Tag: literacy matters

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Adopt A School

December 23, 2020-During shows and events where we’re selling our books, one of the most common comments we get are, “Your books are so cute/funny/awesomely illustrated, I wish I had kids, but all of mine are grown.” The good news is, you can adopt a ton of kids! Let me explain; even if there are no children in your life, you can make a difference in the lives of many with our Adopt a School program! This is the perfect gift to give the person on your list that has everything! Here’s how it works (Click on the link to order): Adopt a School! Literacy Matters – Pandamonium Publishing House

When you purchase this collection, we’ll send TEN of our children’s book titles to local inner-city schools. We believe that literacy should be a right, not a privilege and that every school library deserves new books that will excite young readers. Please partner with us in this crucial initiative as 12 million Canadians are currently illiterate. This collection is suitable for young readers ages 4-8 depending on the reading level and includes themes such as teamwork, kindness, differences in ability, unconditional love, adventure, and friendship! The children will also receive a handwritten note from one of the authors talking about the importance of books while inviting them to participate in a virtual classroom author visit!

Thank you for your continued support of literacy and Canadian authors, illustrators and artists and for joining us in our mission to ignite a love of reading that will last a lifetime! 

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Shift Your Energy

December 14, 2020– Have you ever walked into a store and immediately felt the energy of the salesperson? Even though we can’t see it, it’s there and it’s influencing us whether we know it or not. I was at the market the other day and was in the process of asking a vendor how the night before went as another author was covering our table and I had left a few hours early. I said, “Sorry, I don’t know if it was you here last night, forgive me-there are so many of you and I’m having a hard time remembering who was here and who wasn’t.” The woman tore my head off and barked, “There are only four of us, so not too many for you to remember! Now, what can I help you with?” Wow, what a response! Definitely not what I was expecting. I said, “Nothing at all, thanks. Enjoy your day.” And I went on my merry way.

Guess what happened after that? As much as the woman tried to be as sweet as pie to her customers, she couldn’t fake it. People can FEEL if you’re miserable, they can FEEL if you’re just after their money with no regard for what you’re selling them and if it benefits them or not. The woman made 2 sales in 8 hours. Yikes. What a disaster. I listened to her sales pitch and tone of voice and could feel the tension dripping off of her. Her energy was repellant and made me want to run in the opposite direction! Imagine how her potential customers felt!

It’s important to remember that your energy is influential to those around you. Choose positivity and watch how your outlook changes, watch how your life changes, and watch how opportunities come your way! Changing your energy and your thoughts has the power to change your life! To hear more of the story, tune into our podcast tomorrow on Podbean by downloading the app on the Google Play Store or iTunes, search Pandamonium Publishing House: https://jidwkx.podbean.com

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Schedule of Events

December 2, 2020- Hi Friends, I though that today it would be beneficial for us to post our schedule for the upcoming month so that you know what’s on the agenda! Here’s what’s coming up at Pandamonium:

December 2-Book Box Subscriptions go out in the mail! Check it out here: https://pandamoniumpublishing.com/product/book-box-3-month-membership-1-book-box-month-for-3-months/

December 3, 4, 5, 6, 10,11,12,13,17,18,19,20- St. Jacob’s Market from 10-6 every day. We’re in the outlet mall building!

December 4, 11, 18- Check us out on Facebook every Friday at 11 am as we discuss Pandamonium Publishing House International Book Club book, A Long Way Gone. To join, send us an email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com

December 7- Check out my interview with our very own Tonya Cartmell where she answers questions from readers about her book, The 12 Days of Rescue! It will be on our social media and YouTube Channel at 7 pm.

December 12-24- Tune into our YouTube Channel Pandamonium Publishing House each night at 7pm where I count down my 12 favourite Holiday books! Snuggle up and read with me.

If you’re in the area and would like to stop by and say hello, we’d love to see you. This year, give the gift of literacy.

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The Benefits of Reading Books

October 18, 2020– Check out this infographic on Reading, the Road to Success! I know that we’re Canadian, but sadly, our numbers are close enough to these ones in the United States.  Literacy matters.

 

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Lifelong Reader

October 16, 2020- I LOVE this TedTalk by Alvin Irby. According to the US Department of Education, more than 85 percent of black fourth-grade boys aren’t proficient in reading. What kind of reading experiences should we be creating to ensure that all children read well? In a talk that will make you rethink how we teach, educator and author Alvin Irby explains the reading challenges that many black children face — and tells us what culturally competent educators do to help all children identify as readers.

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Advice From A Publisher

September 28, 2020-Today, I’ve taken a page out of my book Advice from a Publisher  (Insider Secrets to Getting Your Work Published) to talk about Synopsis’. This is critical info if you want a shot at being published!

How to write a synopsis: Do you want to know what will make a publisher absolutely lose their mind and throw their laptop onto their front lawn? Read on to find out. No, I don’t mean read on to find out; I mean, when authors say, “Read the book to find out!” Let me explain: The job of a synopsis is to tell the publisher what happens in your book from beginning to end. It’s a snippet of the big picture and gives us the information that we need to know. If you remember from the previous chapter, How to Properly Query, you’ll know that a query letter is a sales pitch. A synopsis is an overview of your book which allows the publisher to identify any major problems with your manuscript, lets us determine if your book is a good fit, and helps us decide if your work is exciting, intriguing, and fresh enough to publish.

Your synopsis must include:

The main character and why we should care about them. What is at stake, and what motivates this character to take action?

The conflict. How does the main character succeed or fail in dealing with the conflict?

Conflict resolution? How is the conflict resolved, and has the character changed or learned anything? THIS IS THE ENDING! DO NOT PUT READ ON TO FIND OUT because your letter will be recycled, and you’ll never hear from us again. Seriously, this drives us crazy.

