Nanny Adventures

The Great Dog Wash is the cutest bilingual book I have read! It has the words in English then underneath it has them in Spainish.  The illustrations are full of life and excitement.  It comes in a box of Cheerios right now.  You need to go to the store and get your box of Cheerios and The Great Dog Wash today! I received a copy from my friend in California, as I hadn’t seen them yet in the stores.   It comes out in hardback on July 7, 2009.

I love how the kids in the book get together to have a dog wash and invite all the dogs.  The dogs end up getting away from the kids. The kids use problem solving skills to finish up the dog wash.  I really liked how the story progressed from start to finish.

What is so exciting about this book is that it is written by Shellie Braeuner, who is a nanny in Nashville, Tennessee.   Shellie entered the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories® New Author Contest. She learned in December 2007, that she won the contest! Shellie is now the author of The Great Dog Wash that will appear in 1.5 million boxes of Cheerios before being released in hardcover by Simon & Schuster on July 7, 2009

Shellie was recently interviewed by the INA.  Here is a snippet of the interview….

But story telling is something that has come naturally to Shellie, and she’s been writing and telling stories for her charges long before she became a published author. “I work with three boys and trying to get a boy to talk about his feelings just doesn’t happen.” But Shellie found a way to make it happen. “Getting the kids to tell stories with me helps them to better understand, explore and express their feelings. When we temporarily relocated to Atlanta, for example, we told stories about birds flying away. I would ask the children questions about how the bird would feel and about what he would do, and through these questions I was able to help my charges explore their feelings about relocating.”

And Shellie’s stories don’t stop there. When the youngest boy in her nanny family was going off to kindergarten, they wrote a story together called The Boy Who Walked (which she someday hopes to publish). “The boy starts out walking alongside the creek in his backyard. The creek turns into a brook and the brook to a lake and the water keeps growing bigger until it turns into the sea. When the boys comes back home, his mother is there waiting for him. It’s a story that taught my charge that no matter how big the world may seem, there will always be someone waiting for him at home.”

To read the complete interview with Shellie visit the INA Blog.

Cheerios Spoonful of Stories is accepting applications for the 2009 winner through July 15, 2009