If I weren’t married to Susan, Meddybemps.com would simply be a website full of cute drawings.

When an artist marries a teacher, the teacher is always going to get some free art. Year after year, they are likely to work on one little project after another. The teacher will build a collection of custom-made materials and the artist will begin to understand the resource needs of teachers. Over time, they are likely to produce better and better work for children. Now and then, highly effective learning tools will emerge.

In the past, those custom-made learning aids would only be used in that one teacher’s classroom. Today, they can be shared with teachers, parents and children around the world via the Internet.

Susan’s years of experience in Pre-K, K, and early Primary classrooms, in administration, and in teacher education provide her with invaluable insights into what’s effective, practical, and fun. I write, illustrate, and design. Together, we are building an online resource parents and teachers can use to help young children build early learning skills.

Our Meddybemps.com site will celebrate 18 years on the World Wide Web at the end of October. It now offers more than 150 unique online activities and stories for young children. Its content is free for use in any home or classroom with Internet access. We also sell downloadable materials to print and use in situations where a computer is not available or practical.

Topics include: Color, Counting, Emotions, Grammar, Holidays, Matching, Mouse Skills, Observation and Discussion, Riddles, Shapes, Spatial Concepts and Opposites, Special Projects, Vocabulary, Weight, Length, and Size, and Writing and Reading. There are also guides for parents and teachers, to help them understand early learning and the active roles they can take in helping children build essential skills.

Educators recommend our site. Parents praise it. Children enjoy it. We invite you to visit www.Meddybemps.com and sample our content. You may find many useful ideas and activities to use with your children. 

Banana Festival Returns!

Fans of our story But That Wasn't The Best Part may recall that the 30th and last Festival was held in Fulton, KY, and South Fulton, TN, in September of 1992, The two communities used other themes in following years, but none were as popular as the Banana Festival. The theme has been revived and this year is the 50th anniversary of the very first Banana Festival. 

Fulton and South Fulton served as a railroad distribution point for bananas for many years. Shipment would arrive from Gulf ports and be sent off in different directions throughout the country. 

I heard about the festival on National Public Radio in 1991 and vowed to attend the following year. In 1992 Susan and I and our son Michael drove to Fulton to see the big parade and taste the giant banana pudding. We had a great time (and the pudding was good!). 

The parade was longer and more fun than we expected. It inspired me to write and illustrate But That Wasn't The Best Part a couple of years later. After a few impatient submissions to children's book publishers, I published the story on Meddybemps.com. Since then, I added a Spanish-language version and worked with Toni and Jacob Rhodes to create apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad.

The story has been read and enjoyed by countless children around the world since it first appeared online in 1995. It's simple and fun. Young children enjoy reciting the refrain as each parade entrant passes by, eager for the one-ton banana pudding to arrive for all to share. It's a good story for beginning readers.

This year's festival events began last Friday and conclude with the famous parade and a concert Saturday, September 29. For more information, see the Banana Festival website at www.thebananafestival.com/home. Check the site in coming months to learn the dates for next year's festival. You should go.

Young Writers Workshop Publishes 100th Work

In 2004, Susan heard well-known early childhood guru Bev Boz urge teachers to encourage children to tell stories. It would be great for their language development and fun, too. Susan returned to her classroom, anticipating joyful creative exercises, but when she asked one of her three-year-old students to tell her a story, tears welled up in the little girl’s eyes.

“I don’t know any stories,” she cried. This wasn’t going to be as easy as Susan expected.

She told me about the incident. I offered to create a few illustrations and accompany them with an unfinished sentence or two that could serve as a “story starter”. I made several and Susan tried them in her classroom. The children liked them. They gained confidence in their ability to dictate stories. Their parents were pleased to learn that their children were authors. Our simple tool worked well.

I created more story starters and added them to the Meddybemps website in 2005 on a page titled Young Writers Workshop. They were free for people to print and use with young children. Children who were too young to physically write the stories could dictate them to someone who could. 

