Our friends at Room to Read have posted their latest update. Take a few minutes to see how our friends at Room to Read have accomplished much despite a difficult economic environment.

In honour of Family Literacy Day here in Canada, we are publishing the 1908 edition of Anne of Green Gables. It is a powerful story about an orphan, who is mistakenly sent to the Cuthbert brother and sister, who were hoping for a boy to help out with the farm. Anne takes on the challenge admirably, and through her chatter and her wonder wins the hearts of her adopted family and community.

Over the last hundred years, this Canadian book has become an enduring classic for many cultures. The book was given to Polish soldiers in WWII, as a gesture of friendship and encouragement. A little later, Green Gables was preserved, becoming a popular historical site for many young girls to visit, especially the Japanese. More recently, a movie trilogy directed by Kevin O'Sullivan and Stefan Scaini was released, receiving an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

We hope this book inspires you to read a chapter with your young friends. Perhaps at bed time, or during quiet time. For your younger listeners, you can even encourage them to draw pictures of Anne or her new home. Either way, you will be inviting them to imagine characters and settings, as they expand their vocabulary and wonder of faraway places.

For the artists in our midst, perhaps you would like to illustrate the story and upload it for publishing at Sharing-Books. We look forward to seeing your interpretation of this Canadian classic. These are just a few of the ways you too can participate, and we encourage you to join us in celebrating Family Literacy Day.

Labels: Anne of Green Gables, children's books, e-books, e-readers, Family Literacy Day, Lucy Maud Montgomery, orphan

In the famous Peanuts cartoon by Charles M. Schulz, the character Schroeder is seen playing his piano, often recreating a tune of Ludvig van Beethoven's. Many times, the same song comes out, but somehow, he hits the right series of notes to emphasize his progress or frustration.

As we begin the New Year, we too at Sharing-Books continue to play our music. Our IT department regularly meets to find ways of enhancing the site. Our Classics department scours the globe in search of material that will somehow strike a chord in the minds and hearts of our readers. And of course, our Executive Team meet with those interested in supporting literacy and raising up the next generation of readers.

Our creators have brought you lively illustrations, such as those created by Catherine York and James Stroud, as well as topical written material that addresses the human condition. And that is to only name a few of our creators! Together, we create a global publishing company that has released over 150 e-books and posters in 2009.

So just as a pianist takes a fraction of a moment before beginning the next song, we encourage all of you to consider how truly splendid that feat is! It started with a single note, followed by a second hand on the keyboard, only to be joined by yet more players and more instruments. It seems only fitting of course, to encourage you to listen to this piece by Beethoven, as we ring in the New Year. Please join us in humming, singing and conducting this rendition of Ode To Joy.

Labels: Beethoven, Catherine York, children's ebooks, children's illustrators, children's writers, ebooks, James Stroud, Ode To Joy, Peanuts

Some of you have asked what it is like to be a book fox. Recently, we had an opportunity to go in search of books along Portobello Road in London UK. A posh part of London, Notting Hill regained familiarity with the release of Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

From Notting Hill Tube station, it is a 20 minute walk, crossing cobbled streets, and sniffing floral holiday wreaths now available for sale at local market stalls. At 2 pm on a Friday afternoon, the market is a press as mothers push strollers, their toddlers all bundled up in bright fleece toques. There are cafes and pubs with funny names, like The Fat Badger - a remarkably fitting site to stage a scene from the classic Wind in the Willows. And of course there was the obligatory sausage shop featuring all kinds of yummy edibles for our tummies.

We returned to the street to begin our quest. We weeded through one stack, only to begin another. Just where will we find this one book with that particular illustrator? Will this one book matter to one child or thousands? Moving to the next stall, one vendor was kind enough to show us his collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales that was illustrated by a spooky 20th century artist. Another offered to help us search for additional classics via estate sales. Meeting these people and unearthing chapter books and picture books in varying conditions is, for us, akin to an archeological dig at the base of the Egyptian pyramids! Despite the dirty pages and the cold November air, the process is oh so thrilling!

In the end, we found some beautifully illustrated books, courtesy of a renowned jeweller. It turns out their family had been collecting them for years. We would like to take the time to thank the jewelers Cox & Power and invite you to shop at their Marleybone High Street location. Tony, Vicci and Rachel will be more than happy to help you.

Labels: children's ebooks, Cox and Power, e-books, entrepreneurs, jewelry, Portobello market, sausages

For those of you located in the lower mainland of British Columbia,you may want to join us for lunch and hear Erin Ganju, co-founder and CEO of Room to Read present an update on the activities and plans of our favourite charity. This is a unique opportunity to meet the leader of a non-governmental organization that has won multiple awards for its work around the world.

Click here to order your tickets.

See you on November 17.

We are delighted to note that we have delivered over 20,000 e-books to children around the world. By our own (very unscientific) estimate, each book averages 5 readers when we include the classrooms where they are used. So we believe that over 100,000 young readers around the world have enjoyed the work of our book creators.

We are thankful for our book creators who believe in what we want to accomplish and who join us with their creative work. The joy we have each time we read new books submitted by our creators make all the effort to put this project together worthwhile.

Labels: children books, children's ebooks, e-books

The beauty of a web 2.0 site is that your users innovate with the tools you give them.

We originally saw the site as a book publishing tool. But Jennifer Poulter, an educational author form Australia, saw in Sharing-Books a tool to publish one page books that she calls poster-poems as classroom aids to help students learn poetry and/or help teachers introduce discussion topics relevant to their classes. The form of the poster-poem has been received well and Jennifer's work has been used in classrooms around the world. One of our authors, Urs Dietrich, who wrote Miki Makes a Promise, reported that on his last trip to Odessa, he visited a classroom where Jennifer's poster-poems were used to teach English.

Now it is author Timothy Schenk who published last week a surprise he had hinted was coming. Timothy has previously illustrated two poster-poems written by Jennifer. He also wrote and illustrated My Pretty Pointe Shoes that won the second prize in the July 2009 Simone Woods Awards. This time Timothy published our first talking book: Fan of Halloween.

Fan of Halloween demonstrates Timothy's technical know-how as he took advantage of a new feature Adobe introduced to PDF files, the ability to insert flash files. So as you download what looks like a normal and relatively small PDF file, you also download a little movie and a recording of Timothy reading his poem. When you click on the image of the pumpkin on the page, the pumpkin moves in as Timothy reads the poem.

This is very exciting and very promising. We deliberately limited the file type of our books to PDF so that universal distribution would be easy and that given the small size of the files, our books could be downloaded in low bandwidth regions of the world. Obviously this limited the books in being two dimensional. Now we can see the form of the e-book developing new and valuable attributes. Imagine a PDF e-book where a child can click on a cow and hear it go Moo! Or have an alphabet book read to them or having technical details added to a science book.

We thank Timothy for innovating with this first book and showing the way to one more imaginative use of Sharing-Books.com

Labels: children books, digital publishing industry, e-books, Halloween, J.R. Poulter, new features, picture books, publishing, teaching english, technology, Timothy Schenk