BookNews
Web-authoring for kids.
Watch your back, J.K. Rowling. There’s some fresh competition in the children’s book market.
Website lets toddlers and tweens write, illustrate and publish their own stories.
“This is very close to my heart as a mother,” said Tikatok co-founder and CEO Sharon Kan, 39. Kan and business partner Orit Zuckerman officially launched the site in March, and membership has been growing by 300 percent to 500 percent a month, said Kan.
The idea for the children’s self-publishing site, named for the tick-tock sound of a clock, came to Kan while perusing a children’s book section at a Barnes & Noble store with her daughter.
“All the books in the children’s area were written by adults,” she said. “At a certain age they (kids) have so much imagination, and if you prompt them in the right way they can make great stories.”
The young users write their stories online; then, with the help of an adult, they scan or mail original artwork to Tikatok to be bound. Membership on the site is free, and finished books cost about $20 each.
The majority of the site’s content is private to protect the minors involved. The stories visible to the public are real, but the author’s information is not.
Tenley Woodman,
First Line
Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger “As I write this, I’m sitting in the kitchen of the small house where we’ve lived now for a decade. Evening is closing in, and off to the south the Santa Rosas are beginning to blow a brownish gold. It’s my favorite time of day out here — the green of the Joshua trees, the buttermilk stucco, the orange-tile roofs, the ceramic turquoise birdbath in our backyard, everything supercharged, even the faded red of my old Land Cruiser. At my feet Sonny’s big black nose rests in a puddle of drool. Every so often he grunts and sighs in his sleep. He’s probably swimming in the gold-specked waters of Tahquitz Creek where I used to take him before arthritis set into his shoulders and hips. Or maybe he’s chasing down the woodchucks that burrowed beneath our elm trees back in Battlepoint where he spent his first spring.”
Hardcover Religion BestSellers
1. Mistaken Identity, by Don and Susie Van Ryn; and Newell, Colleen and Whitney Cerak
2. Dead Heat, by Joel C. Rosenberg
3. The Secret to True Happiness, by Joyce Meyer
4. A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World, by Carl Anderson
5. Walking With God: Talk to Him. Hear From Him. Really, by John Eldredge
6. Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, the Respect He Desperately Needs, by Emerson Eggerichs
7. Become a Better You, by Joel Osteen
8. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, by Timothy Keller
9. Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future, by Joel C. Rosenberg
10. Have a New Kid by Friday, by Kevin Leman
Publishers Weekly
