Imagination Storybooks

150 Beantown Pals Audio Stories

Recorded on 15 sixty-minute albums and ready to be published to Audible, Barnes and Noble, and numerous other online audiobook stores. To achieve this, we are inviting companies, foundations, and individuals to pay it forward by contributing charitable donations to an outstanding 501c3 nonprofit organization—Imagination Storybooks—a group dedicated to providing online accessible books to visually and hearing impaired children worldwide.

Imagination Storybooks

Founded and Organized by Richard Rieman

Richard Rieman is an authority on Audiobook self-publishing. He has consulted and produced over 300 indie-published audiobooks. He is the author of the Global eBook Awards Gold Medal Winner in Writing/Publishing, "The Author's Guide to Audiobook Creation." Richard is also an Audible Approved Audiobook Narrator (Top 10%) and a 5-time winner of the EVVY Award for audiobook narration and production.

Imagination Storybooks makes children's picture books accessible by adding audio description (AD) of the pictures for blind children and sign language for deaf children in audiobook and video formats.

“Laughter is the best medicine...”

With overwhelming evidence that excessive screen time is harmful to children’s health, listening to audiobooks provides a perfect alternative. Studies prove that listening to stories contributes to child brain development. Kids who listen have better language skills, vocabularies, and imaginations. Families who listen together benefit with increased family time and shared experiences. The addition of comedy and laughs adds additional benefits of ‘stickiness’ and engagement. Kids want to listen

when they are having fun. Parents remark how their children request our Beantown Pals stories while driving or before bedtime.

Comedians Tammy Pooler and Tom Hayes have combined their writing and voice over acting skills to create a series of hysterical fairytale based stories featuring Beantown’s wacky duo, Bucky and Betty. Think Lucy and Desi, Wilma and Fred, and Kermit and Miss Piggy and you have "Beantown Pals, the adventures of Bucky and Betty."

The problem is that children's illustrated books are not fully accessible to over 5 million children with special needs in the U.S.

Solutions:

1) Rich audio description (AD) of all the pictures for blind and neurodiverse children.

2) American Sign Language (ASL) Interpretation for deaf children.

3) Audiobooks and videos with this extra accessibility.

Imagination Storybooks creates all three. You can make a difference by donating today to Imagination Storybooks (Imagination Videobooks, Inc.)

We believe all children should have equal access to early education. We create and distribute accessible videobooks and audiobooks of existing illustrated children's books..

See our accessible videos at https://imaginationvideobooks.org/

Sample:

Where your gift goes:

$20 - adds captions to a video

$50 - creates a Braille .brf file for the video

$100 - pays for the Audio Description (AD)

Our campaign ends Friday, Oct. 21st. Please support us now. Every person who donates $20 or more will get a copy of the video when completed.



WHY this project is needed!

More than 500,000 children in the U.S. have vision challenges, and out of every 1,000 - about 2-3 children are born with a detectable hearing loss in one or both ears.

The original 1900 edition of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum is in the public domain. You can help us bring our accessible video and audiobook adaptations of the classic to everyone. The finished project will be over four hours in length.

Our talented team of all blind and low-vision voice actors is creating a video, audiobook, and eBook that will include audio descriptions of the pictures by original illustrator W.W. Denslow.

REWARDS

Everyone who donates $25 or more will receive a copy of the full video when completed. If you donate $50 or more, you will get a personal Birthday wish from the Wizard himself for someone you name.

The Wizard's Incredible Personal Portrait Reward

YOUR Portrait painted by Artist and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Actor Bruce Horak, our "Scarecrow" in our accessible version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Bruce will do a portrait session with you via Zoom. You'll get a link to follow and a private meeting I.D. You and Bruce will sit and chat and he'll paint your picture. You can get a digital or an original acrylic canvas interpretation. Or both. Each portrait requires a $1,000 donation.

Here is Bruce's amazing story of being a blind artist...

Please donate what you can to make this classic picture book accessible to blind, deaf, and learning-challenged children.

ABOUT THE "TIP"

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