DO NOT:

Summarize each scene or every chapter. This will take way too long, and you must get your summary across quickly and concisely.

Write this with the tone of a book jacket or back cover. It’s not a marketing piece for readers that builds excitement.

Make your synopsis longer than one page.

Get weighed down with specifics such as supporting character names, detailed settings, and descriptions.

Talk about character back story. We don’t need to know, and frankly, we don’t care. Yes, even for you sci-fi writers, leave it out!

Get wordy. Don’t use eight words when four will do.

For examples of good and lousy synopsis’ check out chapter 7 in my Amazon Number 1 Best Seller book found here: https://pandamoniumpublishing.com/product/advice-from-a-publisher-insider-secrets-for-getting-your-work-published/

Insider Secret: Write your synopsis in the third person narrative even if your manuscript is told in first person. Write in the present tense and remind the publisher of the category and genre of your work. Reveal EVERYTHING and never use; it was all a dream endings or beginnings.

Best of luck! I can’t wait to read your work.

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What’s Your Reason?

August 24, 2020-What made you want to be an author? Have you ever been asked this question? I get asked at least once a week, if not more. This is what I say, and I mean every word; I’ve been writing for a long time. I started writing stories when I was around eight years old, but I didn’t always want to be an author. I wanted to be the person who stitched up NHL players’ faces. The first letter I wrote was a piece of fan mail to my hockey idol, Cam Neely. It’s funny that I did that as a little girl because now, the books that I’ve written are at Neely House (a support home and facility for cancer patients) in Boston. I remember going there to donate my books and bursting into tears because it was such a dream come true to make that connection. 

I’ve always been a writer, whether it be short stories, non-fiction diary entries, or poetry; I was continually writing. Then as I got older, I was published in a magazine called Women’s World for the first time. From there, I’ve been published internationally about 15 times, and in 2015, I opened my own publishing company and have never looked back. 

What made me want to be an author was my sheer love of books. As a child, I would read everything I could get my hands on, backs of cereal boxes, hand me down Baby Sitter’s Club books from my cousins, and magazines that were passed on from a neighbour.  As an adult, I read approximately 60 books per year on every subject. Also, I read up to fifteen hundred manuscripts over 12 months that are submitted to me for potential publication. At the age of 33, I finally decided that I wanted to be an author full-time because I love storytelling, creating characters, and inventing worlds. The characters become part of me, and they feel like home. Writing gave me a place to escape to, and it still does. I suppose I wanted to be a writer to inspire others to share their stories and hopefully ignite a love of literacy in everyone I meet.  I hope I accomplish that because that’s my most important mission and the reason why I was put here.

That’s why I strive to publish books that people love to read. Literacy matters, and literacy is directly linked to a better future for all of us. What’s your reason for wanting to be an author?

 

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Daring to Read

July 27, 2020- In some parts of the world, half of the women lack basic reading and writing skills. The reasons vary, but in many cases, literacy isn’t valued by fathers, husbands, even mothers. Photographer and TED Fellow Laura Boushnak traveled to countries including Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia to highlight brave women — schoolgirls, political activists, 60-year-old moms — who are fighting the statistics.

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International Book Club

June 22, 2020-Today is an exciting day; I’m pleased to announce that Pandamonium Publishing House will be starting an International Virtual Book Club! We’ll be reading books by authors from six of seven continents (If anyone knows of an Antarctic author, please email me, and we’ll add it to the list), starting with South America. We hope to help expand our reading diversity, and we hope to read titles that you have yet to explore.

Here’s how it works:

  1. We announce the book on the last Monday of each month. This month’s read is The Alchemist by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho.
  2. Each Friday, we do a virtual check-in on Facebook Live to talk about the book so far and what our observations and thoughts are, and we take comments and questions from readers. You can send us your comments/questions via email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com or by joining our Facebook Live event.
  3. All you have to do is download or purchase your copy of the book from your favourite bookstore or app to participate and follow us on social media!
  4. Each book has an allotted completion date of approximately one month.
  5. Stay updated by subscribing to our blog, podcast, and newsletter at pandapublishing8@gmail.com. Send us an email, and we’ll add you to our list!

That’s it! Easy peasy! I’m excited to converse with you about our upcoming book choices, talk about the messages within the books, and chat about the authors and where they’re from. I hope you’ll join me! X LLB

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Teach Me to Read

May 25, 2020-Literacy matters. The sooner we teach our children to read, the better! People who have low literacy skills have problems finding and keeping employment, they’re afraid to get medical help because they’re unable to prescription orders or read discharge papers. And what’s worse? Their illiteracy has a long-term effect on children because their kids will never hear a bedtime story or get homework help because the parent can’t read. Illiteracy has the potential to become intergenerational and here’s what we can do to help our kids learn to read:

  1. Pre-reading. Awareness of print, tracing the letters with fingers and saying the letters of book text aloud. Rhyming is important as well as sounds such as CH, CK, AH, BL, ST etc.
  2. Learning letters. Repetition matters! Don’t be afraid of the alphabet being spoken out of order, that can come later. Lots of visual exercises should be incorporated such as flashcards and labelling things around the house such as Door, Sink, Toothbrush etc.
  3. Sound it out. Visual cues are important in this step as you should point to the word and blend the sounds. For example, if there is a picture of a cat, sound it out and blend the letters together. Start with C-A-T, CA, T, CAT.
  4. Sight words. These are short words that should be used frequently! Flashcards and games help with memorization and visualization.
  5. Word families. Start with 3 letter words with short vowels. E.g. if they can read Hat, they can read Cat, Sat, Bat, Fat, and Pat.

Ignite the love of literacy in your children by reading to them as much as possible!

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