Good morning Di, thank you for inviting me along today.
Q. What is the Literacy Ladder reading
series?
Donna: Literacy Ladder is a reading program
by the Victorian College of Literacy Arts, that I am delighted to be apart
of. The Literacy Ladder program has
several facets to it including The Literacy Ladder Reader Series© consisting
of ‘Ready’ (Yellow: Prep- Grade 1),
‘Set’ (Green: Grade 1-3) and ‘Go (Gold Star: Grade 3-5) readers for children
within the normal range of reading and comprehension development.
The Literacy Ladder Enhanced Reading
Program© is especially designed for children in Prep to Grade 3 who are
participating in a literacy intervention program. The program focuses on specific areas of
literacy development, speech and sound and comprehension to develop solid foundation
skills to enhance their literacy abilities.
The roll out phase is currently underway and will continue over the next
three years. The Literacy Ladder Reader
series has several contracted titles by various authors within the Ready, Set,
Go levels.
Q: Can you tell the readers about your book
Jazmine Montgomery Toy Detective: The
Magic Glasses? Is it a part of the Literacy Ladder series?
Donna: Jazmine
Montgomery – Toy Detective ‘The
Magic Glasses’ is the first in this exciting new series. Yes, the Literacy Ladder ‘Green’ box is
located on the back cover of the book.
The target audience is Grade 1-3.
Q: Where did you get the idea for the
Jazmine Montgomery story?
Donna: Jazmine Montgomery, the character is
based on my daughter Jazmine (who is twelve in a couple of weeks), Jazmine has
a wonderful ability to see the magic in everything around her. I just love
that. Jazmine also loves games, puzzles
and mystery challenges, the toy detective just happened to come to me one day
when she was going a puzzle. At the time
Jaz was young, as I write the story a few years ago.
Q: Who designs and illustrates your books?
Donna: My books have been illustrated by
various artists. Matthew Shires painted
the beautiful cover of Delightfully Haiku, Aaron Pocock illustrated A Christmas
Tail, a picture book co-authored with Helen Ross and released earlier this year
and Sharyn Madder illustrated Jazmine Montgomery – Toy Detective ‘The Magic
Glasses.’
Artists have their own style and different
styles are suited to different projects.
Matthew Shires was chosen for Delightfully Haiku because he had recently
spent time living in Japan and captured the essence of Japanese culture in his
painting. Aaron Pocock was chosen by
Helen and I because we wanted a timeless, English feel to the illustrations and
Aaron’s samples showed that quality.
Sharyn was chosen for the Jazmine
Montgomery series due to her ability to produce illustrations which matched my
vision so accurately. I loved her
samples and found they were very detailed.
Q: What is Sally Odger’s role in your publishing house?
Donna:
Sally has been my writing mentor for some years and provides MS
assessments for all of my stories followed by editing. Sally is wonderful to work with, she is very patient
with my ‘backward sentences’, generously shares her writing knowledge with me
and genuinely has a love to help others in their writing ability and is very
easy to approach for advice. Sally plays
a big role in the Jelli- Beanz Publishing house!
Jazmine Montgomery and Yapps will be
sharing their next case file mid 2014, keep your eyes out for that.
You can follow along all of the updates at
the Jelli-Beanz Publishing blog site www.jellibeanzpublishing.com and
facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Jellibeanzpublishing
My personal blog site http://donnamsmithauthor.wordpress.com/
I post lots of updates and specials on my
blog. There are also details of my other
books there too.
Thank you Di for inviting me along today.
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