JomyBooks

This week we are conducting a survey among our Estonian fans about how much do their children enjoy reading and would they like to contribute into making new interactive digital books for their kids. If you understand Estonian, you can take part in the survey here: http://tinyurl.com/jomybooks-kysitlus.  A family photoshoot with Katrina Tang will be drawn between all the respondents.

According the the JomyBooks team member Taavi Lindmaa the survey and a mini campaign for increasing children’s interest in reading was conducted because the research has shown that children are much more interested in playing with their computer than reading books. “I think that this is inevitable that computers are becoming a bigger part of children’s lives as well. But in order for them to spend their time behind computers as qualitatively as possible it is needed to have more educational applications, which are lacking so far,” he thinks.

With soon to be published JomyBooks environment everyone can create free digital books for private usage to be read from tablets or pc’s. “Isn’t it a good idea to create a digital book for you kid with his or her named hero and characters their familiar with,” said Lindmaa and added, “and if you are not familiar with for example illustrating, you can find an illustrator through our environment.”

If you want also to support making reading for children more fun, show it with this badge on you Facebook profile picture: www.picbadges.com/2525916

We are always told that reading is good for us, it helps to develop our vocabulary, widen our perspective on life and give new knowledge. We found a good article on www.earlymoments.com  that explains how reading helps children to develop their different skills and what kind of benefits does reading to and with your children give to your relationship with them.

It is important to introduce children to books and reading in the early age. Earlymoments gives 10 reasons why reading to children is important.

1. A stronger relationship with you – reading together brings you closer to each other
2. Academic excellence – studies show that children who are exposed to reading b in an earlier stage in life do better in their educational life
3. Basic speech skills – child listens to the sound, intonation and language and learns to speak
4. The basics of how to read a book – child learns for example that text is read from left to right, it is a knowledge that they are not born with
5. Better communication skills – children learn from the behavior and relationships of the book characters
6. Mastery of language – learning fundamentals of language
7. More logical thinking skills – child can learn abstract concepts, recognize cause and effect and develop judgement skills
8. Acclamation to new experiences – stories about something the child is going through in real life help him to understand and ease the transition
9. Enhanced concentration and discipline – child learns to pay attention and concentrate
10. The knowledge of reading is fun – introducing books to children in an early age helps them view books as indulgence, not a chore

Read more: http://www.earlymoments.com/Promoting-Literacyand-a-Love-of-Reading/Why-Reading-to-Children-is-Important/

A new “QuickStudy” – so named for its short duration and the small size of its sample group – from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center observed 24 families with children ranging in age from three-to-six reading both print and e-books in the Summer and Fall of 2011. Most of the children in the study preferred reading an e-book to a print book and comprehension between the two formats were the same, says Digital Book World.

There is a lack of research on how does reading e-books affect children. But Digital Book World brings out some good examples on how have e-books contributed to children’s education. At Sesame and Scholastic, part of the mission is to encourage reading, and devices that get kids excited about books are welcome, regardless if their paper and binding or full-color touch-screen.

“One of the things we’re about at RIF,” said Rasco from Reading Is Fundamental, “is what do we do to push a kid’s button to get them turned on to reading? There is nothing to indicate right now that I’m sending poison into a child because I’m suggesting they use an e-reader.”

Further, Rasco is the parent of a 38-year-old with disabilities and says, as have many other parents with children with disabilities in multiple media reports, that e-books and apps have helped them interact with their children.

It’s still the very early days of e-books, enhanced e-books and book apps for children. The iPad, which came out in January 2010, and other e-readers and tablets that make children’s books a more attractive play for publishers, have been around for such a short period of time that deep, academic study of their efficacy as educational tools has yet to be done.

What researchers, observers and industry players all seem to agree upon for now is that getting kids interested in reading is a worthy cause, regardless of the format.

Read more: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/for-reading-and-learning-kids-prefer-e-books-to-print-books/

Now, you have joined or are interested in JomyBooks environment. It means that you are probably interested or have thought about creating a book yourself, right?

Here are some of the first steps we found on The Writer’s Workshop to consider before writing. Click the titles of the chapter if you want to learn more

Tip #1 Idea for the book

Make lists of:

• things you daydream about
• your special interests (medieval churches, IT security, tattoos)
• your areas of expertise (that might be something cool, like internet bank fraud, but it may well not be. Maybe you’re just an expert on swimming lessons for toddlers, social hierarchies at the school gate and how to get baby poo off a new dress. That’s still an expertise.)
• your current passions – things that get you off on a rant or long-winded explanation
• things you loved as a child – it’s amazing how often the child seems to predict the adult. Look back and see what you loved in the past.
• books you loved as a child
• books you love now.

Write actual lists of these things. Not in one single half hour session, but bit by bit, over time. Let things stew and bubble up. Almost certainly, you’ll find something nagging at you. Something that stays with you after you leave your lists. That right there is your idea.

Tip #2 Strong story and good characters

The main way to write really strong characters is to know them inside out – at least as well as your best friend, let’s say. If you have this knowledge, you will find yourself using it. If you don’t have it, you can’t. So the problem of writing character is essentially a problem of knowing character.

Tip #3 Defining the characters

Authors of genre fiction – adventure yarns, thrillers, fantasy epics, whodunnits etc – have a horrible tendency to neglect the inner. Why bother with all that deep & meaningful stuff (they say) if the point of the book is a rollicking plot & plenty of action?

Big mistake. NO author can neglect the interior, because the interior is why readers read fiction at all. We don’t just want to see Bond saving the world, we want to feel what it’s like to be Bond saving the world. If you don’t achieve that sense of interiority you haven’t even got off the starting line. The reader won’t care about your story, because they can’t care about your character.

Tip #4 Writing style

In a large majority of cases, authors will give themselves away as amateurish in the opening chapter. If you’re one of them, then no-one will read further. Sure, they don’t know about your story, your characters, or your brilliant ideas. The fact is that if your writing style is poor, then those things are irrelevant. Artists must be craftsmen too – geniuses always are.

Start your writing carrier!

Join JomyBooks community and we will guide you to success in publishing kids e-books!