I invited parents and teachers to mail their children’s stories to us. We would pick one or two each month, publish them on the site for others to see, and send those young writers a T-shirt proclaiming the wearer to be a “Published Author.”

In Oct, 2005, we selected and published the first work, a story by Isabella, from Bradenton, Florida. Since then, we have published a total of 100 stories and poems. Most authors used our story starters. Some wrote and illustrated from scratch. All composed delightful tales. 

Submissions have come from around the world. 18 of the 100 published works came from outside the United States. Teachers have submitted envelopes full of stories from their entire class. Sometimes parents have sent stories written by two or three children of  different ages. Of course, many people use our Story Starters without submitting stories to us. Story Starters are also useful for ESL language classes (English as a Second Language). 

We tried to represent different ages and skill levels in our selections. Sometimes we chose a story because of a child’s sense of humor or the timeliness of the topic. We picked some works because the writer was clearly talented and others because the writer simply made a great effort. Several times, we chose multi-page stories from older children who provided their own illustrations.

Three-, four-, and some five-year-olds will dictate stories. Five-, six-, and seven-year-olds will write using our illustrations and text prompts. Older children are likely to write and illustrate their own stories. Links to all 100 published works appear on our site on the Young Writers Workshop page (www.meddybemps.com/9.700.html). They are grouped according to the authors’ ages.

Forty-eight free Story Starters appear on our site. Another 101 are available for purchase on a CD-ROM through our online store (www.meddybemps.com/Store.html). 96 of those have recently been grouped into four sets of 24 which may be purchased and immediately downloaded.

Our Young Writers Workshop page is one of the most popular pages on the site, often viewed 10,000 or more times per month. A Google search for Chateau Meddybemps Young Writers Workshop reveals more than 3,000 links to our page. What started as a simple aid in Susan’s classroom has become an effective and popular tool for teachers and parents. We are proud of our Story Starters and our “Published Authors”, and pleased to have published our 100th work this September, Jamie Bakes A Cake, written and illustrated by eight-year-old Lucy G.

In Production

Harry and Larry
were curious apes.
They wondered about
the things we call shapes.

Harry and Larry will soon be helping young children identify basic shapes. This is one of many exciting projects underway in the new Chateau Meddybemps® production center and studio.

Even bigger news is the fact that Professor Susan Bailey Jindrich will be retiring from her position as the Early Childhood Program Chair at IVY Tech Community College. Susan will embark on new adventures, including contributing more time and energy to Meddybemps.com (effectively doubling our current staff of one). Watch for new content for teachers and parents and new learning activities and stories for young children.

Susan was recently named IVY Tech Teacher of the Year at the Evansville campus. She is a tireless educator, dedicated to her students and determined to help them become the best possible teachers of young children. She has countless admirers among IVY Tech's students, graduates, faculty and staff, and the local community of early childhood professionals, but I will always be her greatest fan.

On creativity and puppies

What could be more fun than a room full of puppies? How about a room full of young children investigating, playing with, and "chewing on" new words?

Word Puppies have sniffed and bounced and tumbled their way onto Meddybemps.com this month. If you wonder, “Where did that idea come from?”, here’s the answer.

The creative process works for me in fits and starts. Sometimes a concept will evolve in a straight line from vague idea to finished artwork and text. More often, I have to work at it for a bit, let it simmer subconsciously while I attend to other projects, and then work on it some more (perhaps several times) until it finally takes shape. Sometimes I start off in one direction and end up somewhere else.

I was trying to develop more voyages for the Three Pumpkin Pirates and their ghost ship Compass Rosie. While looking through photos from Alaska, I happened to think about unusual words associated with that state. Maybe the voyage could also be a vocabulary lesson. Maybe the focus should be on teaching new words with the Pirate voyage merely supporting that idea.

What would be an interesting way to do that in a classroom? How could I make it really fun for young children? What if...? What if the children were thought of as “word hounds”, searching for new words. A quick look on Google® showed me that that name was already in use.

