I had a Fabulous review for euclid yesterday, from Ginny Steele, a teacher in Ontario, I just had to share it with you! You can get the ipad version here or you can get the paper book version here
Intro to geometry for primary kids
I was so impressed with the sample pages I bought this book immediately and whizzed through it. This book helps refresh those of us who did geometry a LONG time ago, and puts everything simply enough that you can use it to help your kids learn it too.
The videos are superb instruction in how to construct shapes using a pencil, compass and ruler and bisect lines and angles. All of which is coming for your child in school, so it helps if YOU know how to do it. The great thing about the videos is that your child can select the chapter relevant to their current topic of study, use the video to follow step by step, pause, play and go again as necessary.
The jokes are enjoyably cheesy, perfect for a primary school audience, the comic-book character illustrations and simple animations attractively add to the text and I enjoyed the overall look of the book, which does NOT feel at all ‘textbookish’, but instead manages to get across all the important stuff in a fun story style. At the end of each short chapter is a 3-question quiz designed to point children to the right answers, and if they get it wrong, they can keep checking till they find the right answer. It feels very low pressure and I think children will enjoy it.
Cleverly done, and thank you for creating this book, Mr Rayner.
I highly recommend this book
I love it when a plan comes together! I’ve been working like crazy to get my Euclid project up and running by the end of the month – why? Well I’m debuting Euclid at the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland (why not come along?). This will be my third visit to the festival and the organisers now feel like old friends. Because of that I feel safe trying something new with them, and they are being kind in letting me try!
There is nothing like a deadline to get you moving though! I think I made the decision while working on the iPad version of Euclid. I thought it would be great to do book version too, so I looked at the calendar, worked backwards and decided it was do-able.
I’m a week ahead of schedule. The books have arrived, my banner is magnificent, postcards and posters are printed and I’m ready to go – just waiting for the Tee-shirt!
If you would like a signed copy of the book the head over to eBay 
where I have them for sale. Buy one and you will also receive a Free A3 Poster!
Meanwhile, the ebook for iPad, which contains extra video tutorials, is riding high at number 2 on the Us Science Charts on iTunes – how amazing is that? You can download a preview for free here.
If you would like me to come and visit your school for a Euclid Geometry day full of story and drawing and constructing angles, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Designing characters for picture books or animation is one thing, but being able to draw them again and again from different angles too is something quite different. It takes a lot of drawing and trial and error until the character on the page in front of you resembles the idea that you had in your head.
It takes a lot of drawing and practice to get to the point where I’m happy to proceed with a book. I will sometimes have been thinking about the book for years. I’ve been thinking and planning this ebook I’m working on, for about 8 years now, so I have a fairly good idea of what it is I’m after.
Keep following as I build this ebook for iPad.
This eBook is going to be linked to my Sweetlittlebabyboo! iPone app. Get it here. Grown up’s love it as much as babies do!
Some time ago I wrote a new Ginger Ninja story – just a short one, to introduce a new character. There was a bit of interest on maybe making Ginger a TV series. Nothing came of that , but I did have to come up with seven more story ideas and this little story introduced Candy – the local millionaire’s daughter, – who thinks that everything , including Ginger, can be bought.
I read the story again last week. It need a tweak or two and then I thought I would add some illustrations and make it a free eBook to my Newsletter subscribers. All you have to do is fill in the subscribe form on the right and follow the instructions.
Here’s a video about drawing the cover pictures
and here is another video of all the other drawings speeded up.
You’ll find it fits well in iBooks on an iPad. As it is a pdf, it should play on almost any PC, tablet or laptop quite a lot of phones too! Enjoy :)
Now available on iPad so you can follow along. contains a quiz and video drawing lesson too!
I’ve been waiting weeks for Millie and Bombassa Dizzy DIY to be approved on the iTunes iBook Store and today it has gone live. And then, after just a few days, the second Millie and Bombassa book, Air Scare, has gone live to. My cup runneth over and I feel joy abounding!! Click the pictures to go to the iBooks store.
Bombassa is a lazy but loveable rhino. Millie is a sensible but sweet bird. Together they make a great pair!
These stories have consistently been at the top of my Library borrowing statistics as they are read again and again. I know they are much loved. I love Bombassa – He’s kind of my grumpy, don’t want to get out of bed side of me, while Millie is the side of me that sees me still working at quarter to 11 on a Friday night!
You Can see me reading the Dizzy DIY here.
Each story contains a drawing video and a quiz, and Dizzy DIY has a video showing you how to make an origami box.
If you like these books, please leave a comment on iTunes. It really does help.
I’ve finally had to really, truly and honestly admit to myself that the publishing model that we know and love is broken and there ain’t no way to fix it other than to switch off the internet. The Kindle and iPad have arrived like Caxton’s press before and we can’t go back.
