About Ice Cream & FishIce Cream & Fish: A Children's Illustrated Guide to Grand Marais, Minnesota was created in the pandemic summer of 2020. Story Scouts kids produced Parts I & II of Ice Cream & Fish, guided by Minnesota Children’s Press adult mentors in a 10-day Outdoor Book Camp. (www.minnchildpress.org/book-camp)
Outdoor Book Camp took place on the porches, lawns, playgrounds, rocks, shallows, and shoreline of Lake Superior in Grand Marais, Minnesota — an outside classroom — to ensure we always created in coronavirus-safe spaces with lots of fresh air, ample room for children to separate from each other — and play! — while being in proximity to collaborate on a book. Face coverings were mandatory outdoors if physical distance could not be maintained, as was frequent hand sanitizing, use of individual bins with pencils and art materials. Each child was assigned their own keyboard and iPad to eliminate cross-contamination from sharing of materials. Part III illustrations were produced by 15 children in grades K-4 in a collaboration with the Cook County YMCA Kids’ Camp. We organized a poster-parade of kindness signs the children conceived in Minnesota Children’s Press’ empathy writeshop of “staffing” an injured stuffed-animal hospital. Next, we painted the feelings and sayings discovered in our empathy writeshop of healing the stuffed animals. Then we marched our large printed posters over to our local Care Center. Showing residents our signs through their windows kept everyone safe from contagion, and made us all feel happy and connected! Happy and connected — that’s a major goal of Outdoor Book Camp. We also offered creative purpose and achievement. We aimed to preserve for children that familiar sense of outdoors summer wonder and release by providing them with healthy, creative, active summer experiences of positive and purposeful socialization through peer interactions — all outside. As we believe this book shows, Outdoor Book Camp is a successful creative inquiry-based learning prototype involving four children in grades 5-7, and 15 children in grades K-4. Given Cook County’s Norwegian heritage, Outdoor Book Camp is a perfect fit for us because it embodies the Norwegian cultural concept of friluftsliv — free air life. |
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About Story Scouts
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Story Scouts is an entrepreneurial publishing club for rural Minnesota kids ages 5-15 who want to write, illustrate, and publish their own books, newspapers, websites, comics, graphic novels, blogs, and more. Story Scouts sell their published products as fundraisers to support community projects they identify, while also building personal portfolios to be college- and career-ready.
Held mostly outdoors, Story Scouts Pandemic-proof our meetings by remaining true to Cook County’s Norwegian settlers’ heritage: We practice friluftsliv and meet in outdoor classrooms, forests, parks, and yards—with exceptions for extreme weather. Friluftsliv is the Norwegian word describing the Nordic culture of outdoor “free air” living. Mentored by proven Minnesota Children's Press professional authors, designers, artists, editors, and communication experts, Story Scouts learn skills and earn achievement badges for demonstrating 21st century communication competencies. |
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About Minnesota Children's Press |
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Minnesota Children's Press is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, tax-exempt charity based in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Our mission is to mentor entrepreneurial writing and illustration to help rural children ages 5-15 years, illustrate, publish and sell their books, newspapers, websites and other print and digital publishing to fund civic betterment projects.
Through local sense-of-place storycraft and youth publishing, we seek to enrich and expand the sense of shared purpose and inclusive Commons in every rural community.
We also prepare rural children for success in 21st century communication technologies and skills by helping them create career-relevant portfolios by the time they enter high school.
In the coronavirus age, all careers will require mastery of remote working skills. We agree with leading thinkers and economists--read Professor Robert Reich's BerkleyBlog—who believe the pandemic will reshape the future of work into four job categories: the remotes, the essentials, the unpaid, and the forgotten.
Minnesota Children's Press kids will excel in the first two categories. Join us in our mission to help them!
Childhood: It's better with blue skies, bumper bubbles, and books—books written and illustrated by kids with Minnesota Children's Press mentors!
Through local sense-of-place storycraft and youth publishing, we seek to enrich and expand the sense of shared purpose and inclusive Commons in every rural community.
We also prepare rural children for success in 21st century communication technologies and skills by helping them create career-relevant portfolios by the time they enter high school.
In the coronavirus age, all careers will require mastery of remote working skills. We agree with leading thinkers and economists--read Professor Robert Reich's BerkleyBlog—who believe the pandemic will reshape the future of work into four job categories: the remotes, the essentials, the unpaid, and the forgotten.
Minnesota Children's Press kids will excel in the first two categories. Join us in our mission to help them!
Childhood: It's better with blue skies, bumper bubbles, and books—books written and illustrated by kids with Minnesota Children's Press mentors!
About Co-Co Books
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Co-Co Books is a creative, community-building, youth-nurturing communication response to the global coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Minnesota Children’s Press created this special imprint and logo in March 2020 after public health stay-at-home orders were issued to contain the spread of the pandemic. We are an artistic intervention in disrupted youth development. It is our means of coping with and surmounting the pandemic challenges to hope, unity, and mental health. We choose to meet these challenges with creativity and originality, while living in sympathy with each other, striving to promote just and generative well-being.
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www.minnchildpress.org
www.minnchildpress.org