Tessalation! is up for pre-order on Amazon! Did you know you can put your books up on Amazon.com for pre-order? It's kind of a scary process. You can set up all of the parameters -- when it comes out, title, author name, files, cover, etc. -- but if you don't have the absolutely final this-is-it-come-and-get-it version, you can still launch a pre-order. That's where I am. The book is done, it's at the printer, and I have a printer-only version but not yet the mobi file. I have a number of math play stories and other media planned for this next month, so I knew it was time to get the pre-order up there so people with a connection to the book or backers who get the pdf early can post reviews well ahead of the launch date. Also, any books sold in pre-order count towards the first week for the bestseller lists. Also a good idea? Getting some testimonials from great voices to add to the Amazon site. For my project, I reached out to some wonderful backers who are big in the math play world. Here is some early advance praise: "I loved this book! An irresistible celebration of mathematics and nature, buoyantly and beautifully executed." – Dan Finkel, MathforLove.com "Tessalation! is an invitation to view a beautiful slice of the natural world through the pattern-tinted lens of a child. Tessa and her vision are a gift to children, parents, math and art." – Christopher Danielson, TalkingMathwithKids.com "Tessa Truman-Ling’s delight in patterns is contagious, and the book provides a wonderful jumping-off point for a variety of math activities." – Denise Gaskins, author of Let's Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together — and Enjoy It "Beautifully vibrant, tessellating illustrations from Tessa's own observations show kids how fun mathematical patterns can be to make and find!" – Lucy Ravitch, blogger at KidsMathTeacher.com and author of The Pancake Menu Please check out the pre-order page and tell me what you think!
1 Comment
The cover is finally here! If you've been following along on this blog, you know that I take my children's book covers very seriously. Here's a post I did on the ideas I took from other children's books I love. Most of them focus on a single character in a setting that illuminates the themes and story of the book. I gave a few simple instructors to Maima, the Tessalation! illustrator. I said: 1. I wanted Tessa showing the kind of exuberance she has in the book, maybe doing something physical, 2. I wanted it to be in the backyard (where else?) 3. I wanted the cover to reflect the theme of the book -- that there is a beauty and an order to nature, and we can feel like a part of that beauty. What do you think? I think it turned out rather well. The font for the book's text and the cover, by the way, is Maiandra GD, which was chosen by the project's graphic designer, Jeff Diesburg. How do you think it turned out?Last week Stephen Long, a local writer in McMinnville, interview me about Tessalation!, and Kickstarter. Stephen had a great novel that he pre-sold through Kickstarter a while back.
Yes, once you've done a Kickstarter, you are now part of a club -- those who have given over a month of their lives to social media and project creation through the site. I can't say enough about what Kickstarter has already done for me and this project! Check it out. I was super grumpy this day -- hope it doesn't come across too much! To celebrate the last day of Kickstarter I did a tessellation flash mob at my favorite coffee shop4/4/2016 I was so tired at the end of my Kickstarter, but not too tired to do a tessellation flash mob event at my favorite coffee shop, Flag & Wire! McMinnville Library Children's Librarian Sam Geary loaned me this antique quilt, made of tessellated hexagons. I bought a pot of coffee and invited anyone who supported the project to come have a coffee with me and snuggle (tessellate, if you will) under this lovely quilt. Thank you for coming out to support Tessalation! on it's last day on Kickstarter!Thank you, Sam, for the chance to wear this quilt, thank you, supporters, for showing up, and thank you, Kickstarter fans, who made Tessalation! a reality!I live by the maxim that if you say it is so long enough, then it becomes true. With the help of the amazing online Twitter community of #nerdy #awesome math nerds and tessellation geeks, I am launching: World Tessellation Day: June 17 What? You're just going to create your own holiday? Well, the idea may have been mine, but like so much in this world, I am not taking ownership over it (though I do own the Facebook page I just started for it!). This holiday will be for everyone who loves pattern -- natural pattern, manmade pattern, wallpaper pattern, art drawing pattern, manufacturing pattern, whatever your particular tessellation love may be. Just how does one go about creating her own holiday? Thanks for asking! To make a holiday, you pretty much have to prove that it exists before it is an official thing. You have to prove that people are celebrating the holiday on a particular calendar day so that the event/holiday will make it into Chase's Calendar of Events for the FOLLOWING year. Here's a nice explanation from CNN.com about how the process works. In the coming months, I'm going to be suggesting a myriad of ways (and looking for you to suggest some, too!) for how individuals and groups can celebrate World Tessellation Day on June 17. Why June 17? Because the amazing Twitter friends supporting my children's book Tessalation! helpfully suggested that I make World Tessellation Day on 6/17, which is the birthday of M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic designer and artist famous for making all of those compelling tessellation works. More is coming! But for now, "like" the Facebook page, post some of your favorite tessellations, and if your work involves tessellations in any way, tell us about it on FB! Click here to go to the FB page for World Tessellation Day and post a picture of your favorite tessellation!
