Why I wrote "An ABC Escapade through Egypt"

[Bernadette]

I taught English as a second language for eight years in Cairo, Egypt but all the books that I had access to were written for American or British children. None of my students could relate to the characters or events in these books. I wanted to provide my students with a book about things they knew about. So, I wrote and published An ABC Escapade through Egypt.

from my website...
"I was always an avid reader and book-lover, but it was through my graduate studies that I truly realized the importance of children's literature – and the importance and effectiveness of teaching language to children using books with content familiar to the readers. I had few of those books available to me as a teacher in Cairo. I always remember trying to teach a third grade class how to play baseball just so they could understand and enjoy a story from our textbook. As I learned in my university courses and read story after story with my students, I was inspired by these young readers who willingly listened to, learned from, and even delighted in stories about snow, Thanksgiving, armadillos, enchiladas, and backyards. Not once did we read about Ramadan or sporting clubs or bowls of steaming lentil soup. And yet my students always asked for another book. Slowly, ideas for books written specifically for my Egyptian students began bubbling in my brain...and eventually started to find their way to paper."

[Joseph]

They say mountaineers climb mountains because they are there.I thinking writing a book is quite similar. We authors write books because they have to be written. If you are not a writer, I suspect that sounds somewhat esoteric, but it's not. It's simply a basic truth.Writing is a lot like talking, albeit at a higher more refined level. If you have ever been unable to wait to tell a friend something, you know the feeling we have when we have to tell a story.Psychiatrists( my brother is one) note that writers focus on the way things should be ;not the way they are.That's why we have to write. We need to point out injustice,or deceits or prejudices etc.by telling the truth as we see it, no matter how tawdry or ugly.
That's why I told the story of a young boy's coming to terms with the harshness of growing up in Half-Past Nowhere and why I revealed LOVE in all its permutations, light and dark, in Love Songs in Minor Keys.That one becomes available in late April.