changed my life. I don’t think of mental health as something to fix once and move on from. It’s like food: you don’t eat one good meal and call it done. Both body and mind need daily nourishment.
My first real experience with therapy was hypnotherapy as a teenager, for emetophobia—a phobia of vomiting. It helped, but it’s still something I struggle with to this day.
It resurfaced hard in my early 20s at university, and that’s when I tried cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for the first time. My therapist said we needed to lower my baseline anxiety before we could touch the phobia directly. That’s also when I first learned I had anxiety—I’d never had a word for what I was feeling before.
I’ve felt misunderstood and unseen for most of my life, and for a long time I carried a lot of shame about that—because on paper, I had a privileged childhood and a good life. I couldn’t explain the disconnect except to assume I was ungrateful. That started to shift in my late 20s, when I became a mom and learned a lot of new things about myself.
The transition into motherhood nearly broke me. The journalist in me always needs to find answers, so I started searching. A friend suggested I read Scattered Minds by Gabor Maté, and that was a pivotal decision in my life. Halfway through the book, so many disjointed pieces of my life started to fit together like puzzle pieces—I was sure I had ADHD. Though I was tested at 7 years old (there were signs early on), I learned that it was likely missed. I suspected I had inattentive type, a presentation that was largely unknown when I was first tested, decades earlier.
At 28, with an 18-month-old at home, I went through full psychological testing. It came back showing extreme anxiety, moderate depression, and ADHD that was borderline enough that different tests disagreed on it.
The testing psychologist referred me to ADHD coaching with Lynda Hoffman, which turned out to be one of the most impactful decisions of my life. For the first time, someone explained how my brain actually works—and I felt seen in a way I never had. Two years in, I finally understood the real source of my struggles with time, memory, motivation and organization, and could find tools that actually fit.
Most importantly, I got a lot kinder to myself.
Becoming a mother handed me a new hyperfocus: researching how mental health moves through parents, kids and the family as a whole. It started when my son Parker was born in 2015, and continued when my son Hudson came along in 2019—and it hasn’t let up since.
Learning never stops in our house, for any of the four of us—it’s just part of who we are as a family. My kids have faced their own challenges too, and those experiences directly shape the kind of books I want Garden Wolf to publish: ones that take kids’ emotional lives seriously. Child psychology and parenting research still fascinate me endlessly, especially anything that builds emotional intelligence, empathy and resilience. That’s the real raison d’être behind Garden Wolf Publishing House.
Whether you have a question, an idea, or just want to say hi—reach out. I read every message myself.