Sample Tributes &  Book Topics

PictureTeacher Joyce Lindquist started Cook County’s first kindergarten classes in 1953 in Grand Marais. Photo courtesy of the Cook County Historical Society, used with permission.








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​At Fast Pony Press, we specialize in tribute books and customized storytelling: your story, your way.

Call it disruptive publishing...

Stories come from you, not from a vast, disembodied commercial chain more concerned about bottomline than storytelling, a process that regrettably usually  requires printing in China for the numbers to work for the  publishing chain enterprise.

Not at Fast Pony Press. We're local heart with a global mindset.

We are as American as the great North American horse our name honors, and as curious about the world as one of our book's main characters: Mira, a Madagascar mammal called a tenrec--hedge-hoggy-- who is out rambling the world, solving its environmental problems with animal pals she befriends along the way.

For us, the story is all. We tell your story your way, in words, images and sound -- just as you live it -- across a range of media you select. The story not only lives, it endures.

Tribute books constitute a specialized genre of history
Tribute books engage a broad audience with a clear story of achievement in any given effort that you value. From fishing trip to political campaign to institutional history or entire lifetime of a person or family, tribute books capture meaningful efforts to honor remarkable outcomes.

Below, we offer three sample topics that families deemed worthy of tribute.

Needle and Leaf is a tribute to a house and garden that brought the family many decades of joy. 

Unconventional? A Daughter's Tribute to Her Mother's Life is a reflection at life's end of a deep and dear mother-daughter relationship between two strong-willed women. 

New in late 2017 and for 2018! Mira's Big Day of Wonder is a tribute to the natural compassion of a child's empathetic response to the world and its creatures. Through lush watercolor plates, and richly detailed natural-history pencil drawings, this 32-page picture book for preschoolers presents a vivid sense of the wondrous possibility of living in kinship with all of nature.

What's your tribute? Tell your story. Make it last--and shine.

For ideas, contact [email protected]

Needle and Leaf

A house and garden tribute
To view this book, click here.

Deep and Wide |
Alan Anderson’s Expansive Life
Of Curiosity, Community and Caring

A family memoir
This Minneapolis family memoir documents the incomparably capable civic legend, Alan Anderson, proprietor of Anderson's China stores, among many, many other callings. Above: Anderson's flagship Nicollet Avenue store.

Mira's Big Day of Wonder 
32 pages, softcover, made and printed in Minnesota by human beings.
​$15.00

A read-aloud picture book for emerging and early readers, age 3 to 6, this richly illustrated book in water color and pen and ink is a poetic -- and pragmatic -- tribute to the wonder of children  and their world-enlarging sense of possibility. Mira is an environmental detective who figures it all out, everytime.

This book is designed as our "Seedling" level story, taking the beloved character Mira to a more complex adventure than our introductory book at the "Podkins" level, below, Mira's First Day of Wonder.
​Available February 2018.
Picture

Mira's First Day of Wonder
24 pages, board book, made in Minnesota and printed in U.S.A. by humans.
​ $12.00

This is our introduction to the Mira series. It is a read-aloud picture book for the youngest learners, age 0 to 3, featuring a  richly illustrated book that in pictures and words is a poetic tribute to the wonder of children  and sense of possibility and belonging in the world.
​Available now! Contact: [email protected]

About our reading levels:  Podkins, Seedlings and Scouts 

Our three reading levels are designed to meet the developmental and cognitive needs of  3 different ability levels of readers, birth to grade 4.  This approach enables a wide range of readers at different reading abilities and ages to unite in story, so all can enjoy Mira's adventures together.

Imagine! A 4th grader reading to his 2-year-old sister very well knows the               whizzbangery Mira is capable of in the Scout-level Mira series of environmental detective books--Big Day of Frog Wonder, Big Day of Lake Wonder, Big Day of Moose Brain Worm Wonder. Scouts' online science curriculum is both riveting and relevant, written by award-winning instructional designer, Anne Brataas, recipient of three American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) curriculum-writing awards, who is also a graduate-trained zoologist, environmental scientist and historian of science.

But by reading the Podkins level,  Mira's First Day of Wonder, he is fondly reminded how it starts... for all of us. By reading at her level a story he knows has rocket-fuel ideas at his level, he is actively empathizing with the other.