How about “Word Puppies?” Sounds younger and much more playful. Yes. The words could be written on “bones” and served up in a pet feeding dish. Hmmm. I could adapt my miniature village template to make little dog houses where the students could keep smaller copies of the “bones” as they add them to their vocabulary. What fun!

You can see that my original goal had nothing to do with puppies, but look at the results:

www.meddybemps.com/wordpuppies. If you are a parent or teacher, give it a try.

Hot off the press!

When we publish stories from children in our Young Writer’s Workshop, we send them a “Published Author” t-shirt. This year, we earned a few shirts ourselves. We signed agreements with five different publishing companies.

But That Wasn’t The Best Part was made into an iPhone/iPod Touch app and later an iPad app by U.S. publisher, Reading Rhino.

Frogwart and the Easter Eggs was licensed by a publisher in Portugal. Art Is For Everyone was licensed by a publisher in India. Edgar’s Easter Eggs was licensed by publishers in Austria & Germany.

Cool!

Sound comes to Meddybemps.com

Since we launched our site in 1995, the stories on Meddybemps.com have not included audio. We continue to recommend that parents and teachers read them aloud to young children who cannot read for themselves. Watching you read aloud helps their language development more than listening to recorded stories.

We have had many requests for stories with sound, however, and since part of our mission is to share our characters and stories, we decided to add narration and sound effects to some works in an effort to satisfy more of our visitors.

Recent advances in technology made this fairly easy. First, we partnered with the folks at Reading Rhino to bring But That Wasn't The Best Part to the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad (more about that in an earlier post). Now, Susan and I created a video version of Two Brave Pixies with narration, music and sound effects and posted it on YouTube.

Please let us know what you think of it.

Two Brave Pixies

Sometimes, being brave has nothing to do with scary monsters. Courage takes many forms. It may have to do with choosing friends or deciding on a career. It may have to do with dealing with the many problems and opportunities that life sends our way.

Evan in the tiny world of Garden Pixies, a little courage is needed to find happiness. The story Two Brave Pixies follows Wendy and Shredder as they deal with a problem familiar with us all.

This is the fourth Garden Pixie story and represents Fall. As in the other stories, the background photos are from our own yard and garden. Enjoy!

There's an app for that!

A good story is a good story. In 1990 or 1991, I heard a Public Radio story about an International Banana Festival held each year in Fulton, Kentucky and South Fulton, Tennessee. It seems that for many years, seventy percent of bananas brought to the U.S. were shipped there by rail from ports on the Gulf coast. In Fulton and South Fulton, train cars were packed with fresh ice and sent off to other regions of the country.

The twin cities celebrated their unique heritage with a Banana Festival for thirty years. The Festival ran over many days, included many different and playful events, and was capped with a long and delightful parade. The last "float" in the parade was a one-ton banana pudding that was served in cups to the crowd after the parade.

Susan and I and our son Michael attended the 30th (and final) Festival in 1992. It was great fun. I took lots of pictures and was inspired to write and illustrate a children's book about the parade, But That Wasn't The Best Part.

I submitted it to several publishers in 1993 and 1994 but found no buyer. In 1995, I published the story online when I launched Meddybemps.com. The story has many qualities that make it good for aspiring and beginning readers. The illustrations and text work well on Web pages. It has been enjoyed by tens of thousands of children over the years.

Last fall, I learned of Jacob and Toni Rhodes, who had recently published two children's stories in the form of iPhone/iPod Touch apps. We discussed building an app around But That Wasn't The Best Part. The simple, linear nature of the story and colorful illustrations would work well on the small iPhone/iPod Touch screens. Jacob could add narration, sound effects and music to make it highly engaging.

After many weeks of hard work, the very entertaining app is now available for sale through the iTunes App Store (Search for "Best Part"). Now children can listen to their parents read it. They can listen to a narrator and click on sound effects. As they build reading skills, they can read it themselves.

We'll see what happens as another generation of children discover The Best Part. This story is far from over.

