The Dream Guardian, preliminary cover (may change in the future)

I’ve written a children’s book, way different to any of my earlier books and quite a challenge to put together.   It is targeted at 8-years-old-ish and upwards readers and is based, in part, on the bedtime stories I used to tell my granddaughters Ella (now 18) and Georgia (almost 16) when they were much younger.  My two younger granddaughters, Emilie (11) and Lottie (9) missed out simply because they live in France and this was the motivation to write The Dream Guardian book.  Here’s the summary of the book:

Grandpa is a storyteller.  He’s also The Dream Guardian, charged with looking after hundreds of bottles of dreams, both happiness dreams and nightmares.  His grandchildren, Tommy and Nikki, often visit him to listen to a story and, in Tommy’s case, learn how to become the new Dream Guardian when the time comes.  Listen to stories about hidden temples, a runaway dog, four-winged fairies, stag beetles, witches, Arthur (the original Dream Guardian), adventurous train journeys, and much more.  Plus, learn about a secret room, a secret book and map, and how to redream a bottled dream.

Each chapter in the book continues an on-going story wherein Grandpa tells Tommy about becoming the Dream Guardian and relates the history of how his great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Arthur, discovered the Dream Trappers followed by the Dream Makers and the Valley of the Dream Seeds after an epic journey through the jungle, across a desert, over a mighty river on a rickety suspension bridge, and finally by climbing up to the pass to get over a mountain.  Embedded in each chapter, however, is an unrelated story targeted at Tommy or his younger sister Nikki, or both.  As the book proceeds, so Grandpa introduces the two children to interactive “What happens next?” storytelling and, in the final chapter, Tommy and Nikki write and present their own story to Grandpa.  Along the way, the children learn about giraffes and evolution, negative numbers, how to construct a secret room in a house, animals with strange names, walking versus running in the rain, why the sky is blue, daydreaming and déjà vu, Nutella, how to find the exit in a maze and other puzzles, the origins of the Hasbro toy factory, Grandpa’s love of dark-chocolate digestive biscuits, and much more interesting and eclectic stuff.  Here is the contents list:

Publication Plan

I am in the closing stages of publishing the book as a 6″ x 9″ 195-page full-colour paperback on Amazon.  Because of the numerous (almost 80) colour illustrations, the price set by Amazon will be around £20/$25/€22 per copy—gulp!  I suspect I will not sell many at this price and my plan is to order a limited number, one each for the four granddaughters and for others on request.  If you would like to buy a hard copy Collector’s Edition (!) from me at list price, numbered and signed, let me know before 1st July and closer to the time I will confirm the final price including postage and give you the chance to cancel your request before I order.

To help you decide, here are some options.

You can download a PDF file from here and read the first four chapters of the book to judge the content and style, or…
…you can wait until I follow-up the paperback with an e-book version.  I will do this as soon as the paperback becomes available on Amazon.  I haven’t fixed the price of the e-book version yet but it will be considerably less than the paperback—probably around  £5/$6/€5.5 per download.

If you fancy yourself as a proofreader (typos, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.) and can get a response to me before 18th June, I am willing to send you a private and confidential full copy of the book in either PDF, MOBI or EPUB format.  Contact me if you have the skills and want to try your hand.  The reward will be a signed copy of the full-colour limited edition of the book if you find ten or more errors, said he arrogantly or humbly.  You decide!

Arrogant: having an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities. Derivatives arrogance noun, arrogantly adverb.
Humble: having or showing a low estimate of one’s own importance or abilities. Derivatives humbleness noun, humbly adverb.
COED.

(^_^)