Hooray! Just two days left on Kickstarter! It's been an amazing couple of weeks and I am so thrilled to have reached the goal to bring Tessalation! to the world! There is still a stretch goal for the project, however, so I invite you to keep sharing, keep reaching out to people you think will connect with the project. Every little bit does matter. Do you have any questions about the project? Time is of the essence! Visit the Kickstarter site to pledge directly.
My brother-in-law Jeff has this saying I love: "If you're going to do it, do it well!" -- Jeff DiesburgJeff is an art professor at Manchester University in Indiana, but he's not just talking about art projects. Anything worth doing is doing well. I am applying that thought to every level of this Kickstarter process. I'm learning along the way, but I am also making decisions deliberately and thoughtfully. I'm not sure that I'll ever do one of these again -- who knows? -- but with such a powerful platform, the drive to do things well is strong indeed. Creating Kickstarter Stretch GoalsYou can go very wrong creating stretch goals for your project. Just check out some of the responses of frequent backers on this Kickstarter conversation about it. Do it well and you can add value to a project and make fans for life. Do it poorly and you can really anger your earliest and biggest supporters. I want fans for life, so I actually took a couple of days off Kickstarter to regroup and to think about what might be worth backers' time and my own. I've opted for a 16-page coloring book featuring tessellations from the book. The Tessalation! Coloring BookWorking with one of my graphic designers I've been able to have five coloring pages made. If we reach the stretch goal of $10,000, I'll have a 16-page coloring book of all of the Tessalation! pages made and sent with backers' book packages. Why coloring pages?
So that's the plan. Help me share and share alike and if we hit that magic number, you'll be getting a coloring book, too! What do you think? Are you excited about getting a coloring book along with your Kickstarter reward?Today, March 16, Tessalation! got fully funded on Kickstarter! Eureka, we did it! Couldn't have done this without the support of so many wonderful people in my life and so many others whom I have never even met! What comes next? This campaign is only halfway over, so I'll be spending the next two weeks taking it even broader -- reaching out to journalists and bloggers, contacting people in my chosen audiences directly. I'm far from done. My goal was always to get a printed copy of the book in the hands of people who want and need it, and that goal stands. But now I have some new goals -- and that is to reach as many people with Tessa as possible in this short time. This will mean a lot of cold-emailing, which I'm not particularly excited about, but I am motivated to do this as well as humanly possible for all of the people who took time and their hard-earned dollars to back a book that doesn't exist yet. Thank you, thank you, for your support of Tessalation!
Tessalation! is really important to me, and not just because I made it. A couple years ago, when my sister, Ashley, was pregnant, I went looking for mother-baby bonding board books with kids that would look like her child. I couldn't find any with Asian characters. Sure, there are books about BEING Chinese, or half-Japanese, or that introduce Asian cultures to English-speaking readers. I just wanted one of those books that you read to your child as you are falling in love with each other and I didn't want it to be a picture of a blond kid. So I took a Sharpie to a favorite of ours, I Love You Through and Through, by Bernadette Rossetti Shustak. Every page. I took special delight on the page: "I love your hair and eyes / your giggles and cries." So when I made my say I made Tessa half-Chinese, it's because I had the power to do that for someone else, and to put a book in my library with a character that looks like my sons' cousins. I asked Ashley to send me a pic from that Sharpied book last weekend. Though they had moved recently, her son knew exactly where it was. It makes me happy to see it again. I didn't conceive Tessalation! to subvert the culture, per se. But that might be what I am most proud of about this book. We're less than $500 from being funded, Tessa fans! Please continue to share with people who might fall in love, too! To visit the Kickstarter for Tessalation!, click here.
This is how good today feels! Tessalation! is 1/3 into its Kickstarter campaign and 2/3 funded! It's pretty common knowledge among Kickstarter creators that campaigns tend to have a plateau in the middle of the campaign before spiking again at the end. I'm preparing for that by keeping Tessa in the news over the next couple of weeks. Here's some things I'm doing.
Thank you for supporting Tessa! Tessellating on!
|
AuthorEmily Grosvenor, author of Tessalation!, a children's book about tesselations and patterns in nature. Archives
October 2022
Categories |