Melbern’s Holiday Surprise

The sight of children of many cultures playing and joyfully cooperating
brings instantly to view an understanding that America is great because of the
contributions of the diverse many.

“Holiday Surprise”, is the first book in our cultural diversity series of
children’s books entitled, “Melbern’s Journey”.The “Melbern’s Journey” series
will be designed for children in kindergarten through fourth-grades with
editions specifically designed for each grade and reading level. Kindergarten
through second grade adventures will be primarily picture books while adventures
for third and fourth-grades will contain more text and will center on mysteries
and travel adventures.

Over the past few years, our children have faced some difficult challenges.
Today, however, they face a unique and exciting challenge. As our society
continually develops, our children and young adults need to develop an
understanding, an appreciation and respect for cultural diversity.

The development of cultural respect is not easy. Not easy for the children,
not easy for adults. As Dr. Lynch says, “How may (we) push against human
nature’s natural aversion to the unknown and help students become more
respectful of cultures with different ideas? The best way to combat this
tendency is to provide students with ample evidence that people that don’t look
like them are, at the core, people just like them.Such a viewpoint can be taught
by promoting a culture of learning from one another rather than a culture of
passing judgment on differences in values and beliefs.”

Through the engaging and often humorous adventures of Melbern D. Moose and
his group (please view our “Meet the Moose Group" film below), our readers will
be exposed to cultural diversity of not only immigrant cultures but also the
cultural diversity between urban, suburban and rural cultures.

In our first book, “Holiday Surprise” prepared for kindergarten through
second-grade readers, Melbern and the group, in attempting to secretly pull-off
a surprise party, become exposed to traditions of several cultures.While at
first these traditions seem too complex and difficult to include in their party,
the group soon discovers the importance of these traditions and how tolerance
and working together can produce an even greater event. Each of Melbern’s
group’s diverse abilities is put to a challenge. A challenge they successfully
and joyfully conquer.

A challenge that we, as writers, face is to present the material in a manner
that will attract the children’s attention and motivate them to read, imagine,
think and apply what they’ve read. Today’s children are tough. They’re smart,
they know what they like and if they don’t quickly become engaged, they move on.
We will have very little time to attract their interest and even less time to
keep it.

That’s why we have chosen Melbern D. Moose and his friends.They give us the
opportunity to present our material through positive, entertaining characters
who experience our adventures with a variety of diverse abilities and personal
characteristics.

With this in mind, we are very pleased to announce that Dave Titus, a
national and internationally celebrated digital artist, has agreed to be our
character artist. In addition, Dave has also agreed to become a part of our team
throughout Melbern’s entire journey.

Dave has given our characters a contemporary, exciting and unique
multi-dimensional design. A design that we believe will attract, entertain and
engage our modern, digitally-oriented readers. Dave’s expertise and experience
will also allow us to immediately offer Melbern’s Journey in digital
versions.

We are going to self-publish this first book so we can control and maintain
the quality and integrity of both the art and text. We will have this edition
published in September of this year in multilingual versions. The funds received
from the gogetfunding project will permit us to complete the drawings, complete
creative and pay for the printing.

Future books will cover family traditions, daily living traditions, beliefs
and significant persons in each of the cultures. All presented by Melbern and
his friends as they meet new and engaging people and situations.

We would like to take this opportunity to extend the invitation to you and
the gogetfunding family to join our family in developing this exciting
project.Our entire family of Melbern’s creators includes a language arts teacher
with over forty years experience in teaching first through fourth grades, a
published writer and documentary filmmaker, an accomplished screenwriter and
award-winning director, a children’s character designer and a digital character
director.We would also like to thank you in advance for your help. We look forward to
you joining Melbern and his friends as we all travel through some great
adventures.