(Just to note before you start reading: If you’re looking for the free copies this post probably won’t help, but if you want to hear the story about how they came about read on:-)

Around a year ago, out of the blue, I received an email from Tim Keran at a company called Western Graphics.

He advised they are looking at printing some free books to give to schools in need for literacy awareness, (somewhere around 10,000 books!) and would I be interested in providing any of mine. I said of course, I’d love to.

They were looking for two books for 3-5 year olds, and 7-10 year olds, with text and pictures on opposing pages. We sent them two books Gecko on the Wall and The Other Side, which I thought were perfect for these age groups, and universally appealling. (Here’s the colouring book links Gecko on the Wall Colouring Book, The Other Side Colouring Book, Note: our colouring books have different covers to distinguish them visually at our online store, whereas the printed Western Graphics versions have the same covers as the normal books except for the title Colouring Book.)

Being busy as we all are, after a little two and from; some revisions for American English, (I asked an American proof reader to review these, and she, hearing about the project, and how it will help kids in need, also provided editing services for free,(-Faith at Have Faith Proof Reading), another reminder of all the good will people have,  and just in time for the holiday season; and some great additions, suggested by Western Graphics, for example a page for the children to write about themselves and draw a picture of themselves at the end, about a month ago, I received a soft copy of their print ready file, and then yesterday, I finallly received the hard copies.

I have to say, it was well worth the wait. The books are printed and bound well and the back cover explains the project from their perspective in full, I’ve included a picture of this text below (scroll down if you want to read it now).

It often amazes me the questions people ask! So here’s some FAQ and my answers.

What are they paying you for the books? Nothing of course! We are really happy to be involved in this, since it promotes literacy, and gets the books out there read and enjoyed by more children, and in hard copy, what could be better.

Why is it taking so long? Good things take time! Also you need to remember that social initiatives come secondary to commercial duties in a company, since if we don’t attend to business we’ll go out of it and can’t complete anything social.

Why would a company do this? Marketing is a primary reason most companies complete these initiatives, since all companies will have a marketing budget, and if you can spread the word about what you are doing while helping people it is a triple win situation – that is two for you and one for those you help. Secondary, and more importantly in this case, I believe because they care about literacy and want to help.

Where do we get the books? I am not sure how Western Graphics is allocating the books, all I know is they are working with some non-profit organisations, and I will update this post if I do hear more.

We all need to remember social responsibility, and if we are making money, why not spend some of it on others, you’ll often find, even better if it is by surprise, that there is a kick back for you in it.

Okay, enough ranting from me, here’s what Western Graphics says about the project:

Free Colouring Books Western Graphics Back CoverText

Post Written by Danielle Bruckert

By Danielle Bruckert

Here’s a link to a blog which expands the ideas we’ve reported in the post on ‘Why Free?’ (http://freekidsbooks.org/blog/2011/02/why-free/):

http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/12-ways-to-market-your-book-by-giving-away-free-stuff

There’s some great food for thought, and some good marketing  ideas for authors.

And here’s my take on why I give my books away:

1. Everyone believes their book is good, but is it really? Only one way to find out, share it with the audience and if they like it they’ll tell you.

2. I had fun making the books, and I want people to have fun reading them, the easiest way to get the largest amount of readers is to make them free.

3. I firmly believe in the economy of free – give something away and it will return to you many times over!

4. A good children’s book needs to be in hard copy for children to enjoy, that is I have no fear of diminished sales from free e-books, as if people like the books they will buy the hard copy.

5. It’s just good!

I hope you’ll take a chance to look through the books on this site and if you like them, leave some FEEDBACK! If you really like them, follow the link next to the one for free download to buy a hard copy for your child or as an original present for a friend’s child.

I hope I can find more teachers like Paula in my children’s schools, and as a parent I’m glad to have learnt a little more about reading approaches from her.

More of Paula’s reading resources can be found at http://yourchildwillread.com and http://www.facebook.com/yourchildwillread.

I asked a query recently on a literacy forum about letter recognition, as my understanding was it is the first step to reading. This lead to a whole lot of new discoveries. One is the ‘whole word recognition’ concept.

Helena Rogers, and expert in this method, provides resources on her site, www.reading revival.com, here’s what she has to say about the method.

“When I started  teaching in the 1960s, the method of choice to teach children to read was through ‘whole words.’  There were lots of reading schemes with this approach to choose from in those days and I might add that reading levels were so high that people from all over the world sent their children here to be educated. (I think they are more likely to send them to Korea now!)  We expected a child to be able to read within their first term at school and to be fluent within a year. The only children leaving Primary School unable to read were ‘Special Needs’ children who went on to special schools for specialist help.

I have been using this method of teaching reading ever since and when all the ‘whole word’ reading schemes died out, I developed my own – but I improved on all those original schemes, ironing out any problems,  so that my scheme now works very efficiently with all children – even those with special needs.  It is now available to anyone via our web site: www.readingrevival.com .  My aim is that we get back to the days when all children could read within a term of entering school – and it can be done with Reading Revival.”

Further reading on the topic led me to discover Glen Doman and his work, who I believe popularised the concept to main stream in the 60′s, supporting what Helena says above, after developing the methods from studies into assisting brain injured children. More on this soon.

However in the mean time, from what I’ve read and seen, although the technique initially surprised me,  proof is in the results, and in this I have to support Helena and her initiatives, and ask -why are children now leaving the education system with inadequate reading and writing skills? And what can we as parents do to help our children?

I think Helen’s tools are a great way to start, and a small investment for a right to reading competency.

It would be great to hear from anyone out there with personal experience in this method.