Is this a terrible thing? It is if you love paper bound books and wan’t that old world to continue – do you still listen to shellac 78 records?
The “BOOK” has been seen as a holy object for so long because it was the best information storage system we had. The book’s new role will be that of souvenir, gift item or collector’s edition.
The threshold to publishing has been brought so low, there is no way an author can survive by giving away 90% or more of potential earnings to publishers – more if they employ an agent too. Publishing is something anyone can do now and many are leaping in, muddying the market and reducing quality to the very lowest common denominator. But some new media published works will rise the the surface and make a healthy profit while the rest turn into digital compost. Fear not – there will be millions trying – “There is a book in all of us” – the quote goes. Soon they will be available.
So what to do? Stop thinking about books. That’s where the vanity lies. People want to see a book – their book with their name on it – as a physical object on their bookshelf and in a bookshop window. The screen is the new delivery vehicle. Words, pictures, video, whatever are the medium. Anything is possible and those that break free of the shackles of print will probably be the winners. The book and the printed word have no God given right to be the delivery vehicle of future thought.
I’m throwing off the shackles of an old system and embracing the new – today – now – this moment :)
What made me write the Ginger Ninja? well, the 1960′s was not the best time to be growing up with red hair. Britain was a pretty homogenous society. It was full of white people who pretty much looked the same, so anyone with red hair stood out. Immigrants of all shades and colours were pouring into the country at the time, but they kept to small areas of large towns and cities.
Some people do so love to hate – and there was no reason not to hate back then. We didn’t have political correctness or the media enlightening us to the dark goings on in society. (They were certainly going on at my country prep school – there were one or two great teachers, but we had to put up with psychopaths and pedophiles who were allowed to get on with their business in those days. (They were quietly moved on when caught in flagrante.)
Two or three times a term, when there was nothing else to do, the name calling would begin. I hated it and I hated the way the mob would smell blood and surge around me, pushing me to lose my temper – because that’s what red-heads do, right? A saint would lose their temper under such provocation. That was the generally understood law of red hair in those days. Red heads have red hot tempers. I’m now convinced it’s a race hatred of the Vikings. Oh! Did I mention I’m a Viking too? My Mother is Norwegian – I got it from both sides. I was different.
Eventually, I managed to control what had become a very violent temper and the bullying ceased – I wasn’t fun anymore. Maybe I’ll tell that story another day.
My son was born a terrifying shade of blue after a traumatic birth – I thought we’d lost him, but then he finally screamed – the midwife took in a deep breath and said, “Oh Dear! He’s ginger – you’re going to have trouble with this one!”
I wasn’t pleased. I thought that had all gone away. I’m lucky – my hair has gone very dark brown, so I’m not really thought of as Ginger anymore, so that remark brought it all to the surface again.
Also, in the intervening years there had been other people to hate. The Irish, the Pakistanis and the Carribeans got it the worst. My blood runs cold when I think of the stuff that would be put out on on primetime TV – remember Jim Davidson? Repeated casual jokes have a drip-drip effect. I’m sure I was just as bad as anyone – there was one Irish joke I was very fond of telling…
But that drip-drip-drip is poison. it desensitises us.
All babies are lovely until they get to the age of two and then they start to fight for their rights – It’s called The Terrible Twos. Most children are stood up to and put in there place by their parents, so they grow up fitting in. Red haired children are excused their behaviour – after all that’s what red heads do, right? They are given permission to have a temper which can only get worse. Each time they lose it, the trigger threshold for a temper tantrum is reduced until the parents and everyone else give in, after all, it’s in the blood – bad blood.
So, redheads are permitted to have a terrible temper and become prey to those who enjoy making others lose their temper. And school is where they find each other. It becomes a vicious circle, one that is very hard to break.
Now we have race relation laws to protect everyone but Gingers. I know blondes have a hard time of it too, but they don’t get the same, visceral hatred. I’m amazed at how often gingers are portrayed on the media as figures of fun – replace the ginger character with a black face and the name Ginga with the “N” word and what’s the difference? The race relations business doesn’t recognise red-haired people as being worthy of the same protection as other racial minorities. Ginger’s are fair-game. Can you believe 5,000 people signed up to “Kick a Ginger Day” on FaceBook before it was taken down. Again, can you imagine it ever getting that far if you replaced The “G” word with the “N” word? Oh my God! I just realised it’s an anagram!!!!!
That comment from the Midwife set me thinking long and hard about red hair and how it had affected my life. Perhaps the hardest lesson was to realise how desensitised I became to others feelings. Why should I care about anyone else?
Writing the Ginger Ninja was the beginning of a sort of therapy for me – a catharsis, the beginning of sorting out a very confused young man. I’ll tell you more about how all the ideas came together another day.
You can get the Ginger Ninja on iPad
UK Store
US Store
Australia
Canada
Ireland
or the old-fashioned paper book go to Amazon
