Runt Farm Series by Amanda Lorenzo

Amanda Lorenzo has added two new members to the Runt Farm family of animals. Beatrice is a flop-eared bunny who is rescued by the Runt Farm mice, Cletus and Tooth after being bounced from a truck.

Beatrice fits into the Runt Farm family nicely and soon stumbles upon a little boy squirrel, Blossom, who's trapped and shivering. Beatrice rescues the baby squirrel and adds yet another member to the Runt Farm family. Blossom's excellent sense of style is a great addition -- and he and Beatrice become best of friends.

Beatrice and Blossom have distinct personalities, as do the mice, Cletus and Tooth, Kitten and Peep, the duck, but all blends well within the family. Beatrice and Blossom play marbles while Cletus mouse uses recycled objects to build a vehicle that helps Blossom get back a precious, found object.

The Runt Farm Series books are an excellent method to build your child's vocabulary and tweak his imagination. Amanda Lorenzo is creating a series of children's books that not only teach valuable lessons, but also bring entertainment and enjoyment. Mark Evan Walker's illustrations help the children form pictures in their imaginations that will live forever.

These excellently written and illustrated children's books demonstrate that families can come together and create good lives for themselves -- even though they may look and act differently.

Beatrice and Blossom, the second addition to the Runt Farm series is as appealing to readers as the first book, Under New Management. Collect all the books in the Runt Farm series for the children in your life.

Here comes the third book in the Runt Farm Series - Clovis Escapes!. The first two books, Under New Management and Beatrice and Blossom build up the excitement and population of the Runt Farm family by introducing Kitten, The Peep (a duck), Cletus and Tooth, two highly intelligent mice, Beatrice, a rowdy rabbit and Blossom, a flashy squirrel.

Now, Amanda Lorenzo introduces another member to the growing family -- Cousin Clovis, the artistic cousin of Tooth. Clovis is in danger at NAARF and when Tooth finds out about it, she and the other Runt Farmers develop a plan to rescue poor Cousin Clovis. They must overcome "evil agents and wily weasel henchmen," but they succeed, and an artist is added to the Runt Farm family.

But Runt Farm isn't safe yet. The whole tribe must come together to solve the big problem that came about because of Cletus' love of cheese. Soon after they solve this problem, another one quickly appears in the form of a NAARF raid on the family's home - their beloved barn. Each one of the species in the family must use every power in their arsenals to outfox the intruders and repossess their home.

Amanda Lorenzo, with the help of an excellent illustrator, Mark Evan Walker, has created a series of books that thrill and delight their readers as well as teach them lessons of self-reliance, communication skills and problem-solving. Any mixed family with adopted children, children of divorce or personality-diverse children will want to have the Runt Farm series books on their bookshelves.

Author, Amanda Lorenzo inadvertently created a spirited group of fictional animals who find that "family happens" when they all meet each other on a farm that's been abandoned by Farmer Brunt. The extremely diverse personalities of the animals serve to fill the books with fun, games and the stark reality of learning to work together as a family to solve problems.

Runt Farm came into being when Amanda's friend, Ruthie, asked Amanda to tell her a story. The next day, Amanda asked Ruthie to tell her a story - and the storytelling became a ritual that was sometimes heard on voicemail or voiced in person, but was always spontaneous and funny. Then, Amanda had tea with a book editor who was also a dear friend. She told the editor some of the stories about Runt Farm and received laughter full of enjoyment.

The editor made Amanda promise to write down the stories and even offered to help her publish them. They began BooktiMookti Press - and the rest is history. The books have the panache to create a loyal following of children who will learn to love reading with these delightful books. These "easy fiction" books are exactly the right size and volume for children, ages 6 to 10 - they're not too overwhelming, and the cover and illustrations inside the book are charming and inviting.

Besides her endeavor as a children's book author, Amanda Lorenzo is also the Production Editor for CeciBooks.com. She formerly worked as an Information Technologies Manager with Qwest Communications.

When my brother -we'll call him Johnny--was nine years old, his teacher sat down with Mom and said, "We're sorry but your son can't read." Mom was horrified. The teacher asked gingerly if they could hold him back a grade. Mom asked why she hadn't been told before this. The teacher's answer? "We didn't want to upset you."

Well, my mother was most certainly upset that, prior to this parent-teacher conference, no one had bothered to let her know that her son couldn't read. Mom readily okayed the grade holdback plan. You may wonder why this boy's mother didn't figure it out herself, but in those days my folks were running a booming construction company, and Mom also did plenty of volunteer work. Easy enough, I imagine, to miss the fact that little Johnny couldn't read.

