Magnificent Me - Kids Yoga Book!

All I have to say is 'We've done it!"  Along with the author Dawattie Basdeo and me as the designer and illustrator, it taken us a year and a half of hard work, but finally we have our Kids's Yoga Activity Book and our Kid's Empowerment Cards ready for sale!!! And we are so proud of what we've achieved and hope you'll love them for your kids too.

Our book is called, 'Magnficient Me, Magnficient You - The Grand Canyon (ISBN: 978 1 78279 8194)', and is released for worldwide sale through Amazon and other retailers from December 2014 as a paperback and eBook (RRP £5.99). Published by Our Street Books.

Here's what MELANIE LEE, a yoga teacher had to say about our book: "I felt the book was imaginative and informative, there was a clear story that flowed. Lots of visual aids which are so important to children and there was a good balance of emphasis placed on postures and breathing and meditation Loved the affirmation. Personally speaking as a teacher this book would fit in with many areas of the curriculum. Thanks for a good read".

Our affirmation cards are called, 'Magnificent Me, Magnificent You - Empowerment Cards' and are available initially through Holistic World Online Shop and other retailers like Amazon Marketplace soon (RRP £12.99).





Dawattie is a busy mum of two boys, runs a holistic online store and is a children's yoga teacher. She came to see me about a year and half ago and explained that she had an idea for a series of Yoga Activity books for young children and would I be interested in illustrating them for her. She had seen my drawings and liked the way I worked, and felt we could make a great team. I work from the heart and explore love and light, and her ethos is support children both physically and emotionally. She focuses on wellbeing through yoga - not just bendy stretches, but health mind, body and spirit.

All yoga poses are accurate to help guide users to perform them correctly.

She's a great believer of using stories to bring ideas and teach kids all sorts of things, especially life skills and every night she reads to her boys before bed and encourages them to read for themselves. As a kid's yoga teacher she was already aware of a few products that exist in a niche market to aid in teaching kids yoga, but she felt that they didn't go far enough and wanted to write a story that would pull kid's into an adventure story as they learnt how to live within the yoga ethos. So her first story focus's on twins Crystal and Leo who have a magic wishing mirror which transports them to a new place and the story follows their journey of discovery. They learn about spiritual traditions from another culture and discover how to bring these practices into their lives. Interspersed within the story are yoga activities, meditations, songs and games to empower young children and enable them to nurture their physical and emotional development whilst having fun.  We were also very careful about how we drew and described the yoga activities, making sure they were as accurate as possible for kids to follow and get right! I wrote an EARLIER BLOG ENTRY about my design and illustrations for the book should you be interested in reading more.

As we developed the book, she had the idea of creating a deck of positive affirmation cards using the Grand Canyon book characters, with the idea that kids could use these in their own time and pick affirmations that would appeal to them. She chose the affirmations very carefully and each message to uplifts, empowers and encourages kids. There are 56 different cards each with a unique message and picture - some yoga inspired. Each card is large (A6 size), durable (they are plastic coated) and very colourful and fun to use - there are 8 cards in each of the seven rainbow colours. You can VIEW A SAMPLE OF OUR CARDS.

I had a lot of fun drawing the pictures and putting the colourful rainbow design together. And I know she is really proud of them and she hopes that they can made a big difference to kids as they grow up.

Both the book and the cards are fantastic props to use in kid's yoga classes to engage and ignite their imaginations. The cards could be used at the end of a class where you can ask each of the children to pick a card and to have a quiet moment thinking about the affirmation, or get the class to discuss one card together and what it means to them, and then afterwards calm and lie down to Savansana. The book could be used with a group of children to work through the story and activities over several classes - they could also have their own copies to practice the activities in their own time and just for the fun of reading the story and enjoying the pictures!

We had a lot of interest last year at The Om Yoga Show in London where we broached the idea and we saw there was a growing interest for yoga resouces for children - so we are hoping we've created two products the market will love.

Magnificent Me Empowerment Card Box

We put a lot of our heart and soul over the year and half it took for us to develop, design, draw, market our ideas and produce this amazing book and cards, and we hope you agree and want to give your kids our gift to you. We'd love to hear what you think of our products and if you would like to have a copy and leave a review for your website, blog, magazine etc please contact me on angelstorm@gmail.com or our publicist from Our Street Books maria@jhpbooks.net.

For further information and updates, check our Facebook page, Holistic World Online Shop and Amazon

YOGA ACTIVITY BOOK AVAILABLE AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON AND OTHER BOOKSELLERS NOW.

CARDS AVAILABLE THROUGH WWW.HOLISTICWORLD.CO.UK. SHIPPING WORLDWIDE AND WHOLESALE AVAILABLE AND AMAZON MARKETPLACE.

LINK TO BLOG ENTRY ON YOGA BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS