The Start of the Idea Behind and How it all Came to Be: “The Big Alphabet Book of Critter Tales”
Hi! I’m Judy and I wanted to share with you how this whole book idea got started.
I have been an Occupational therapist for more than 35 years, and early on in my career I needed to develop a way to engage small children in their therapy programs. Trying to “make” a child do what you want is often a losing battle and can cause distress as well as make the whole situation overwhelming for a child.
Working with children in early intervention, through pre-school, and then into kindergarten and elementary school I needed to find a fun way to get the kids to want to work with me and still address their developmental, sensory, speech-language, or cognitive needs.
I provided OT to most in their homes, but also went into day-care facilities, school-based settings, and therapy-based clinics, and I was looking to find other means to promote participation besides the typical therapeutic toys, equipment, and media.
Using stories, often made up on the spot, and pretend play combined with therapeutic activities and tasks, I was able to see that using age-based interactive play along with creative imagination worked. I was able to engage children at a level they could easily relate to while working toward the achievement of their Occupational Therapy functional goals and their overall team treatment plan.
The value in using play, and the development of creative thought and imagination promotes physical, cognitive, perceptual, and language development, as well as positively impacting those children who also have sensory integrative issues. I started referring to my stories and the pretend play that went along with them as ISP or Interactive Story Play.
Over time I continued to “make up” stories and finally began keeping track of them all. This first book, “The Big Alphabet Book of Critter Tales,” is the culmination of stories related to the alphabet – each letter of the alphabet introduces a “critter” who has it’s own “tale” to tell as well as therapeutic based activities and tasks that are specific to each “critter.” Coming up with 26 stories that was not only fun, made some crazy kind of sense, and where the majority of words in the story started with each critter’s (A to Z) letter of the alphabet was way harder than you can imagine!
Once I had most all of the critters decided upon for the book, but way before all the stories were fully completed, I knew I needed an illustrator. I looked and searched but did not find someone who could create my vision of the critters – then out of a stroke of luck, a friend, another Judy, and an OT as well, introduced me to Cathy, who not only had a Speech background, but who also loved to draw, paint, and even illustrated cool cakes using frosting for her kids! We became a great match and our partnership on this project began.
Cathy was able to read my “critter tale” and use her vision to create an illustration that was went perfectly with each story. The imagery of each illustration connects with each “critter tale” blending physical interaction with imaginative thought. One by one, each of the 26 critters were brought to life by their illustrations. With all the stories, and activities now completed, we are now here looking to publish!
“The Big Alphabet Book of Critter Tales” can be thoroughly enjoyed as a great illustrated story book and fun early learning experiences to share with any child.
Using the included OT and ST based activity pages, with over 400+ activities, however, adds a whole new dimension to the concept of interactive story play and developmental learning.
We hope you will check out the Interactive Story Play page on TheraPlay4Kids.com
