Next kickstarter after playing cards --> a children's book

Sep 24, 2013 23:16:22

I know the permies have a lot going on, but I wanted to tickle Paul and team's brain on doing a kickstarter to publish a children's permaculture book. With the exception of the Dr Seuss Lorax book, I am unaware of any environmentally conscience children's book (and even that one only speaks about the problems of environmental damage and does not offer solutions). Most kid's books on farms don't get past the "Old McDonald had a farm" level, but some of my 4 year old's favorite dinosaur books go into all sorts of detailed facts on how dinosaurs lived. A clever book could be written on both kid's and adult's levels with more info in the back for adults to follow up. Finally, my son has lot of birthday parties to attend so my wife often buys several copies of the same books that we like so we are ready for the next party. A kick starter with a "brick" of 5 or 10 of the same books is not a bad idea (as long as they are good books that kids will enjoy and make their parents think).

PS I searched permies.com for variations on "Children's book" and got ZERO search results. I think it time.

I am curious of people's thoughts.

Patrick

Sep 25, 2013 05:43:29

In Maine there is a program called "Raising Readers" that gives a free book to children at every wellness visit with their pediatrician. It's a way to get books into the hands of kids and parents that either can't or don't afford them. The books range from simple cardboard books with a few words for babies all the way up to nice hardcover story books for kids at age 5. They are all really nice books and they change them up from year to year so you kid never get's the same one twice... even if they have an older sibling the book selection doesn't repeat.
WE have a huge library of kids books here at he house and some of our favorites came from the Raising Readers Program. If you could get a permaculture kids book into that market you'd really get the message out about permaculture.

I think a permaculture kids book would be fun and educational. The biggest challenge is probably going to be making something that plays to a wide age range of kids. Being that the permaculture community is small (but growing) it would be nice to have something that was geared towards a larger audience to -as some unnamed person would say- "Infect Brains with Permaculture".

I've tried my hand at writing little short permie stories for my kids. It's fun but I always end up getting into too much detail. It's hard not to do that for me.

How about this?: A collection of permaculture stories written by permies illustrated by permies all in one book. Make it a contest. Set up a place for people to post stories or fact pages and illustrations and let the community decide. Take the ten best ones and print em in a nicely bound and illustrated book. I'd buy that.

As a side note: A permies dot com scrapbook would be fun too. Get all the permie people to submit photos, artwork, short blurbs, stories or poetry of their own and then mash it all together into scrapbook format. It would make a nice coffee table book. Just a thought.

Edited for grammar and pre-coffee nonsensical mumbling.

Sep 25, 2013 06:52:33

There are some really good farming and building books out there, but I don't know of any specifically permie ones.

I highly recommend "building our house" by Jonathan bean and "haystack" by some great author and illustrator.

I will ruminate on topics, I think this is a good idea. If we want this thing to work, we gotta start em early. It seems like a lot of us permie parents homeschool.

a fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool - shakespeare. foolish tiny ad:

montana community seeking 20 people who are gardeners or want to be gardeners

https://permies.com/t/359868/montana-community-seeking-people-gardeners