ABOVE Minnesota Children's Press founder, Anne Brataas, an award-winning author and publisher, signs off on her children's book, Mira's Big Day of Wonder to authorize printing. Your book is next!
ABOVE Anne works with a young author – the motivating joy behind Minnesota Children's Press. She's been teaching kids in grades kindergarten-10 how to write, illustrate and publish their own newspapers, books, and magazines since 2006.
BELOW Minnesota Children's Press specializes in amplifying the voices of children in rural communities, and staffed a booth at the Goodhue County Fair, in Zumbrota, for four days in August 2019. Credits: Top photo by Joey McLeister for The Story Laboratory, LLC and bottom photo by Anne Brataas. Copyright@2016-2019. All Rights Reserved.
BELOW Minnesota Children's Press specializes in amplifying the voices of children in rural communities, and staffed a booth at the Goodhue County Fair, in Zumbrota, for four days in August 2019. Credits: Top photo by Joey McLeister for The Story Laboratory, LLC and bottom photo by Anne Brataas. Copyright@2016-2019. All Rights Reserved.
Greetings and Welcome to Minnesota Children's Press!
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Howdy! I'm Anne! Some of you may know me as the woman who gives out books – and candy – for Halloween.
Minnesota Children's Press is my new educational non-profit authoring and publishing collaborative. It's a mobile, mentored publishing lab for Minnesota child authors, illustrators, designers, and editors in kindergarten-grade 10.
We are Story Scouts. We interview, research, write, illustrate, edit, design, craft, proof, sign off, and publish stories from a child's eye view to offer a fresh, clear, truthful perspective on the world around us.
We practice early childhood philanthropy by selling books we make to raise money for community improvements. Selling our books helps fund life-improving projects such as helping kids graduate from college free of debt. Or helping build a new, safer and more engaging playground of natural, non-polluting and non-toxic materials. Or a Fairy Library – our project for 2020! We'll help design and build it, and write the books, too! Fairies, trolls, tomten and nisse can read them aloud to each other and their animal friends.
Writing, illustrating and publishing books together—and the many entrepreneurial skills learned doing this—highlights how capable, creative and caring kids really are. We aim for impact! And hope the world is better for it.
Join us to make a Minnesota Children's Press book, newspaper, 'zine, web site, graphic novel, illustrated timeline, public service announcement, informational graphic or other words 'n pictures project today!
Minnesota Children's Press is my new educational non-profit authoring and publishing collaborative. It's a mobile, mentored publishing lab for Minnesota child authors, illustrators, designers, and editors in kindergarten-grade 10.
We are Story Scouts. We interview, research, write, illustrate, edit, design, craft, proof, sign off, and publish stories from a child's eye view to offer a fresh, clear, truthful perspective on the world around us.
We practice early childhood philanthropy by selling books we make to raise money for community improvements. Selling our books helps fund life-improving projects such as helping kids graduate from college free of debt. Or helping build a new, safer and more engaging playground of natural, non-polluting and non-toxic materials. Or a Fairy Library – our project for 2020! We'll help design and build it, and write the books, too! Fairies, trolls, tomten and nisse can read them aloud to each other and their animal friends.
Writing, illustrating and publishing books together—and the many entrepreneurial skills learned doing this—highlights how capable, creative and caring kids really are. We aim for impact! And hope the world is better for it.
Join us to make a Minnesota Children's Press book, newspaper, 'zine, web site, graphic novel, illustrated timeline, public service announcement, informational graphic or other words 'n pictures project today!
How it Works: Publisher In A School
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MinnChild brings mentored, mobile publishing labs to your school, interest group, or club. 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. One day we'll collect them all for 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. |
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Our Focus: Original Voices of Children
Our focus is on you creating. You are original thinkers and doers!
Our priority service area is rural Minnesota, or national and international partner children's organizations who live outside of major cities or urban areas. If you have stories to tell, reach out now and contact me: anneATminnchildpress.org
Our priority service area is rural Minnesota, or national and international partner children's organizations who live outside of major cities or urban areas. If you have stories to tell, reach out now and contact me: anneATminnchildpress.org
Why Join? To Create Publications Like These!
Cartoon ©Jordan, 11, Grand Portage, "Cig Shark" character for a 2016 public service announcement about the dangers of smoking and vaping as part of a BorealCorps kids' Story Scout public health project.
Castle cover ©Aaron, 9, for a class-written text about their medieval history studies.
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. |
We have worked with children for 10 years to write and publish children's newspapers. Click image to see the archives of our Children's Newseum of child-authored newspapers.
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. |
My First Farm, book, ©Julia, 8. She drew the dog and chicken on our logo, too.
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. |
To Do Fun Things Like This: Snow Read-Alouds!
Photo Credit: Christina Hadjiyiannis.
Used with permission.
The All-Weather Public Read-Aloud is an educational pop-up format the Minnesota Children's Press pioneered. In this snowy photo, Anne is reading aloud her baby board book, Mira's First Day of Wonder, in a snow storm at the European Outdoor Christmas Market at St. Paul's Union Depot in December 2018.
Why do this? To create a wonderfully vibrant, spontaneous Story & Book Commons that unites all people through purposeful, creative communication and imaginative storycrafting!
Why do this? To create a wonderfully vibrant, spontaneous Story & Book Commons that unites all people through purposeful, creative communication and imaginative storycrafting!
...And Like This: Minnesota Winter Writing With Fur Feet
Winter Writing: On -30 degree F. days, stay cozy and write, draw, design, edit. For maximum comfort and perfect form, wear your grandmother's fur coat with your feet in the arms, as Anne is doing in this photo.
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS OFFICE
We agree that sharing is caring! And we do, in fact, want to share and circulate our work – and also give credit where credit is due to honor intellectual property rights worldwide. You can contact us below to get permission to use our work:
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Minnesota Children's Press
P.O. Box 301 Grand Marais, Minnesota 55604 U.S.A. |