He's Here!

The Ice Dragon has arrived and visitors are reading the tale. He may be the biggest bully in my stories so far but he is no match for a clever Garden Pixie.

I have more stories in mind than there is time to write and illustrate. Unfortunately, I need to create other types of content to keep the site varied and interesting.

I recently published 40 pages of Opposites for young children and and I hope to have an iPhone/iPod Touch App to announce in a few days.

Stay tuned. It's going to be a busy year.

Coming soon: The Ice Dragon

Opportunities for taking "snow pictures" in southwestern Indiana are rare and can't be ignored. The winters are generally mild, producing only a few days of snow. When snow does blanket our garden, I am eager to see how the familiar has become fascinating. I grab my camera and go exploring.

This year, I was captivated by dried Oak Leaf Hydrangea flowers, pictured above. Last year, an ice storm devastated the Ohio Valley and left our trees and shrubs looking like broken and distorted crystal chandeliers. It was awful and it was beautiful. Amazingly photogenic.

I was inspired by these images to write a Garden Pixie story that takes place in winter. It will be ready another week or so. You will like the images. Your children will like the story.

Just For Fun

In the new Pigmoose story, children visiting the Zoo learn about Protective Coloration. Pigmoose overhears and puts his new knowledge to use for our amusement. Learning something new is fun for children, adults, and Pigmooses.

When I finished writing and illustrating this story, I made up a short “game” to explain three different ways Protective Coloration helps animals survive. It’s a simple activity, but interactive and intriguing.

It gives children and their parents or teachers a quick opportunity to figure out answers together. No pressure. Not too much information. A learning moment to be enjoyed just for fun.

Pigmoose Returns!

Now that Red Wrinkler and His Rowdy Cousins has been added to our Beantime Stories collection, I'm working on a new Pigmoose tale.

"It's long overdue," Susan reminded me. The last Pigmoose story was written in 2003!

This time,the Striped and Spotted Purple Pigmoose will learn about Protective Coloration and will try to use it to his own advantage. You might be able to spot him hiding behind the Jacaranda tree in the illustration above. I can't say much more today, but this interactive story will have a little science and a lot of humor. Watch for it in August.

Gotta Dance!

Clipper and Shredder are hard workers, but they do have a lighter side. Sometimes they have to do silly dances. Red Wrinkler and His Rowdy Cousins is coming along nicely.

My process for this story may be a little unconventional. I'm making up the story, creating illustrations, editing and rewriting, all at the same time. I usually write a rough draft and draw simple sketches to work out a story. These Garden Pixie stories depend so heavily on photos from our garden, that I often have to look for a photographic "setting" and then draw the characters in appropriate poses to lay on top.

I am building the html pages at the same time. So, when I complete the last illustration and its accompanying text, I will also finish the last Web page. Then I'll go through and edit text and art as needed to make everything look and sound just right.

What, More Garden Pixies?

I'm working on a second Garden Pixies story and I thought you might enjoy a little behind-the-scenes reporting. This time you will meet Red Wrinkler and his Rowdy Cousins. I won't give away the plot yet (it's still evolving, anyway), but these are the guys who dispose of withering and dead flowers in the Spring and Summer and all the colorful leaves in the Fall. They're rough and tumble pixies who sometimes get into trouble. The photo/illustration above shows them hard at work taking an old Tulip apart. More to come in a few days.

Planting the Trees of Kenya

Evansville, Indiana, librarians and a few invited guests got together recently for a “Mock Caldecott” event. I filled in for Susan who could not attend. The purpose of the event was to meet days before the Caldecott Medal winner was announced, review likely candidates for the 2009 Medal, pick our favorites, and see if we picked the books that eventually won the Medal and runner up Caldecott Citations.

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. The award goes to the artist of the most distinguished picture book published that year.

We examined dozens of books and agreed on a handful of favorites. No, we didn’t pick the eventual Medal winner, a striking book illustrated by Beth Krommes called The House in the Night.

