Blog Archives
The Adventures of Super Obi: Nothing to Fear
When Obi’s mom forgets to turn on his nightlight at bedtime, he becomes afraid, thinking there is a monster in his closet. Then there is a monster downstairs! Finally, the monster comes upstairs and is standing at Obi’s door. Can he hide from this monster? What will happen to Obi?
The Adventures of Super Obi: Nothing to Fear by author Dominique Okonkwo and illustrated by Mariana Hnatenko tells the story of a little boy that is afraid of the dark but realizes, with his dad at his side, that there is nothing to be scared of and how to be brave. At the beginning of the story, Obi is afraid of the shadows in the dark, but his dad helps him see things as they really are and helps him find his courage. This allows him to overcome his fears.
This heartwarming picture book examines the concept of fear, courage, being brave, and family relationships, and it does all of this while also touching on faith and trust in God. This educational kids book is told from a perspective that preschoolers and kindergarten children will be able to comprehend.
The fantastic artwork is a mix of bold colors, comic style accents, and expressive character designs. You can really see the emotions on the father’s face as he listens to his son’s fears. The idea of being afraid of the dark is something many children can relate to, so this is the perfect book to use to teach the lesson of God’s love and that you can always bring your fears to God.
The Adventures of Super Obi: Nothing to Fear is a beautifully written picture book that will captivate young children and teach them that fear is normal and that you can overcome your fears through prayer and trust in God. The charismatic character of Obi will spark children’s imaginations and encourage them to face their fears.
Pages: 39 | ASIN : B09MNLPVHR
Investing In Stocks
Asset Allocation For All Markets provides an analysis of investing in stocks and details two active asset allocation approaches. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important that I write it as a reminder to younger individuals that meltdowns in capital markets have to be taken into consideration if they seek investing success.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about investing?
That you will always make money in stocks over the long term such as 10 years.
What is one piece of financial advice that someone gave you that changed your life?
Buying undervalued stocks can be successful if done right.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your book?
The xlxs and the use of CAPE.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
This book highlights the most critical research tied to investing in up and down market cycles, asset allocation, and investment management over the last 50 years.
We start with a critical look at diversification and asset allocation; we provide an in-depth analysis of investing in stocks, we then provide details on two active asset allocation approaches, make a case for index funds, and then introduce you to a management tool which we’ll use to manage the asset allocation strategy going forward.
I Wrote A Book I Needed
Billy Be Kind: Making A New Friend is an amazing children’s book on how to make friends that preschoolers can understand. Why did you feel this was important to write about?
I wrote a book I needed growing up as a shy little girl. Now that I am the mother of a shy daughter, I know the importance and impact friendships have on a child’s self-esteem and emotional health. I hope to simplify important life lessons with my short stories while teaching social and emotional skills to children at a young age.
The art in this book is fantastic it really jumps off the page. What was the art collaboration process like with illustrator Ayesha W.?
Since I have collaborated with my illustrator, Ayesha W. on several projects, she has a clearer understanding of my vision. I begin by sending her my storyboard and stick-figure drawings. She then sends me her interpretation of my ideas. We often go back and forth until we are both satisfied that the artwork matches my vision. Our personalities work in a manner that allows us to create and collaborate effectively.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I thought it was important to explore the theme of friendship. I used a shy protagonist in my story to show children that you can be shy and still be brave. Additionally, exploring the theme of friendship allowed me the opportunity to incorporate inclusion, diversity, and of course, kindness, a theme repeated throughout the entire series.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I am currently working on 3 books that should be released by the end of 2022.
Billy Be Kind: My Big Feelings
Billy Be Kind: I Can Do Anything
Billy Be Kind: Sharing
Author Links: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Making a new friend when you’re shy isn’t always easy. It often requires putting in a little effort. Billy Be Kind the kind little mouse is there to help!
This wonderful, short, rhyming story is part of the Billy Be Kind Children’s series. Billy Be Kind is a kind, little magical mouse created to teach and encourage young children to be honest, brave, kind, to listen and so much more.
Parents, teachers and caregivers understand how challenging it is to grab and retain the attention of children. These engaging, short, rhyming stories will grab and keep their attention from the beginning to the very end.
Come join the Billy Be Kind family and make this series a part of your child’s library.
About the Author
2021 Black Caucus American Library Association Best of the Best book list -Honorable Mention
Kim Adams is a wife, mother, and the author of the Billy Be Kind children’s series. She fell in love with the art of storytelling at a very young age and has been inspired ever since. Kim hopes to simplify some of life’s important lessons as well as strengthen social and emotional skills through her short, rhyming stories. She has always taught her children to lead with kindness and hopes to help spread her message to every little boy and girl.
