We mentor children ages 5-15 in rural and underserved Minnesota in writing, illustration and publishing books to create inclusive community in which children’s perspectives enrich and enlarge the public imagination about how to create a generative future for all. |
Children inherit the world – but are left out of the conversations that shape it. Our mission at Minnesota Children's Press is to change that. Story Scouts power the vision and the reality. |
Seeing a bear in an apple tree while on a walk in Grand Marais is believing–and inspiring! It makes Story Scouts and their mentors who are professional artists, writers, editors and designers think of...picture books about bears! And the things bears might do in their bearly days with their bearly friends. Share apples and tea and a story, of course. Illustration credit: Lexi Ames © 2020 Minnesota Children's Press. All Rights Reserved.
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MCP Mentor Kip is a hands-on guy. You'll learn a lot from him, especially about illustrating with stick figures. And coping. And cows. While studying acting at Ireland's National Theatre School, The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Kip never forgot his Minnesota roots and love of the land, its creatures and beverages. He visited the Irish countryside, farms and cows whenever possible, stopping for a nip of milk now and then.
FREE & FUN! Receive 1 gift copy of Kip's Illustrated Guide to Shakespearean Insults, 2nd Edition, as our thanks for your tax-free donation to Minnesota Children's Press. |
New! Our expanded, 2nd edition with empathy curriculum is now available, as of January 4, 2023!
Click here to buy Kip's Illustrated Guide to Shakespearean Insults by Kip Hathaway, Minnesota Children's Press (MCP) illustration and story mentor, actor, improv professional, comic and stick figure artist. It's the first in our children's mental health series on creative resilience to help kids cope with the uncertainties caused by:
Looking back at his early self, Kip, now 28, shares the wobbles he's known and illustrated in his middle school and high school notebooks. In his Dear Reader preface to Kip's Illustrated Shakespearean Insults Kip explains how he drew his way out of some depressing days. His spirit-stick figure Bob even showed up in Kip's college application in an essay about the most influential people in his life. Kip invites your questions. Write and draw to Kip about your experiences, or send questions to: [email protected]. |
Minnesota Children's Press brings mentored, mobile publishing labs to your school, interest group, club, 4H meet-ups or county fair. During 2021 COVID-19 precautions, we make the publishing magic happen remotely: virtually, online, through distance mentoring and publishing.
If you don't have a group, join our Story Scouts Club. You can read about one in Grand Marais, Minnesota, USA: www.storyscouts.org. These kids wanted to write about global health to help raise money to improve children's health in Africa. What's your topic? Love history? Join our Digital Rural History Project! Help us research, interview, write and illustrate multigenerational stories of community in rural Minnesota. During our Outdoor Book Camp, generously funded in part by the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation, kids on Minnesota's North Shore published "A Children's History of Grand Marais, Minnesota: Ice Cream & Fish" in 2020, www.icecreamandfish.org. We expect a second printing this summer to meet demand! Our dream: To collect child-authored and -illustrated histories from around rural Minnesota to create a child-eye's-view anthology of life in our state. Learn conversational and interview skills, like these Grand Marais Story Scouts in the video interviewing Ron about what his Grand Marais high school days were like 65 years ago. Then watch our writers craft their story and ponder fonts as they develop their entrepreneurial writing instincts. When you start a project with us, our professional, award-winning writers, editors, and publishers help you tell your stories with style and clarity, and in the process, help you "skill up" for 21st century communication challenges by teaching entrepreneurial writing, illustration, editing, publishing, web design, and related career skills. We finalize the files of your project with you, then print whenever possible with local printers in your area. If there aren't any, we print in Minnesota—occasionally in upstate New York—but always in the United States to ensure our books are non-toxic. |
Sharks & Rocks. Watch this 20-second video to see how a hole in a rock inspires a story involving a cookie-cutter shark.
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TEXT BOOKS DIY and show what you knowDARK TIMES TRIBUNE Creative teachers can assign the publishing of a class-authored and illustrated text book to serve as a summative learning assessment for a topic they studied. Forget tests and reports. Book crafting is a far more demanding, rewarding, and instructive interdisciplinary project. Fourth-graders in St. Paul's Capitol Hill Magnet School learned this with their unit on Medieval Life and their creation of Dark Times Tribune. They supplemented class lessons with research. |
NEWSPAPERS Create your positive community AEROBIC NEWSPAPERS Newspapers written and illustrated by children—who walk to do their reporting, making it an aerobic newspaper—bring fresh voices and visions to community dialogue that connect, enrich, and delight. Newspapers are a foundation of our free American society because they encourage civil discussions that lead to productive, problem solving. |
BOOKS Tell your story, your way, your genreMY FIRST FARM & JACK'S STORY The youngest Story Scouts create with paper and pencil, as 8-year-old author-illustrator Julia from Rochester does above in her book, My First Farm. Older Story Scouts, such as Sammie, 13, from Grand Marais, are fully digital in research, writing, and web book. Her story is historical fiction about the life of Jack, a Depression-era orphan. Sammie has been the editor of BorealCorps.org, Cook County's children's newspaper, since 6th grade. |
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address |
Minnesota Children's Press
P.O. Box 301 Grand Marais, Minnesota 55604 U.S.A. |