Archive for March 2008

Articles

  1. The word “Convert”

    Published 27 Mar 08 to 10:51 | by Elisia Bargelletti | no comment

    I need some advice. As you may already know, Christian is the author of all our stories. He writes them in French and then the text gets translated. I’ve been doing the translating for the new projects.

    I’ve found this task to be very challenging. For example, in our French version of our Chocolate story Christian has a lot of words rhyming with “chocolat” (pronounced show-co-la). Not many words in English rhyme with chocolate.

    I wanted to know if you think the word “convert” is a difficult word for 3 to 6-year-olds. My cousin is a Kindergarten teacher and she says it is hard. Noemi and Christian also think it is a hard word.

    I agree that a child will not know what the word means right off the bat. But it’s a fairly easy word to explain: to change. I feel putting the word in the story would encourage new vocabulary. How would you feel if the word was in a book you were reading to your child?

    The reason I’m asking is because I came up with some great text for the story and I needed a rhyme with dessert. This is the text:

    “My mouth starts to water at the things I convert.
    Honey soup, cinnamon radish; I’ll eat my spoon for dessert!”

    Help!

    PS. Now can you guess what the story is about?

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  2. Sneak Peek!

    Published 20 Mar 08 to 14:15 | by Elisia Bargelletti | no comment

    The Team has been working on quite a few projects lately and I wanted to give you a sneak peek on one of them. It’s a very small peek; I’m showing the first page to what we, for the moment, call our Chocolate story.

    Janet (our graphic designer) has been working on the illustrations, so I asked her to whip me a page with some text. So here it is:

    first-page-chocolate-story.jpg

    How do you like our bunny? I’ve named him Coco for the time being, but do you have any other suggestions? He’s a bunny made of chocolate. Can you guess what the story is about?!?

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  3. What you have to say

    Published 13 Mar 08 to 13:30 | by Elisia Bargelletti | no comment

    Thanks for the great suggestions guys! Here we got 5 comments, but our French blog got over 60 comments and suggestions! We really appreciate the time you guys take to tell us these things.

    Steph, I think you’re on to something with the bunny story. We’re actually in the process of creating one, so I may ask you guys for comments on that book soon. I’m thinking of eventually posting some excerpts and getting your opinion.

    A lot of you have also asked for baby stories, more specifically birth books. Which I think is a great idea.

    I think what surprised me the most was that most of your ideas for books come out of real life situations. I was expecting more suggestions like the Tooth fairy idea coming from Steph. But it seems you want books that relate to your children like books on vacation, the first day of school, dealing with a monster under the bed, books on allergies and the Internet. Many people requested personalized books that had your child doing different professions. That’s really great!

    For personalization, many of you want us to add pets. There were also many of you who wanted more hairstyle selection.

    One of my favourite ideas came from one of our French clients: A book where your child travels the world and is exposed to different cultures. What do you think?

    Keep the suggestions coming!

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  4. What should our new story be about?

    Published 06 Mar 08 to 12:37 | by Elisia Bargelletti | 5 comments

    In what kind of adventure do you want your child to be in?

    We are very excited to be creating a new story where your child can be the hero of a brand new adventure. A few weeks ago we had a team meeting where each one of us gave our ideas of what the new story should be about and we realized that you should be part of this brainstorming process as well.

    If you’ve visited our site and said, “Gee, I wish they had a ___ story.” Then leave your suggestion here. Post a comment, post two if you like. (By the way, I realize no one says “Gee” anymore.)

    We thought about creating a new Holiday story. Many people have asked us about another one. My idea was to create a story where your kid and the family win a trip to the North Pole. What do you think?

    We came up with quite a few different themes, but we want to know what you want.

    We also wonder about personalization. How could we make our books more unique? What ideas do you have about the characters in the story?

    Remember that if we do follow your suggestions, we reserve all rights. (Sorry, we have to say that.)

    I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.

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