Welcome to Flamingo Street Publishing

Last week, I told you all I wanted to do was push a button. Well, I finally pushed it, and much to my surprise, nothing exploded.

After weeks of building pages, weighing books, figuring out shipping tables, sales taxes, payment processors and more things I never knew I needed to know, Flamingo Street Publishing finally has a home on the internet. If you look at the bottom of this column, you’ll see our website address with a link.

Welcome to Flamingo Street.

If you’ve been reading this column for very long, you already know how most of this started. I spent eight years growing up on Flamingo Street with my three brothers and The Sister. We had adventures and misadventures that I remember to this very day. I also remember all the kids on the street and those who were in my third-grade classroom at Mt. Olive Elementary School. That would be Old Mrs. Crabtree’s classroom.

Now, I work in a kindergarten classroom. I write stories for children. And somewhere along the way, those stories started turning into actual books.

There is Sir Knotalot: The Shoelace Monster, born from something every kindergarten teacher knows all too well, the mysterious inability of shoelaces to remain tied.

There’s Polly, the Six-Toed Cat, a much quieter story about a little cat trying to find where she belongs.

And there’s Matt the Rat Goes to School, where a little gray rat scurrying across the parking lot during morning drop-off, turned into a rat going to school for his very first ordinary day in kindergarten, proving it was anything but ordinary.

Then something unexpected happened.

Flamingo Street wandered out of kindergarten and all the way into a fifth-grade science classroom.

That journey led to Cellopolis, an imaginary city where the parts of a cell become citizens, their scientific functions become their jobs, and students learn life science by exploring the world those citizens inhabit.

And Cellopolis kept growing.

There are books for students and teachers, trading cards that turn review into something students can hold and collect, achievement badges, stickers and downloadable classroom resources. More books and materials are already on the drawing board.

That’s really what I wanted this website to become.

Not simply a place where somebody can buy a book.

I wanted it to be the front door to everything we’ve been creating. A place where parents can discover a story for bedtime, teachers can find something useful for their classrooms, and children can meet characters who might make them laugh, think, learn or perhaps see something in a slightly different way.

Some of these books are silly.

Some are tender.

Some teach science.

Some simply tell a story.

But every one of them began the same way: with children in mind.

There will be more coming to Flamingo Street. Much more. And if the stack of unfinished ideas sitting beside my computer is any indication, I have years of writing to get to.

For now, though, I think we have reached an important time in our journey.

The books are on the shelves.

The trading cards are ready.

And the link at the bottom of this column, will take you straight there.

After everything it took to build the thing, I suppose there’s only one thing left for me to say.

Welcome to Flamingo Street Publishing. Our doors are finally open.

Not trying to change the world – just hoping to make a difference, one kindergarten classroom at a time.

flamingostreetpublishing.com