A Bus Box:

Free Kids Activities-Bus Box

Paint a conveniently sized box, glue and colour some old CDs for wheels, then stick on some white card windows, and have fun with putting some people in from magazine cutouts. Bottle tops or coloured card can make nice lights, or if you want to be really inventive, the ones shown below can be obtained from a car accessory shop, hardware shop or even at supermarkets, and you can push a button (here it’s on the roof, but the side/front would be better) to make them light up. For a shoe box, you can also use the box to store some other toys.

A pipe-cleaner Animal

Free Kids Activities - Pipe Cleaner Animal

You can usually get fun packs of pipecleaners, decorative bits and bobs, eyes, and icecream sticks at a craft shop or book shop, or again even at the supermarket.

This pipe-cleaner ant was made by twisting a few pipe-cleaners onto an ice cream stick and gluing the decorative balls and eyes on. Egg cartons with pipe-cleaners also make great spiders, beetles, octopus and crabs.

I met Faith on one of Lulu’s forums, back when Lulu was more author focused. She seemed to have a nice attitude towards editing, and so when I needed an editor for a charity project, I asked Faith to help. To my amazement, since it was a charity project, Faith offered to do the work for free.

I referred another author to Faith, and received some positive feedback, so asked Faith if she was interested in this type of work she responded “I adore copy editing children’s stories as much as I adore children!”

It’s nice to find an editor who is both understanding and interested in children’s books, and provides pure technical editing and copy editing, and at extremely reasonable rates.

So if you need another pair of eyes, or a professional opinion to make your work look polished, and avoid the normal stigmas of self publishing (argh the typos!!), I recommend contacting Faith.

Happy Reading and Creating

Danielle Bruckert

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/macanddipper

Right now in our top ten, we have The Adventures of Supercow (my own book and suprisingly popular, even to me, I’m still hoping for some feedback from readers), then there is a number of Hans Wilhelm’s previously published and beautifully illustrated books, Matt Ryan and Patric’s adventures in “Hide and Seek” which I love – although I’d also check out “The Case of the Missing Banana” or Patrick found a Something”, and another one of my favourites “A Fish with a Wish” by Ethan Crownbury.
If you choose the “popular” button, you can quickly see what is the most popular in terms of numbers of downloads right now. This button only works on downloads through history, so recently uploaded books will take a little while to show up in the statistics, normally after around 3 months a book can make the first page if it is downloaded frequently, and thus I hope loved by our readers.

Happy Reading
Danielle Bruckert
Owner and Editor: Free Kids Books

great teacher with thankyou notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums
reaching into the billions.” (Warren Buffet).

This week a combination of my childrens teachers and my friend that are teachers made me realise how little the world respects them and the importance of what they do, so I post this again in hope that someone who reads it may help to make a difference in the educations system.

Danielle Bruckert: Editor

We’ve just put up Hero of the Mountain by Ivan Parvov, and I wanted to point out that this book is available number of different languages, including Arabic and German, on Ivan’s site, http://www.bubutales.com.

It is difficult enough to find good childrens books in English, and must be nearly impossible in another language. Because Ivan has made his books available for free, people have kindly volunteered to translate them, adding value to the resource provided.

One of my own books was also kindly translated by Effie Kyriakidou, a task even more difficult since it is in rhyme. http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/bugs-by-numbers—greek-edition/16303602.

Janaki Sooriyarachchi also provides her books in both Englsh and her native Sri Lanken language, Sinhala.

Hans Wilhelm has a number of his out of print books in foreign languages at http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/

The International Childrens Digital Library, http://www.childrenslibrary.org/, also features a large number of book in different languages which are available to read online.

Anyone reading this, and enjoying our books, who has the skills, time, and inclination to translate a book, to help give back, please contact me (danielle at freekidsbooks.org) or leave a reply here, with details of the book and I will help coordinate with the author.

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

If you haven’t yet put your book on video, here’s my advice.

- Windows Movie Maker is free for windows users, and seems very easy to use.

- Youtube accounts are likewise easy to set up, free, and you can upload your book as soon as it is finished, there are a number of other similar sites too which are valuable for countries where youtube is banned, for example Turkey.

- It’s my feeling ideally to be a good resource for reading, a book should have the audio along with the words, and to best display the author and illustrator’s work a visual of the picture which matches the page being read. This is easier said than done, and each picture book format will require different formatting to achieve this. However this type of format will enable a read along, and aid comprehension for ESL or EAL students.

-This link resource is aimed at picture books, an audio list will be included for chapter books later

Comments on this from teachers or people working in early literacy education would be appreciated.

Any book which is free online in it’s full version is acceptable for submission to be included in this resource.

I’ll look forward to “seeing” some more books read here!

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.

Bugs by Numbers has kindly been translated into Greek by Effie Kryiakidou. The download can be found here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/bugs-by-numbers—greek-edition/16303602