With a new trading card series, Carly Thaggard hopes to remind children that the greatest victories are not over one another, but within themselves.

Carrie Jones

just now

SOUTHWEST HARBOR—In the forest of noble animals that Southwest Harbor’s Carly Thaggard has created, a raccoon can be confident in her workshop and shy in a crowd. A caribou with a quick temper learns the patience that does not come naturally. An otter, who is forever finding the silly in things, discovers that even laughter requires a measure of kindness. And a moose, large enough to command a room, still feels small inside.

These animals in all their beautiful nuance are the sort of creatures children might recognize. Not necesarrily because they live in the woods of Mount Desert Island, Maine, but because, in their struggles and complexity and growth, they look a little like the children themselves.

Thaggard, a local mother and founder of Mighty Effort, has brought these animals together in Noble Animals, a newly released trading card series designed to do something a little different from the cards that have long captured the imaginations of children.

The cards celebrate the quiet and often difficult work of becoming a better person.

There is courage in the cards and in Thaggard’s business.

It’s not just courage though. It’s kindness, integrity, patience, and resilience. It’s the understanding that growing up, like growing stronger, is rarely comfortable.

“I saw the most popular trading card sets encouraging and celebrating domination over and destruction of the other,” Thaggard said. “As a mom, I spend every moment trying to instill good morals and foster my children’s inner qualities, and it’s discouraging when the most popular things promote the opposite.”

She wanted something her own children could hold in their hands, something that might make the lessons parents spend a lifetime trying to teach a little more approachable.

What she could not find, she decided, she would make.

“My motivation is simply a humble effort to try to make the world a better place. To give parents and kids a fun and engaging way to develop a healthy growth mindset and the virtues they need to navigate life and relationships,” Thaggard said. “I want children to learn from an early age that effort is praiseworthy; it’s about progress, not perfection. That when we make mistakes, when we fail, when we struggle, that’s so good! It means we are growing. It means parts of ourselves are strengthening,” Thaggard said.

The idea began modestly with hand-drawn fairies created for her children over a holiday. Each fairy carried a message encouraging the practice of a virtue. The drawings took roughly six hours apiece. Then her husband introduced her to artificial intelligence image-generation tools, and a new world opened.

Thaggard began learning. She watched YouTube tutorials late into the night, researching trading cards, studying virtues and figuring out how to turn an idea into a business. She first developed a collection of fairy cards, but she found herself wrestling with a question of representation. Fairies, she felt, were too close to human beings. It was difficult to create a diverse cast without the possibility of leaving someone out.

Animals offered another way.

There was something more universal about a forest full of creatures, each with its own personality and its own struggles. A beaver in overalls and a tool belt could be industrious. A moose could be insecure. An otter could be funny and still have some growing to do.

The animals would be dressed like people and their stories would belong to everybody.

The first collection settled into a North American forest, an ecosystem Thaggard researched carefully after realizing that an elephant and a mouse sharing the same woodland did not quite make sense. The forest became the beginning of a larger vision, one that might eventually stretch into other ecosystems.

Her children became part of the process, offering opinions about their favorite animals and watching the characters take shape.

Soon, the animals were no longer just drawings.

During summer outings on lakes and hikes around Acadia National Park, Thaggard’s children began spotting creatures in the wild and calling them by their Noble Animals names. An eagle became Aria. A deer became Faye. The characters had crossed the distance between a trading card and a child’s imagination.

For Thaggard, that was part of the point.

The series includes 24 virtues and roughly 80 scenarios, each designed to approach a lesson from a different angle. It is one thing to tell a child to be kind. It is another to give that child a story about a character struggling to be kind to someone he does not particularly like.

It is easy to be patient when nothing tests us, Thaggard said. It is harder when the world has other plans.

She wants children to understand that the difficult moments are not necessarily the moments when they are failing. Sometimes those are the moments when they are growing.

You can show that lesson through image and story and imagination.

“Much like building physical strength, developing our inner qualities takes effort, repetition, and being challenged. It’s easy to be kind to someone you like; it takes practice to be kind to someone you disagree with. It’s easy to be patient when nothing tests us, but we only become more patient from being tested. We develop courage thanks to fear or resilience because of setbacks. I want kids to know that every hard moment is an opportunity to become wiser, stronger, more compassionate. And when those moments come, I want them to remember that they have a toolbox of virtues to draw from. They can pause and ask themselves: What tool do I need right now? Is it justice? Integrity? Mindfulness? Respect? Or perhaps a combination of tools—a little kindness paired with a little assertiveness,” she said.

