When working

with special needs children, Respess says a common goal among educators

is to teach students how to answer basic "wh" questions who,

where, when, what and why. In trying to select books to use in her own

classroom, she often found that most were too verbally and visually complicated

for children with limited language skills. This motivated her to set out

and develop a set of reading materials that would not only address basic

questions but also would be fun for the students to use.

"I wanted

to create a book that these children would enjoy, whatever the topic.

I think the complexity of many of the children's books out there today

is the reason many of these students do not care for books," said

Respess.

Respess' book

is one of simplicity in both wording and illustrations, with a central

character called "Buddy Bear," and it has an interactive component

each book has reusable stickers in different shapes that the child correctly

places on the page after it is read. According to Respess, this aspect

is what catches the interest of the child so that the therapist has the

student's attention for the words on the page. After some repetition,

the child can answer the "wh" questions on his or her own.

This set of

books is the first Respess has published. The 26-year veteran speech therapist

began working on the project about five years ago and spent much of that

time experimenting with various ways of producing the reusable stickers

before discovering that she could make them out of plastic sheets. In

the middle of working on the books, she lost her son Jonathan and the

project was put on hold. Eventually it would be one of her students who

would encourage her to pick up the books again and finish them.

"After

we lost our son I did not have much heart for the books. When I started

working with a student who has autism, I was inspired to complete them

because he and some other students enjoyed reading them and seemed to

benefit from them," she said.

In January

of this year, she decided to submit her books to Linguisystems for consideration.

Within a week she heard back from the company that they were interested

in publishing them. She was assigned an editor and together they worked

to finalize the wording and illustrations. Now Respess' set of books is

featured in the Linguisystems catalog for teachers across the nation to

purchase and use in their classrooms.

"I am

amazed by how close the finished product is to my original books, and

conversely, how they took the raw material that I sent and turned it into

real books," said Respess. "One of the neatest things was receiving

my Fall Linguisystems catalog in my mailbox at school and being in it."

While teachers

will be the primary users of Respess' books, she says parents can use

them as well, especially if their student's teacher has already introduced

them. The books can be order through the Linguisystems catalog.