Only five days to go to the launch of A New Me! This lovely Christian book for young people (11-13-ish) shows how there is always hope, even when things seem to be going very wrong. If you can come to the launch, we’d love to see you there! The author’s wife, Jane, has apparently got some games and challenges ready, so bring the kids, too.
If you can’t make the launch, you can order the book here and we’ll send it to you next week. 🙂
One thing we all have in common, is freedom of choice. Given a Christian book, young readers can think through issues for themselves, such as homelessness, child-led families, answered prayer, people trafficking, body image, corruption, becoming a Christian. (The Only Way, Living in Hope, I Want to Be an Airline Pilot, The Treasure Hunt, the Beech Bank Girls, The City Kid, The Birthday Shoes.) The same is true for church and non-church children. Stories can be a tool for the Holy Spirit to work through. Let’s not underestimate the power of a good story to inspire!
If your children don’t read, why not read to them? Don’t live with them? No worries, you can do it now on Skype, or even with the new facebook face time app!
According to the Children’s Society Annual Report, a massive 34% of 10-15 year-old girls in the UK are unhappy with their appearance – and the number continues to rise. This article from the BBC news website is very well worth a read if this issue concerns you.
If you know a girl this age who needs some encouragement, why not buy her a set of the Beech Bank Girls books? You can buy them from your local Christian bookshops or direct from this link. You may never know what good they will do! And don’t let’s forget to pray for our precious young people, growing up with so many pressures.
Thank you to Lucy who drew the Dernier bird and coloured it in so beautifully, and her Mum who kindly sent it to me. What a lovely surprise! This is the Dernier bird who is singing in Jesus’ ear, as mentioned in last month’s newsletter . . . if you missed it you can read it here. 🙂
If you have an encouraging story, or a photo of your children reading Dernier books, please do send them in – it’s always such a pleasure to hear from you. Some days and weeks are full of hard work and headaches, and hearing an encouraging story is guaranteed to lift the spirits. 🙂
Some of our books are off to Lufutuko Community School in Zambia at the weekend! A local church minister is flying out and has made room in his luggage for about 20 books – thank you Martyn. 🙂 The township of Kawama, on the outskirts of Kabwe, Zambia, is a poor community, so we are delighted to be able to help with books. If you know anyone going out to Africa or India, or anywhere where education is highly valued but books scarce, would you ask them to take a few books? If we can help, please don’t hesitate to contact me for discounts or to raid our seconds box!
If you would like a pdf to download/print of all the first chapters of our books, please sign up to receive this newsletter. I hope this resource will help you choose, because you can’t flick through a book online! (You can of course browse our books in Christian bookshops.) 🙂
Talking of Christian bookshops, I will be at a trade event later this week, where Christian publishers will be meeting Christian retailers and authors. Please pray for a fruitful time – we are all working towards the same aim of getting as many Christian books and resources into as many hands as we can. Thank you!
The new Write for a Reason course began last week – I run this course for anyone who writes for children and young people from a Christian perspective, and wants to improve their writing skills. Please pray for the students! Just in case you’re interested, we also have a monthly membership programme and lots of free writing tips on the website.
I’m running out of room, but don’t forget to buy your copies of our new book, The City Kid, for all the teens you know. Because of my mum’s illness and subsequent death (thank you so much for all your kind messages and cards), I haven’t done anything like as much promotion as I planned, so please do pray this book will reach the young people who really need to read this story. Could your teen buy a copy for a friend? Click here for more info about the book.
Janet Wilson, Founder of Dernier Publishing
Thank you for reading this far – and for all your support. Please keep praying for us, and for all our readers!
Janet
I like to keep up with what our children/young people are reading, so when I was early for an appointment in town recently I popped into a charity shop to look at the books. I bought these three from the children’s shelf:
The Replacement is about a boy from an ‘underworld’ (which includes the living dead) who is a ‘replacement’ – left in the crib of a human baby when just a few weeks old. He has fatal allergies to iron, blood and consecrated ground which are slowly killing him. The Blue Hawk is a different kind of fantasy. Tron, the protagonist, is a temple boy who is led by his gods to follow his destiny. Dancing in my nuddy-pants is the fourth in a series of eight ‘confessions’ written in diary form, for girls 13-15. The name of God is used continuously throughout the book, but not in the way Christians do. 80,000 copies of this book were pre-sold – that’s before the book actually hit the shelves!
All these books are well written and have attractive covers. But the content of all three books troubles me deeply because the stories we read affect us. In a study on how novels affect the brain by researchers at a university in Atlanta, USA, the findings “suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist [main character].” Read a short article about the findings of the study here: How novels affect the brain It’s definitely worth five minutes of your time . . . this shows how urgently we need Christian books for children and teens with characters who will encourage and inspire our young people to walk with God.
All I can say is, thank you for your support for Dernier – imagine if we could sell 80,000 books, reach 80,000 young people! Please keep praying and spreading the word, because we struggle to sell 2,000 of each of our books. There is so much tinsel around – we need to give our young people true gold. If we could sell 80,000 we could cut the cost enormously, too, to make them more affordable for us to send to children all over the world. This is my dream and my prayer! Please pray with me.
97 people did, during the free promotion last month! Please pray the story will touch many hearts and lives. Oh, and if you did download it, when you have read it, would you be kind enough to leave a review? Thank you! If you missed the promotion you can still buy the book here (this is the UK link) or in your own Amazon store.
