Danny Ellis has watched his bedtime stories come to life in a series of books he now creates with his mother, Nata Ellis.

“Danny the Mighty Diver was a story that I started telling him at night,” Nata said. “He wasn’t even five at that time…He had a surgery scheduled for December and he wanted a story but he didn’t want a book. He wanted something to sooth him during surgery, so I came up with the story Danny the Mighty Diver.”

That story has since grown into a children’s book series, now available on Amazon and at the Swampscott Public Library. Danny, 7, has illustrated and written the books with his mom, expanding on the stories Nata tells him each night.

Last year, Danny “started experimenting with a lot of different technologies, using Canva, using Photoshop, using ChatGPT.”

“Out of the blue, he started to come up with these very, very cool images,” Nata said. “One day he was playing around, and he turned back to me and he’s like, ‘Mommy here is Danny the Mighty Diver.’ He created the cover.”

A self-professed bookworm who especially enjoys encyclopedias, Danny shared that he prompted the app to generate an image of a boy, a shark, and a whale.

In the first book, Danny the Mighty Diver, Danny talks with sea creatures and explores the ocean with his best friends, Willy the Whale and Bruce the Shark. On a surprise family trip to Costa Rica, he sets sail on his boat to navigate the vast ocean and the challenges it brings.

“The concept behind the book was his creation, kind of playing with AI and campaign up with the scenes,” Nata said, adding that the first story was illustrated by an outside party.

Since then, the mother-and-son duo have written and illustrated the series entirely on their own.

“We have a little framework that we’ve developed,” Nata said. “It’s based on the story that I tell him at night.” 

The second book, Danny the Mighty Diver and the Secret of the Ocean Letter, follows the family on a vacation to Mexico. Joined by their loyal dog Whooffie, and with Willy and Bruce returning, the group works to uncover the origins of a mysterious letter covered in strange symbols. Along the way, they help a young dolphin in distress, protect the ocean and expose poachers behind the trouble.

The third installment, Danny the Mighty Diver: The Treasure of Turtle Bay, follows Danny to Longboat Key, where he visits his Mimi and discovers a mysterious bottle in the sand. With help from his ocean friends, he dives to uncover the treasure and protect marine life.

Next comes Danny the Mighty Diver: Ghosts of the Deep, a Halloween-themed adventure. Danny hears the ancient whale songs of the sea, sounds that seem ghostly at first but turn out to be wisdom lost for centuries.

The most recent book, Danny the Mighty Diver: Journey Through Winter Holidays, takes Danny and his friends through snowy landscapes and holiday celebrations around the world, from a Three Kings’ Day parade in Spain to Israel for the Festival of Lights and Istanbul for Ramadan and Eid traditions.

“Danny wanted to write about different cultures,” Nata said, adding that her son wanted to give the book as a holiday gift to his teachers and classmates.

More stories are already in the works.

“Now his friends want to be in the books,” Nata said. “We have quite a few friends that demanded to be in a story, and we have concepts for three books but we’ll see how many we will end up doing.”

And Danny said he plans to continue to write, saying he will continue to be an author “until I’m 25 and then I’m going to be a marine biologist.”