The philosophy is woven through the project. Thaggard draws inspiration from the Baha’i Faith, including the belief that character is a precious thing and that the betterment of the world begins with good deeds and good conduct.

She cites two that are core to the project.

“Children are the most precious treasure a community can possess, for in them are the promise and guarantee of the future. They bear the seeds of the character of future society which is largely shaped by what the adults constituting the community do or fail to do with respect to children. They are a trust no community can neglect with impunity. An all-embracing love of children, the manner of treating them, the quality of attention shown them, the spirit of adult behavior toward them – – these are all among the vital aspects of the requisite attitude.” — Universal House of Justice

“The light of a good character surpasseth the light of the sun.” — Bahá’u’lláh

She describes the virtues as tools children can carry into their lives.

When a difficult moment happens, a child could possibly pause and ask what tool they need right now?

It could be justice, integrity, or mindfulness. It could maybe be respect? Progress is more important than perfection.

During the process, Thaggard said that she found herself needing those lessons as much as the children she hoped to reach.

As she struggled to build Mighty Effort, she began drawing strength from the stories she was writing. The work of creating a business was testing her patience, her confidence, and her willingness to keep going when things did not come easily. That’s a pretty normal thing.

“It’s pretty humbling to create a business whose message, celebrating effort and progress over perfection, deeply tests the very thing I struggle with most,” she said. “Turns out I gotta walk the walk if I’m going to talk the talk.”

There is so much honesty there. The woman who is making the cards isn’t standing outside the struggle, handing down instructions. She is right there in it, too.

The name Mighty Effort carries that idea. Its logo, ME/WE, reflects Thaggard’s belief that the work a person does to improve themselves can ripple outward. There is the individual effort, the ME, and the collective good, the WE. One person’s growth, she believes, can benefit the people around them.

The trading card format carries that message in a different way than a lesson that’s delivered from a parent’s chair at the kitchen table or during a car ride.

Cards can be slipped into pockets. They can be sorted, collected, and traded. Children can return to them, and then the conversations can happen between children, not only between adults and the young people they are trying to guide.

Thaggard has already seen groups begin to form around the characters, with children influencing one another in positive ways.

She hopes the cards will travel beyond Southwest Harbor, beyond Maine, even beyond the first forest. She imagines families and friends connecting over the stories, finding in the animals a way to talk about the struggles that make us human.

“I want children to understand that they are created Noble, with goodness already within them, and that through effort, struggle, and experience, they become Illumined, just like the Noble Animals. Like the examples we see in nature, hardship can strengthen us: wind helps trees develop deeper roots, and pressure transforms carbon into diamonds. Growth isn’t comfortable, and its purpose isn’t always clear in the moment, but even our hardest experiences can help us develop the qualities we need to navigate life,” Thaggard said.

She has dreams and hopes, too.

“I dream of a generation that understands real strength isn’t about dominating others, but about striving for excellence alongside one another. A generation that encourages each other to refine their inner gems, celebrates each other’s growth, appreciates differences, and realizes life is just a vehicle for our development. I hope Noble Animals reaches all around the world and provides a fun, engaging way for children, friends, and families to connect over the meaningful stories, to inspire conversations, and ultimately to appreciate the struggle of growth—a message that resonates with adults just as deeply as it does with children,” she said.

In a world that places so much emphasis on appearances, she wonders what might happen if children learned to place greater value on what they cultivate within.

“My hope is that children will learn that all these qualities are already inside of them; they are revealed through education, strengthened through practice, and that the effort is the achievement,” Thaggard said.

What if strength wasn’t measured by how thoroughly one person could defeat another, but by how much courage it took to be kind? What if failure were not something to hide, but a necessary part of becoming wiser?

Thaggard has made a forest full of characters who are still working on those answers, and she hopes that somewhere, someday, a child facing a hard moment will remember a favorite animal and find the courage to try again.

That, she said, would mean everything.

“When one of us grows,” she said, “we all gain.”

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TO LEARN MORE

www.mightyeffort.com

If you are local to MDI, there are no order minimums and free arranged pickup or delivery. Submit order through the site’s contact page.

Thaggard and her Noble Animals will be at the Bangor Craft fair this weekend (November 14) at Furniture, Mattress, and More in Bangor.

All images via Thaggard’s Mighty Effort website.

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