One of my favorites was a book written and illustrated by Claire A. Nivola, called Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai.

I loved the illustrations right away because I enjoy highly detailed images and excellent design, but the story really got to me. It’s the true story of an intelligent, dedicated, and courageous woman who accomplished so much for her people and the environment that she was awarded a Nobel Prize for Peace in 2004.

A radio interview with Wangari Maathai was broadcast this morning on public radio. A podcast of the interview is available on iTunes. Search for Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. The release date was April 30. Speaking of Faith also prepared an interesting Web site about Wangari Maathai.

Susan and I were so taken by this inspiring story that we read the book to two of our grandchildren’s grade school classes. They seemed to enjoy it. You will like it, too.

Surprising Subjects

I've been fascinated by photography since I was given a Brownie Hawkeye camera when I was eight or nine years old. The changes in technology since then have been astounding, and you don't have to worry about the cost of film and processing anymore, but the act of framing an image in a viewfinder and then capturing it hasn't lost its magic at all.

Last year I used a digital camera to shoot many of the flowers in our garden. The images were crisper and more lifelike than any pictures I had taken in the past. I put together a collection of images to show how buds formed and opened and put them on the site. See Spring Colors.

During the remainder of the year and through the winter, I continued taking pictures of trees and plants. Many were close-ups and, as you might imagine, they included spectacularly colorful details of fall leaves.

Since I watch for ideas for children's stories, it was easy to imagine creatures living in the colorful little world I was shooting. That led to the idea of "capturing" garden pixies with my camera. To accomplish as much as they do, they have to move quickly. So a fast shutter speed is required. Above are some photos. In one, you just might see a pixie. Maybe if I increase the shutter speed some more? See The Spring Flower Show to see what I found.

Meet Mr. Squared Pine

Now and then we receive envelopes from teachers bursting with terrific stories submitted to our Young Writers Workshop. Usually, these are based on our Story Starters. Reading them all is great fun. Picking one or two to publish is a terrible task. If we could, we would publish every one.

Students and their teacher in from Pierre, South Dakota, sent a collection of stories in March, last year. We picked a story by Eden W. and published it in April. We wanted to publish them all.

In May, we received an envelope full of stories from a second grade class in Eugene, Oregon. Since the beginning of the school year, they practiced skills such as brainstorming, peer editing, paragraph structure and the use of dialogue. They used all those skills preparing a wonderful group of stories based on our Story Starters. We chose one from Zoe P. to publish in June.

Last summer, another big envelope arrived, this time from Ilford, Essex, U.K. This teacher works with a wider age range of students. She invited the children to read Frogwart and the Tooth Fairies and Frogwart and the Easter Eggs. They studied the characters and discussed their personalities and behaviors and the settings I had illustrated. Then they set out to write and illustrate their own stories about Frogwart and Tippity Witchet. We selected stories by Sreram R. and Garthika S. to publish in August. Mr. Squared Pine is one of Garthika's wonderful characters.

Though most of the stories we receive are submitted individually by parents, we were intrigued by the ways these teachers used our simple Story Starters and other content from our site.

Jerry

Welcome to our blog!

Like many people, Susan and I love to spend time on the beach. The sun, sand and ocean breezes are wonderfully refreshing. Away from email, cellphones, and our daily distractions, we can read a good book, look for shells, or play in the sand with our children and grandchildren if they happen to be along. We can also spend time thinking about Meddybemps.com and how to make it more engaging and helpful for children, parents, teachers and librarians.

So we thought we would invite you to join us on this virtual beach to share your ideas and experiences using our content with young children. Other parents and early childhood professionals are sure to benefit from your comments. We will be happy to learn what works and what doesn’t. 

A second purpose of this blog to let you see “behind the scenes” as we work on the site. We’ll use this space to preview ideas and show you sketches of content that’s being developed. No telling what you might see.

Thanks for visiting Chateau Meddybemps. Please comment as you see fit. Don’t forget your sun block.

Jerry