Understanding What Success Looks Like
The DAP Strategy is primarily about the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), and how one can capitalize on the digitization industry. Why was this an important book for you to write?
There were two aspects that I was concerned with.
First, most customers I spoke with were challenged in demonstrating the value they had realised from the multi-million-dollar investments they had (were making) made. They had focused on defining the problem they wanted to solve (what) and the reason for solving it (why) but very few if any were as focused on how they were going to realise the benefits (how). To give you a sense of the magnitude of the challenge, some analyst reports suggest that over $1 trillion will be spent on new software and an additional $3 trillion on implementation services only for +75% of programs to fail to deliver on the value (Gartner).
Second, with each interaction with the employees of my clients, I could see that the complexity of work had become a massive weight in their shoulders. With each passing transformation initiative came an added burden; one that did not help them achieve their professional nor personal goals. You could see the joy of work rapidly diminishing. The complexity was sucking the joy out of work for them and as a result having an impact personally.
When you marry the two together you begin to understand the challenge both employer and employee are having in the workforce, and this can go some way to explain the radical shift in the workforce that we see today globally. This is such a big topic that in the book, I make a bold prediction that by 2025, digital employee experience will be a top-5 criteria for employees in their decision-making process on whether to join an organization. Employers who do not have a response to digital adoption will struggle to attract the right talent because talent will not be willing to deal with the complexity of work.
What has been one of your greatest successes implementing the DAP Strategy to your own organizations?
The smiles on the faces of the users. Instead of reluctance to use the new software, seeing users wanted to use the technology and being able to use it without impediment makes the effort and investment worthwhile. We talk about productivity a lot but being able to alleviate pressure from the workforce is a major challenge and each time we are able to do this we create a natural attrition barrier whilst helping employees take an additional step towards their personal and professional goals.
What is one of the biggest challenges an organization faces when trying to implement digital transformation?
The biggest challenge is the original business case. Typically, this doesn’t see the light of day and it is almost impossible to build out value realisation metrics without understanding the financial and operational levers that were set in the original business case. Once the extended team understands this then understanding what success looks like will help the team build out underlying digital adoption content and metrics that can be tied back to the business case.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
This is still in stealth mode. You will need to buy The DAP Strategy for clues to what the next instalment may look like.
Author Links: Website | Twitter
As teams struggle to out-perform, new software offers opportunities to improve business outcomes. Yet millions of dollars and hours of productivity are wasted each year as companies fail to manage change in a cloud technology-led world.
The problem isn’t the people or software—it’s a lack of confidence and knowledge. Enable new ways of working to de-risk and accelerate the potential value from your digital transformation initiatives with Digital Adoption Platforms.
In The DAP Strategy, Raj Sundarason, chief evangelist for the world’s premier DAP provider, shares practical insights to empower leadership teams and employees to master digital tools. Strategic yet nontechnical, this is your guide to accelerating capability and unlocking the potential of digital transformation programs for your organization.
You’ll discover:
The power of DAPs to help your “baby users” confidently navigate new digital tools, completing processes faster and more accurately.
How to unlock cashable benefits by leveraging existing system data to fix process friction points that impact your P&L.
Positive benefits of DAPs on employee workflow, work culture, and customer relationship management.
A framework to assess the value and economic impact of DAP content on business objectives.
What your organization must do to ensure successful digital transformations for the competitive advantage you need-because DAPs aren’t enough.
Transform your organization from the inside out! Get The DAP Strategy now to leverage the Power of How and start your company on the path to a successful, DAP-driven future.
Being Indie
Eeva Lancaster’s informative book clearly lays out all the steps an indie author needs to take when publishing and selling their book. Each chapter dives into a separate topic, explaining why the section is important first before moving onto the detailed how-to section. Sprinkled with anecdotes to help drive the points home, Being Indie is as fun as it is educational.
This book really impressed me with how quickly the author gets to the core of the problem or misconception that many authors have. The book then moves on to quickly dispel those flawed notions and proceeds to educate the reader on the proper way to go about tackling the variety of obstacles that indie authors face. Eeva’s driven personality and perceptive humor helps to make readers feel at ease, and drives home the fact that Eeva knows what she’s talking about.
