Storymakers - Creating picture books with families.

I'm working with families and preschool children in Tameside to create a brand new picture book all about emotions.

As part of the Storymakers Project, run by Tameside Libraries and funded by Community Safety, we have been talking about big emotions and how we can help our children understand and manage how they feel.

A really important part of children's emotional and social development is helping them develop vocabulary to describe how they are feeling, to talk positively about ALL emotions and to give children tools to regulate some of the more difficult emotional states.

In this project, we are using the weather as a way of describing our feelings in this sweet story about two bears and their adventures in the wilderness.

Unlike the books I publish with traditional publishers, there is no editor or designer on this project, so illustrator Andy Rowland and I are running the whole process ourselves - and learning a lot along the way.

Every one of the 500 or so families involved in the project will receive a free copy of the book when it's published.

If you have a project you'd like to discuss, drop me a message!