Books By Kids…Now Letter Writing, Too!
TOP: Our Story Scouts publishing club members proudly display their book, www.safeandhappy.org. Story Scouts’ newest book, Go Away Rock Snot! (scroll for details) will be available in January 2025.
BELOW: Letteracy Deck visitors write, illustrate, mail–all for free!–letters and cards.
Letteracy Deck is our free, public letter writing park and kindness commons open June-October in Grand Marais, and this year, on Dec. 6-7 indoors for holiday and Santa letters. Since opening on June 21, 2023 Letteracy Deck has mailed more than 7,000 letters and cards—for free—that families have written. Our goal: to encourage screen-free reflection and connection among families to create a kindness commons.
In the News, Again! Minnesota Star Tribune, Nov. 17, 2024, Highlights Letteracy Deck, Our Free Public Letter Writing Park.
www.startribune.com/letters-from-grand-marais/601181952 Or, click image below to read article.
News Archives Sampler, 2023, click image below to read article.
Letteracy Deck has two summer locations. Top: Story Scouts write cards and letters from our Cook County History Museum deck overlooking Lake Superior’s East Bay. In September and October we overlook the harbor from our deck at Lake Superior Trading Post.
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OUR NEWEST BOOK is being proofread by our crack corps of keen-eyed proof readers, the Story Scouts’ Comma Club! Available January 2025.
LAUGH LOCAL!
LEARN EMPATHY THROUGH INSULTS
"Kip's Illustrated Guide To Shakespearean Insults" now in Grand Marais stores, and available online! Click the cover photo to purchase online.
Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais is a Kip favorite to check out when he’s in town visiting his parents.
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Kip’s publishing mentor is the legendary independent book store whiz, David Unowsky, who created St. Paul’s Hungry Mind Books, 1970-2004.
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Kip's improv comedy performances and sales at the Twin Cities Book Fest at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds are always fun!
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Listen along as kids in Grand Marais trade barbs with the bard and read Shakespearean insults aloud!
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MISSION: MENTOR FOR MEANING
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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. 
Our book "Ice Cream & Fish" won a Top 3 award in the 2021 Minnesota Author Project! www.icecreamandfish.org
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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. |
COOKING AT THE CO-OP!
Click the video play button on the cartoon below to watch 3 minutes of delicious!
EXPLORE, OBSERVE, CREATE
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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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VIRUS TRAPS
Vaccinated and masked 1st grade Story Scouts over the holiday break prepared for safe return of in-person school in January 2022 by making do-it-yourself (DIY) air filtration boxes that can trap viruses, using only:
We call these air filter boxes Virus Traps.
Adults call them Corsi-Rosenthal Air Filtration Boxes, named after the engineers and scientists who designed and tested them. Read about this easy, cheap (about $75 for materials) effective way to reduce infecting others with airborne omicron viral variant here and watch instructional videos here.
- a box fan
- four MERV 13 air filters
- cardboard
- duct tape --- LOTS of it!! Colors, please!
We call these air filter boxes Virus Traps.
Adults call them Corsi-Rosenthal Air Filtration Boxes, named after the engineers and scientists who designed and tested them. Read about this easy, cheap (about $75 for materials) effective way to reduce infecting others with airborne omicron viral variant here and watch instructional videos here.
STORY SCOUTS' 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!
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 with nationally recognized, award-winning instructional designers!
Click the cover photo below for free download PDF of its standards-aligned curriculum for learning activities in the book, written with nationally recognized, award-winning instructional designers!
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.
Innovation rehab. Here's the trend (below) we seek to reverse: the Innovation deficit in our 7 county region we live in known as the Arrowhead Region. Our area is well-served by high-quality broadband internet (See "Connection") which often is cited as the key factor needed to foster a robust innovation culture. But our innovation score is less than half the Connection score.
We are changing that. Our Story Scouts are innovation-centric, eagerly learning atmospheric chemistry to improve the quality of indoor air, mapping litter flows and analyzing spatial data with ArcGIS software, collecting field data on microplastics in Lake Superior.
This is the work, our work–and the promise–of children educated to thrive in the 21st-century.
FOCUS ON JOY! Butterfly Birthday Parties
MORE JOY! Reading Aloud to Elders
Listen 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!
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!
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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.
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! 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]. 
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.
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BOOK BIRTHDAY PARTIES
Still VIRTUAL FOR Spring 2022
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.
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.
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
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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!
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: 2022
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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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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
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 Help Create Publications Like These!
Original cartoon of the "Cig Shark" is by ©Jordan, 2016, Grand Portage, Minnesota. Our
mentors digitized Jordan's "Cig Shark" character to be the "Spokes Shark" for our successful public service campaign about the dangers of smoking and vaping. In 2019, BorealCorps www.borealcorps.org became Story Scouts, www.storyscouts.org. Click the Cig Shark chart above to go to our BorealCorps web site–see our success! State law changed to help keep vaping out of high schools and protect young kids from peer-pressure exposure to it.
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. |
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:
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Minnesota Children's Press
P.O. Box 301 Grand Marais, Minnesota 55604 U.S.A. |