The Ponds of Wonder

Our winner this month is "The Ponds of Wonder", but of course, there is a story behind the story, and personally, that is my favorite - from the author:

Hi everyone, I'd like to introduce a story I wrote for young readers ages 8-13 called The Ponds of Wonder. A story which had taken root when I was in grade 7 and held a special place in my mind for a good number of years until I finally sat down and fleshed it out back in 2011. I felt it was the right time to do so and had placed a special dedication to my son, Eric, who was born with Mowat Wilson Syndrome and had fought through a number of medical issues in the first five years of his life. He lives with a severe visual impairment and shows me with each passing day the true meaning of being a father.

My wife and I are readjusting our place of residence to suit his needs and one such project will involve a new therapy room for him. Since I also believe in promoting healthy reading habits with the children of today, I would like to offer this story for your consideration. Any proceeds collected from the sale of the digital copy will be going towards helping to fund Eric's therapy room.

Here is the link to Eric's story and where we are today with our fund raiser. It would give me great pleasure to give the gift of reading to other children and, in turn, be able to help my son.

http://classroomideas.wix.com/parentappeal

Thank you in advance.

Brian Abela

Happy New Year (okay a little belated) and our winner for this month!

Hello everyone and Happy (belated) New Year!

I sure hope you are reading and buying picture books for your kids or for kids that might not get a chance to read picture books!

Here is our winner for this month!

These two picture books are really great as they are bi-lingual and give kids a chance to learn Spanish or English (depending on who is reading the books).  I think it also gives young kids a chance to learn another language even if it's not their main language.

A lady I work with informed me her young daughter (age 4) was watching a movie in Italian even though her main language is English and her daughter was just entranced by the movie.  

I personally love watching foreign movies with sub-titles but then my friends who do speak that language always inform me that sometimes the translations are a little incorrect or that the language is so different that the Americanized language of terms can't be translated into another language.  I know for example in my book "Journey to Jazzland" there is a lot of terminology that can't be translated.

Congrats goes to Maritza Martinez Mejia this month!  Well done!

Two more winners before the year ends - Thank you all for the support!

I ran the cover contest on the fan page and we have two winners!

I can't thank you all enough for the tremendous support that you have shown me and I can only hope we grow more in the future!  I hope you all had a lovely holiday and we'll see what next year has in store for us!

Happy ho ho ho and more winners!

Congratulations goes to two authors this month!  (Oops, almost wrote moth but both books have insects in them so I guess that would be alright :)).  We didn't have too many entries this month as unfortunately, our fan page went down for a few days, but no need to fret folks, it is back up and running!

I am so honored to help support these authors and also help promote early children literacy!

Keep reading and Merry Happy HO HO HO to what ever you all celebrate (my family celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas).

Maybe as a gift, give your kiddos the gift of a picture book!  

Congratulations goes to Cathey Graham Nickell and her book "Arthur Zarr's Amazing Art Car"

I decided to start an cover art contest a few months ago on the fan page, and this month this was the clear winner at 15 likes.

I personally love this idea and want to say thank you to everyone that voted!  I'm sure the author and illustrator appreciate all the support!

I hope you can check it out!  Her website is here!  https://www.catheynickell.com/

Welcome!

My name is Gia and I wrote a picture book called "Journey to Jazzland" back in 2013, which was published.  I have learned that the author must also be responsible for promoting the book.

I realized that with all the promoting I do for our events (Renaissance Festivals here in MA and I also help run other such pages to help promote other performers and merchants http://www.renperfmerch.blogspot.com) that I decided to also create a Facebook page to help promote other picture book authors and illustrators get the word out about the books.

The Facebook page only started last year sometime and already the support has been fabulous!

I've run a contest now and then for cover art work and the response has been really fabulous! promotingpicturebooks fan page is the fan page

Are just some of the winners!!!  And we're running a contest right now!!  The deadline to enter is 10/30/15 so enter it today!!!

This is my website for now, I'll update you all on our winner when it's chosen!