Put your best foot forward and reach for the sky - children’s book author Allison Stoutland is signing books Saturday at the MSU Bookstore.

Stoutland, who is married to MSU offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, will sign copies of “Reach For the Sky” and “Put Your Best Foot Forward” from 11 a.m. to noon. The signing is the unofficial kickoff of Children’s Book Week.

Stoutland did a reading Thursday at Wardcliff Elementary, 5150 Wardcliff Drive.

“Her books are very appealing to children,” said Jan Fuzak, reading consultant at Wardcliff. “Kids can relate to those kinds of things.”

The children responded well to Stoutland, Fuzak said.

“She really just related well to the kids,” she said. “I really can’t say enough about her.”

The book signing coincides with MSU’s football game against Purdue, which starts at 1 p.m.

“When we moved here I thought it would be a really great idea to do a book signing the day of a home football game,” Stoutland said.

The MSU Bookstore wanted to bring children’s authors into the bookstore, especially on a football Saturday, said Cathy McGill, trade coordinator at the bookstore located in the basement of the International Center. The bookstore wanted to do something for the children who come into the store and not just the adults, she said.

Stoutland, a former kindergarten teacher, always wanted to write children’s books. She said it just seemed like the next step from being a teacher. Once she became a mother and stayed home with her children, writing was a perfect professional outlet for her, she said.

During her teaching years, Stoutland saved the lessons she taught her students on gum wrappers. But their impact never hit Stoutland until a student told her how he used one of her lessons.

Years after he had been in her class, a former student told Stoutland how he had used the “turtle lesson” - that sometimes you have to protect yourself.

“All I could think was, ‘Wow,’” she said.

Those lessons later became “Reach For the Sky” and “Put Your Best Foot Forward.”

“Put Your Best Foot Forward” was published in August.

It contains 14 “uplifting, happy lessons learned from nature,” she said. “Lessons about really basic things that people see every day.”

Cathy Hofher illustrated both books. The two met in Syracuse, N.Y., where their husbands were both football coaches.

“As soon as I met her, I knew it was meant to happen,” Stoutland said.

The pair had problems getting their book published because publishers wanted to use their own illustrators. But the duo was determined to stay together, so they started Inch by Inch Publications.

“There was a certain way Cathy and I envisioned our book,” Stoutland said. “I had seen what Cathy’s work did to my words.