Minnesota Children's Press is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit children's publishing charity. We exist to:

• mentor rural Minnesota children in writing, illustrating, publishing and selling their own books to teach entrepreneurial 21st Century digital media skills while raising money from publishing projects to fund civic improvements children identify
• enrich and expand the sense of shared purpose and inclusive Commons among Minnesotans of all generations, identities and cultures by engaging children's agency to be positive change agents, and building confidence that their contributions to community are needed and valued
• amplify children's voices, agency and moral authority to preserve the natural world and its many diverse life forms
• be as generous and helpful as the lilacs below welcoming nectaring butterflies, or the Cook County Minnesota Story Scouts who help keep  communities safe from coronavirus by making and displaying friendly, handmade public health posters.
  
• Credit: Butterflies filmed by Kate Hathaway on a sunny June day 2021 in the Minnesota prairie.

TRAPPING CORONAVIRUS

Vaccinated and masked 1st grade Story Scouts  over the December holiday break prepared for safe return of in-person school in January 2022 -- when omicron virus is supposed to peak! --  by making do-it-yourself (DIY) air filtration boxes that can trap viruses, using only:

• a box fan
•  four MERV 13 air filters
• cardboard
• duct tape --- LOTS of it!!  Colors, please! 

We call these air filter boxes Virus Traps.

Grownups call  them Corsi-Rosenthal Air Filtration Boxes, named after the engineers and scientists who designed and tested them. Read about this easy, cheap (about $50 for materials) effective way to reduce infecting others  with airborne omicron viral variant   here and watch instructional videos here.

STORY  SCOUTS' 7-STEP VIRUS  TRAP

1. DRAW a building plan. That way you understand the basic idea: A box fan mounted on the top of  a filter cube sucks indoor air into filters. Filters trap the viruses. The cleaned air is sucked out by the fan out of the filter cube -- safe and happy air! This reduces the number of infectious virus particles in the air, and makes being together indoors safer.​
2. TAPE four MERV 13 filters together with duct tape to make a cube. Make sure  all the arrows on the filters point IN to the center of the cube you are building.
3. CUT a square of cardboard and tape it to the bottom. ​
4. HAIR TEST a box fan placed on cube to get the blowing-air direction right. Use the hair test. Turn on  the fan and  position it so it  blows your  hair around. That proves the fan is moving filtered air  OUT   of  the cube and putting  virus-free air back in the  room! 
5. TAPE the box fan to the top of the cube.
6. DONE! Celebrate your excellent safety device and share the  news with others. Teach them to make a Virus Trap!
7.  CARTOON your success! On  your original build plan ADD screaming virus dialogue boxes as they are about to get trapped by your filter box, including a mad sassy virus daring you  to trap it! 

Our newest Story Scouts children's publishing club book!
Click the cover photo below for free download PDF of its standards-aligned curriculum for learning activities in the book, written by nationally recognized, award-winning instructional designers!

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Click the photo to buy our latest books!

Entrepreneurial writing samples: We designed and made these printed paper placemats so visitors to the North Shore can write love letters to Lake Superior. We plan to collect them into a book.

We prepare rural children for success in 21st century work based on digital media literacy and collaborative, creative communication and next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). How? By helping them create career-relevant portfolios, develop admirable work ethics and apply outstanding problem-solving skills and attitudes by the time they enter high school.

During and after the coronavirus age, all careers will require mastery of remote working skills. Call it the Zoom Boom. We agree with leading thinkers and economists – read Professor Robert Reich's BerkleyBlog –  who believe the Pandemic will reshape the future of work into four job categories: the remotes, the essentials, the unpaid and the forgotten.

Minnesota Children's Press  kids excel in the first two categories.

FOCUS ON JOY! Butterfly Birthday Parties

MORE JOY! Reading Aloud to Elders

Listen below to the joy a reader feels from reading Nancy Nelson's February 2020 book, Joy! Finding Joy Every Day. In the gallery, see Nancy's evocative cover photographs and the moving preface she wrote as she faced pancreatic cancer with courage and creativity.

