As most of you know, we believe that their is in fact a place for traditional printed stories for children. However we are also aware that technology is playing a larger roll everyday in our lives as well as our children’s lives. Technology itself progresses in improvement by magnitudes every 20 years. The Internet itself is only about 15 years old which means we are approaching a major shift in how that impacts our children, educational institutions and lives.

A recent New York Times article discusses the impact of “Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers“. Although we don’t particularly agree with everything in the article we do find it extremely interesting and worth a read. Using Interactive products to immerse children into stories is certainly entertaining and if executed correctly, could be educational and beneficial.

“Why don’t I have brothers or sisters?”  “Why doesn’t Daddy live with us any longer?”  These are questions from children trying to understand why their family or situation is different.  If you’ve read the blog from Storybook Jane, you know this site was created not only to entertain and educate, but to help children deal with perplexing situations in their lives.  Do you believe reading about other children in the same situation is a constructive way to help children cope with difficult problems? Is there a particular issue your child is grappling with that you would like our writers to tackle?

Welcome to Storybook Anytime! We thought you might be interested in some details on how this site was born and a little about the Storybook Anytime values.

Our President, Angie Johnston, has a young daughter who is an only child with a wild imagination and a penchant for books. When her daughter starting asking about why she didn’t have any brothers or sisters like her friends and cousins, Angie’s explanation didn’t seem to satisfy. So, Angie began a search for a book that might help her daughter understand the great advantages of being an only child. She was able to find plenty of books for herself, so she could explain it to her daughter, but only two for her child. They were both inaccessible!

In discussing the problem with her husband, who is a computer programmer, they decided to explore the possibilities of soliciting original stories for a children’s internet book site. Stories that would not only entertain children, but help them understand some of the difficult situations they face in their little lives.

Not all of our stories will tackle issues; some are just plain fun and full of silliness. But, our goal is to weave some stories into the site that will educate and build an understanding for children that everyone has problems or unusual circumstances of some kind at one time or another. Knowing you’re not alone out there, and seeing how other children deal with unusual issues, lends a sense of comfort. We are very interested in knowing what difficult or unusual situation your child is trying to cope with at the present time, divorce, death, physical handicap, absent parent, multicultural family, bullies, etc.

We hope you and your children will become avid users of our site and share your needs and comments with us so that, together, we can build a children’s book site that will entertain, educate and lead to a better understanding for all who enter. We look forward to hearing back from you.