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New Children’s Book by Ashe County Author Features Appalachia Scenery While Educating Kids

 

“Gracie: A Bilingual Adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains” is a recently published children’s book that features the Appalachian Mountains as the backdrop. The story is also bilingual, promoting young children to start learning another language.

Written by Ashe County, N.C. resident, Kathryn Leslie, the book showcases 24 watercolor illustrations and includes a look-and-find of the local mountain foliage. The sweet story follows a lonely dog, Gracie, on her search for fun and companionship. Children will enjoy Gracie’s adventure through the colorful countryside, her passion for dancing and her encounters with some familiar farm animals.

Kathryn Leslie

Each page features English and a foreign language. The story is currently translated into three versions: Spanish/English, French/English, and German/English with free bilingual and immersive audio downloads available. Leslie says she intentionally chronicled Gracie’s journey using repetition and simple sentence structure to allow children and adults to match the languages together easily. The book was written to assist monolingual adults in helping children become bilingual.

Leslie wrote the book about her charming dog and the true story behind how they met. “Gracie was the sweetest dog on the planet, and I wanted to share that with the world,” said Leslie, “but I also wanted the book to be educational and fun with plenty of color and familiar scenes.”

The bilingual aspect stems from Leslie’s struggle to learn a second language through middle school, high school, and college. After her failures, she hoped to expose her nieces to foreign language at a younger age to increase their chances of fluency, but Leslie struggled to find good-quality bilingual books that she could also easily understand. She hopes to inspire a new generation of children to take an earlier interest in learning a new language.

Published by Aunt Katie’s Place LLC, “Gracie: A Bilingual Adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains” is available for sale on the Aunt Katie’s Place website, https://www.auntkatiesplace.com, the Barnes and Noble website, and Amazon. You can find Aunt Katie’s Place on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @auntkatiesplace

About Aunt Katie’s Place:

A small independent book publisher, Aunt Katie’s Place released its premiere book, “Gracie: A Bilingual Adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains” in December 2019, and has two more books scheduled for release between 2020-2022. 
Young children are at the heart and soul of Aunt Katie’s mission: To champion the intellectual, physical, and emotional well-being of all children. Creative, engaging content, supported with similarly beautiful design and silly, informative videos will be a welcome treat for children and a helpful tool for parents, families and teachers. Aunt Katie’s Place is located in Lansing, North Carolina.

About the Book:

This children’s picture book was published December 13, 2019 by Aunt Katie’s Place LLC.
Gracie (Spanish/English): A bilingual adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
By Kathryn Leslie. Illustrations by Anita Morra. 36 p. Fiction.

Book Description:

Meet Gracie – a lovable sweet dog who has a hard time making friends. Join her as she travels in the Blue Ridge Mountains and meets new characters. She dances for them, she brings them presents, but no one wants to play with her! Will she ever find some special companions?
Children will love the beautiful water color illustrations of Gracie as she travels through the mountains in this bilingual, based-on-a-true-story adventure. As a special bonus, a look-and-find of Appalachian foliage is included at the end. Spanish (Español)/English.
This book was written to assist monolingual adults in helping children become bilingual. Suitable for children ages 1 to 4, with help from an adult, and children ages 5 and up, with basic reading skills.
Free bilingual and immersive audio versions available at: www.auntkatiesplace.com/gracieaudio

 
Aunt Katie’s Place LLC
PO Box 261
Lansing, NC 28643