Recently I ran across a book written by a woman who had once agonized over her own son's failing attempts to read. He was a bright kid, but it was all going wrong for him around reading and that failure was cascading into every other subject for him. This mother worked all the tried and true methods to help him, as did his teachers: phonics, sounding out words, pointing at the words to help him. All the while his belief in his own ability to read, his self esteem and his enjoyment went further downhill. Nothing she tried seemed to help her son overcome his reading problem.

One day the woman's friend (who had chronic car trouble) said, "I just haven't found the right mechanic." With that, a light went on! This mom went to work to find a method for learning to read (the "right mechanic") that would help her son. She let go completely of the idea that he just wasn't going to be a good reader, or that the failing might be his. This mom dug in and studied to discover how our brains learn and she applied and adapted that knowledge to reading specifically. Today she is the only person I know who has a PhD in Reading!

Dr. Dee Tadlock's methods are stunningly successful at helping people of all ages and abilities learn to read with ease. I was so inspired when I read her book that I wanted to drop everything and become a Read Right tutor. Dee studied the way the brain learns any new material. Essentially, when faced with a new task such as learning to walk, throw a ball, or open a door, we start with a model of success, or as Dee would put it a "predictive strategy" for how to do that task. Excellence in walking means to get where you want to go without falling down. When we learn to walk we make attempts, the brain automatically measures our success against the internal goal (reaching our destination while remaining upright) and we continue to make attempts until we are successful.

In reading, the goal is to understand the author's meaning. Yet much of the teaching done around reading emphasizes individual word recognition and pronunciation. This includes sounding out individual words as well as bits and pieces of words. This method -- in use in schools across the globe -- is not meaning-based but rather mechanics-based. If a child cannot pronounce a word they are encouraged to sound it out. How will sounding out a word help them comprehend its meaning? Imagine how successful you would have been if someone had tried to teach you to walk by breaking down the mechanics of walking and told you, or even showed you, step by step how to do it. First put your foot forward, now shift your weight a little until you are almost falling down, then shift the other foot forward . . . Many of us would never have learned to walk using that method alone. Luckily our parents first modeled excellent walking for us, and they got down on their knees and clapped their hands to encourage us, and held our hands to steady us as we took our first steps. Then they had a big hallelujah moment, cheering like crazy the first time we made it across the room without falling down.
An excellent model, assistance and encouragement. That's the ticket!

To put it in terms that you academic educators will appreciate, I'll quote Read Right's summary of the method:
Through her research and 20 years of teaching and testing Read Right with thousands of students with reading problems, the developer of the program, Dr. Dee Tadlock, who holds a Ph.D. in Reading, has determined how to structure the tutoring environment and what specific methodologies and materials to use so that the student's brain is compelled to correct the errors in its neural network for reading. This is why Read Right works so much faster than other reading improvement programs and why we can guarantee the results. The Read Right system of instruction sets the appropriate output expectation, provides all the necessary information the brain needs, and delivers timely and appropriate feedback to the student so that the guidance system is corrected to produce excellent reading all of the time.

After reading Dee Tadlock's book, Read Right! (a fascinating book written for parents as much as for educators) I'm convinced that most of us learned to read in spite of the instruction we may have gotten in school. Here are some key tips from the Read Right model.

Model excellent reading for your child. Read out loud at a normal pace and tone. Excellent reading feels and sounds comfortable, like conversational speech.

Do not point at individual words, or allow your child to point at words. This stops the mind completely from focusing on the goal of understanding the meaning of a passage.

If your child does not know a word, tell them the word right away. Don't make them struggle.

Give timely and appropriate feedback. Do not tell a child they have done well if they have not.
(That would be like cheering when they fall down while trying to walk.)

There is so much sense in this groundbreaking teaching method. There's also much more to it than I have given you here. If you have a child who is challenged by reading, do not let it go on any longer. Reading is essential. As we're all now aware, literacy is not only fundamental to a lifelong journey of learning, but also to ensuring a child's lifelong financial well-being. Please act promptly for the sake of your children. Learn about Read Right, and get them help if they need it. I am so thankful that Dee Tadlock, out of sheer determination to help her son learn to read, has now helped thousands of all ages and in many countries to achieve excellence in reading. Thank you, Dee!
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Amanda Lorenzo is the author of the Runt Farm children's book series. Her books and blog may be found at www.runtfarm.com and www.amandalorenzo.com. For information about Read Right please visit: http://www.readright.com