Amazon Link to Revenge of the Flying Carpet
We have the final invoice to pay for the beautiful, encouraging, inspiring Beech Bank Girls, A Time Remembered books. I would be grateful for your help!
£1.99 would buy you The City Kid on kindle: Buy the City Kid
£5.99 will buy you the new book! Buy from your local Christian bookshop or right here on our website! Buy the new book here
£20.00 will buy you a pack of eight ‘seconds’ books – I have a growing pile in my office and would like to find a good home for them! More details here: Buy a bundle of ‘seconds’ books
£69.99 would give one each of our fourteen books – a fabulous present for a family, church or library:
Buy one each of all our wonderful books!
£150.00 would buy 30+ books for you to give to a school, church or library – this option isn’t on our website, but contact me if you might be interested.
Thank you for your help – very little helps!
Here’s an email I was sent recently: “I just wanted to tell you how much Joe and I are enjoying reading ‘I want to be an airline pilot’!! I’m reading it to Joe at bedtime and he’s really enjoying it – his favourite book so far!! And he’s read lots of books! He loves the bits about Rwanda and his bedtime prayers are full of thanks for all his blessings. We’ve had some really good chats following on from each chapter too. Each chapter he tried to persuade me to read on so he can find out what happens next – and not just delaying bedtime, he’s genuinely wanting to keep going!!! – just wanted to encourage you!! You are making a big difference, 1 book at a time, 1 child at a time.”
Isn’t that just so encouraging? 🙂
I would love to receive your comments on this new website! Is there anything you would like to see, or doesn’t really work for you? Our designer is working on a logo so we don’t have such a big space on the home page and I have more ideas – I always have too many ideas and not enough time though!
Still, do keep in touch, it’s always lovely to hear from you 🙂
Enjoy the sun, and thanks for reading this far!
Janet
P.S. Do join us on facebook Be lovely to see you there!
Welcome to the latest Dernier Publishing newsletter!Wooo hooo, yippee, hurray and hallelujah! Here they are, folks, real Beech Bank Girls, A Time Remembered books in the flesh, all ready for you to buy!
Now the final bill needs to be paid, so if you could possibly help out by buying a boxful for the girls in your life (Guides and Brownies, Girls Brigade, daughters’ friends, end of term prizes) I would be very grateful! And of course it’s a win/win situation, because you get to sow seeds in girls lives! Here’s the blurb:
“Teenage friends Chloe, Willow, Annie, Rachel, Holly and Amber become absorbed in a diary from the First World War, and discover that the choices they make have consequences, just as they did for fourteen-year-old Grace one hundred years ago.
Amber makes a bad decision but finds forgiveness, Holly’s honesty pays off, Willow finds hope in her grief . . . and lots more! The girls continue to live, love and laugh together through all the trials and joys of life, and discover that even when everything seems to be going wrong, God is still at work.”
Now there are four of these inspiring books for girls – praise the Lord for this miracle!
We have heard back from Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, and are delighted that he has written this foreword for The City Kid for us! Here’s an excerpt:
“The story – a loose adaptation of the Prodigal Son parable in the Gospels – seemed to be very relevant to the lives of young people in Africa, but the problem was: how to present it on a stage. It existed only as a prose narrative with songs. It fell to me and a small group of friends to adapt it for the stage, and I had the privilege of acting the lead role, John Ouma a.k.a. the City Kid. So you could say that John Sentamu was the original City Kid – but only as an actor!
I am delighted that the story is now being brought to a new generation of readers. The text has been updated and extensively rewritten, but the essential story remains the same – of a young man, brimming with ambition and self-confidence, who is overwhelmed by the temptations and problems of city life until he finds new hope in Jesus Christ. This is a fast-moving story with plenty of thrills and spills, but, more importantly, it confronts with honesty the harsh reality of surviving (or perhaps not surviving) in an unforgiving, dog-eat-dog environment. And, above all, it shows that apparently hopeless situations can be redeemed through the intervening love of Jesus Christ.”
You can read the whole foreword if you buy the book on kindle now!
Scripture Union in Uganda made an order for some of our books, but the cost of shipping is proving to be prohibitive. If you would like to donate any amount to help them out, please let me know – they do a wonderful work in challenging circumstances among the children and youth of Uganda. Thank you.
I would have loved to have had a stand at the recent International Christian Resources Exhibition at the Excel Centre in London, but a 2m x 2 1/2 m stand was £1375+VAT . . . way beyond our means! Advertising in magazines is also hugely expensive – often hundreds of pounds, even for a ¼ page advert . . . I’d so much rather our money went back into producing more books!
Here’s a thought . . . would you help us to publicise what we do? If we all network with the people we know, we can get the message out the ‘Twilight Barking’ method (with apologies to anyone who hasn’t read/watched 101 Dalmations!). What do you think? 🙂 Here are some ideas for ‘barking’ (sorry, I know you’re not dogs!):
We are also on facebook, so please come on over! If you like, share and comment on our posts, they will reach so many more people than we can alone.
None of these things will cost you a dime! But if we work together we can make a huge difference in the number of people who would hear about what we do.
Pongo and Missis got their puppies home through all the dogs passing on the message – how about that for an inspirational story? 🙂
Phew, I’m all out of room – I hope I haven’t bored you! Thank you for reading this far and for all your support and prayers. Without you, Dernier Publishing would cease to exist.
Janet Wilson, Founder of Dernier Publishing
May the Lord bless you and keep you!
Janet
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