There's an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Only when you become a mother can you understand how true that saying is. What mom hasn't said to herself, "Why doesn't someone come up with a way to make this task easier?" Some moms uttered those words and followed them up with the statement "I am that someone!" They saw glaring gaps in the seemingly saturated baby marketplace and leaped on them. Here are a few of their stories.

a passion for purple

Jill Morgan's passion for children's literature began when she was a little girl, listening to her father read Mr. Pine's Purple House by Leonard Kessler and waiting eagerly for her favorite pictures. Little did she realize that the book would one day change her life.

Fast-forward 35 years to Morgan all grown-up and living in Keller with a husband a three children of her own. Having left her job as a software engineer to raise her kids, she started collecting out-of-print children's books and reselling them via the Internet. Hard-to-find books that may have sold for less than $2 when they were first published decades ago were selling for hundreds of dollars. One of these was Mr. Pine's Purple House.

"When Mr. Pine hit the price of $300 I decided to contact the author and see if he would let me reprint it," Morgan recounts. "I felt that $300 was outrageous for that story. I also knew that a book purchased for that price would never end up in a child's hands." With Kessler's wholehearted approval, Mr. Pine was resurrected for a new generation of young readers and Morgan's career as a book publisher began. She named her new venture Purple House Press.

Luckily for Morgan, she wasn't the only one with fond memories of the book. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos declared it his childhood favorite, sales soared at the online bookstore. Morgan has since reprinted another Mr. Pine book, Mr. Pine's Mixed-up Signs, and plans are under way to bring back a third one. Meanwhile Kessler is at work on a new Mr. Pine story.

In adition to the Mr. Pine books, Morgan has published 14 other titles, among them Bertrand Brinley's The Mad Scientists' Club series, TWIG by Caldecott Medal winner Elizabeth Orton Jones, and Miss Twiggley's Tree by Dorothea Warren Fox. Four more books will be released this spring, including two by Astrid Lingren, Mio, My Son and The Brothers Lionheart.

Morgan runs the publishing business out of her home, storing part of her inventory in the garage. Producing, marketing and shipping all those books (more than 50,000 thus far) is a big job. With help from her husband, Ray, who handles the accounting and invoicing, Morgan works seven days a week, often late into the night. "We eat out a lot," she admits. But her schedule is flexible enough to allow plenty of time with her children, who remain her priority.

One of the rewards of her new career is the warm feedback she gets from parents thrilled to share favorite childhood stories with their own children. Although her books were written for the 3-to-12-year-old crowd, many of them are given as gifts to grown-ups who, like Morgan, recall the joy of hearing a beloved story one more time.