What separates this book from others of its kind is that this book covers absolutely everything that an indie author needs to publish their book and sell it, and themselves, after it’s published. Many books will cover one topic of the other, but this book does both. While it comprehensively covers all the tasks authors must accomplish before and after publication, what truly makes this book stand out is how quickly we get to the heart of the matter on each topic. With only a few paragraphs to explain why things are important, readers will appreciate how quickly they get into the meat of solving the problem. With clear step by step instructions, and suggestions on further learning, it will be impossible to fail.
I needed to read this book before publishing my first book. It could have saved me so much time, money, and sleepless nights. Now that I know the solution to many of the problems authors face, reading Eeva’s book now makes me shake my head in amazement with how clearly she identified my previous problems and how quickly she resolved them.
While the self-publishing journey may be long, Eeva has formatted her book so that it works easily as a reference guide whenever you are ready to move onto the next step in your adventure.
Being Indie is a no-nonsense guide to self-publishing with a direct tone that delivers concise instructions in easily digestible segments. This is an effective crash course on being an indie author that I highly recommend to any aspiring or current indie authors that want to create a book that SELLS.
Pages: 211 | ASIN: B072BT3J37
We Want Kids to Embody Joy, Breath, And Imagination
Andi’s Valentine Tree follows a child that wants nothing more than to dance, they befriend a tree that helps teach their classmates about kindness. What was the inspiration for your story?
The stories in this series (Andi’s Valentine Tree is book 13) are all developed around kids’ favorite stories when I taught children’s dance classes. The kids lit up when it was story time and asked for the same stories over and over again. It was funny because I’d work so hard to create something original for them and they’d be like, “Please, can you tell the [last-week’s] story.” Witnessing their joy in creating movement while using their imagination and being the star of their own show is my inspiration for the series.
I love that your series teaches dance along with the story. How do you approach this process, do you decide on the moves first, or do you write the story outline and fill in the dance moves after?
So far, the writing process has always initiated with some curriculum aspect from my dance classes, In the case of Andi’s Valentine Tree, the tree wanting someone to dance was one way we reviewed ballet vocabulary. So I started there and built the plot up around that idea.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
For each of our stories, we want kids to embody joy, breath, and imagination as well as dance and movement. We appreciate kind characters that can be positive role models. Each book encourages kids to use the stories in a way that works for them, their bodies, and their space. Of course, in this story, the importance of bystanders showing support in difficult situations, celebrating individuality, and the value of forgiveness are themes I was happy to incorporate.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Danika’s Dancing Day was just released. There are a few Dance-It-Out! stories with illustrators that should be out by summer. We are wrapping up the debut in a new series for kids 8+, which will hopefully be out in March.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Ballerina Konora joins the pages with dance photos and suggestions for movement exploration. Three books in one: readers can enjoy the story, act out the tale in their own way, or try Konora’s suggested activities, designed by an award-winning ballet teacher to develop body awareness and movement knowledge. Each Dance-It-Out! story is a kids’ dance performance for the imagination stage. Andi’s Valentine Tree builds on previous Dance-It-Out! material and is ideal for ages 6+, dance students, or as a sequel to other stories.
MANSA’S Little REMINDERS The Money Workbook for Kids Part 1
MANSA’S Little REMINDERS The Money Workbook for Kids is part of the Mansa’s Little Reminders series. This is a workbook designed for teachers, educators, parents, and caregivers to be able to teach six to twelve-year-olds about budgeting, saving money, and age-appropriate entrepreneur skills. This workbook outlines activities for adults and gives them worksheets, example pages, quiz questions, and links to print off additional resources.
When looking through this fantastic workbook I was impressed with the amount of information that is presented. Authors A.D. Williams and Kendal Fordham have laid out the materials in a clear step-by-step manner with vocabulary sheets, activities, questions, and everything someone could need to create a lesson plan either for a classroom or homeschooling.
The exceptional workbook is filled with bold and colorful illustrations done by Taylor Bou. The images jump off the page and present the concepts clearly. With clean lines and entertaining expressions, children will be drawn into the pages and better able to understand the information being presented.
What educators will like is that the information is realistic, the authors bring up failure and how it is a natural part of the process. Discussing how to manage failure and how to learn from it is often overlooked especially for children. This process sets aside time each week just for evaluating what works and doesn’t work. This is an important step towards learning and I am happy to see it highlighted.
MANSA’S Little REMINDERS The Money Workbook for Kids is a great workbook to continue the lessons that are started in MANSA’s Little REMINDERS: Scratching the surface of financial literacy. This workbook will help put into practice the information from the first book and give children a hands-on application for the lessons covered. This is a great resource for any adult that is trying to give kids an early start on understanding budgeting and saving money.
Pages: 49 | ASIN : B09QMGY4LM
LITERARY TITAN 