Working with Minnesota Children's Press made it easy for Nancy to involve her middleschool granddaughter, Sylvie, in a multigenerational artistic family history project. Sylvie drew the soaring hopeful birds that we incorporated into the book design to become end papers of winged joy!

Your tax-free donation honors Nancy's spirit of joyful embrace of life, and all roads on the journey. We thank you for supporting the spirit of creative resiliency Nancy embodies with a gift copy of her book.

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CHILD
​MENTAL HEALTH

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!
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Receive 1 gift copy of Kip's 18-page, full color, softcover book, An Illustrated Guide to Kip's Shakespearean Insults! as our thanks for your tax-free donation to Minnesota Children's Press.

New in May 2020! Read An Illustrated Guide to Kip's Shakespearean Insults! by Kip Hathaway, Minnesota Children's Press (MCP) illustration and story mentor, actor, 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:

• the covid-19 pandemic
• school stresses
• being misunderstood
• the unobstructed view of a future full of vibrating question marks

Looking back at his early self, Kip,  now 25, 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: kip@minnchildpress.org.

In Ireland, at The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Kip was cast as a cat and took the role seriously. He takes your questions seriously, too.

BOOK BIRTHDAY PARTIES
Still VIRTUAL FOR Spring 2021

Bookcrafting birthday parties are conducted as hybrids through Spring 2021. That means Minnesota Children's Press will send supplies to your home, and then coordinate the fun online through a bookmaking buffet, including choreographing a Story Walk to develop plot, characters, conflict and resoultion.

Physical supplies include character-crafting materials and bookmaking kits  for child authors and illustrators. Online, we manage book creation in a Zoom 2-hour writeshop overseen by a bookmaking story mentor from Minnesota Children's Press. When the Covid-19 virus is fully controlled and it is safe to socially interact, we will resume in-person book buffet bookmaking parties. Questions? Contact Anne.

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HEARING CHILDREN

TOP 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@2016-2020. All Rights Reserved.

  CREATING WITH CHILDREN

Howdy! I'm Anne! Some of you may know me as the woman who makes Fairy Gardens and Fairy Libraries in summer, and in the fall, 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, or thereabouts.

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 through our Youth In Philanthropic Publishing (YIPP) Advisory Board. By selling books that Story Scouts make and sell, we raise money for community improvements. Selling our books helps fund life-improving projects such as helping kids graduate from college free of debt.  Or designing more engaging playgrounds of natural, non-polluting and non-toxic materials. Or helping our kids' log-rolling team excel by raising funds to buy a new $800 cover for its practice logs. From our Ice Cream & Fish revenues through March 2021, we donated to the Violence Prevention Center, several 12-steps groups, and funds for families facing food insecurity.

Writing, illustrating and publishing books together—and the many 21st Century digital work and entrepreneurial skills learned doing this—highlights how capable, creative and caring kids really are. We aim  to make our community stronger, more inclusive and more prepared to create and practice a sustainable future with a vibrant culture of meaningful work (likely remote); thriving families; healthy water, forests, air and land. We want to be the best stewards we can be of our  harmonious home on the north shore of Lake Superior.

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!

And when winter snows blanket Fairy Gardens and  Fairy Libraries, and my books have all been given out at Halloween, I read aloud to babies, outside, in the falling snow!

MCP Founder and author Anne Brataas reads aloud to children wherever, whenever she can.

HOW IT WORKS: 2021

MinnChild 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.
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Sharks & Rocks. Watch this 20-second video to see how a hole in a rock inspires a story involving a cookie-cutter shark.

ORIGINAL VOICES 

Our focus is on you creating. You are original thinkers and doers, a sound not heard before in the Universe, and vital to the song of life. We start with you telling us the stories you feel all around you, like this one, about how a rock got a hole in it:

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 know

DARK 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 genre

MY 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.

Still not sure what you might do in a Minnesota Children's Press Story Scouts Publishing Club? Click on the triangle below to watch a 3-minute video visual explanation.

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:

email

rights@minnchildpress.org

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address

Minnesota Children's Press
P.O. Box 301
Grand Marais, Minnesota 55604
U.S.A.