Publishing for Gifted Children

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About Royal Fireworks Press and Publishing for Gifted Education… Notes to Homeschoolers, and some book suggestions.

from Dr T.M. Kemnitz, President

Parents regularly assert that our educational products—the MCT language arts curriculum in particular—engender a different response in children than other curricula. Many parents have said that with our books they at last can teach as they always wanted. Why might this be?

Royal Fireworks was founded in 1977 to provide educators with totally different materials to educate children. We believe that education should be child centered. Education is an individual process, and each individual is different. In order to be effective at the highest level, educational materials should be flexible and adaptable to each individual child.

We believe that education should be joyous, filled with fun, humor, and art; educational materials should not be sloughs through dry, dull material that has to be “covered.” We believe that children should be impelled rather than compelled to study the material we want them to learn. We believe that if we challenge them and expect great things from them and give them books that appeal on many levels, we can help them to attain high levels. Honey really is more attractive than vinegar.

At Royal Fireworks Press we seek to develop curricula to inspire the imagination of children, to engage them affectively as well as cognitively, to transmit joy and fun and creativity and a sense of wonder and excitement about the world around us. Books—particularly textbooks—have to be designed with the child in mind, formulated in two page spreads to convey an idea, a concept, an understanding that works in that space.

Textbooks should have art. They should open vistas for children to explore a wider world. They should be fun. Frequently our texts do not look like the texts of other publishers. We sometimes do odd things with type because it helps kids to understand a point. We use subtle colors. If a child has to be cajoled to read one of our texts, we have failed.

We do not use worksheets. We believe that they are the neutron bombs of education; they kill all intelligent life while leaving the textbook intact. Coping with a worksheet sends a child in search of a short answer that will fit on a short line. We would prefer children to seek large panoramas of ideas and relationships. To worksheet a subject is to trivialize it.

While we have a sense of intellectual and artistic play, we do not sacrifice what we believe children must know. We think that there is core of knowledge that educated people should have. We would never shortchange that; our view of core knowledge is far more extensive than other educational publishers. We do not “dumb down” material, and we do not abide low expectations.

We are unusual among educational publishers in that we publish many novels for children. Novels are an important part of the art, the world of the imagination, we offer to kids. Historical novels are particularly useful in engaging children’s imaginations in worlds that are otherwise remote and unlike our own. They also allow us to discuss topics in ways that children can feel the emotion instead of simply trying to deal with abstract ideas. Novels such as The Key to Honor and The Price of Command offer an insight into the real dilemmas that are involved in leadership, in working in an organization with a poor leader, in assuming responsibility for one’s behavior and actions. We have taken pains to ensure that our novels are free of the inappropriate language, situations, and behavior that so often characterize modern novels for young readers.

There is a parallel between what we do with books for children and what you do in educating your kids at home. Some parents are determined to do everything possible to ensure that their children are truly educated. Others are content to do their duty, to hand out the worksheets, to offer up the textbooks, to proffer the assignments and the tests, and to let it go at that. We try to publish special materials for those parents who want to make the extra effort to ensure that their kids succeed. For you we are prepared to go the extra mile with what we publish to help you help your children.

We don’t always get it right, just as you don’t always get it right. We all learn as we go. We do the best we can today, and we try to do better tomorrow. We have learned to listen to you, and to pay attention to what you tell us. We have found that some of our materials are less than what you need, and during the past few years we have sent many of our books to be recycled as we produce better editions. We will continue to do that. We will make our books more attractive, more approachable, and more appealing whenever we see the possibility for improvement. We will remain committed to you and your success with your children. We welcome your input, criticism, and suggestions, and we hope that you will continue to be a partner to us in producing better materials for you and your children. We hope that we can be a worthy partner to you in your endeavor to give your children the very best you can offer them. We want that very best to have a red truck on it that says Royal Fireworks Press.

For more than thirty-four years our goal has been to enable teachers, administrators, and parents to enrich the experience and life opportunities of gifted children.

During this time, other companies publishing in gifted education have come and gone. All have experienced the fundamental truth of the market place: there are not enough gifted children to make publishing for them economically attractive to those who measure their achievement by dollars sold, units shipped, and profits reported to shareholders. The major publishing conglomerates now measure their income in tens of billions, and yet great income does not translate into even small measures of concern. Mostly, these companies do not publish books specifically for gifted children.

There is not enough public money to go around, and the gifted frequently do not get their fair share. The programs are sparsely funded when they exist at all, and many parents cannot afford to supplement. We have always realized that all too often the needs of the gifted have to be met both in the regular classroom, and we have published books and curricula at affordable prices that make this possible.

Through good economic times and bad, through all educational cycles, through war and peace, the children keep coming, and some of them continue to be gifted. Our challenge is to continue to seek ways to engage the gifted children, to challenge them, to meet their needs and to help them develop their full potential. This is the crucial challenge we acknowledge as a company. And we are proud to say that more two million children have received instruction from our materials.

A Complete Language Arts Curriculum

Our English curriculum by Michael Clay Thompson has become a staple of gifted and talented programs throughout the country. We are proud to be his publisher, and at conferences for the gifted we always enjoy meeting teachers who tell us how successful his books have been in the classroom.

Novels and Other Titles

We are now offering more novels for young people at a time when the major international conglomerate publishers are decreasing the number of titles they produce and slashing the number that they will keep in print. We are concerned about language, situation, and values as well as the story when we evaluate novels for publication. The range of subjects and themes is extensive.

Dr T.M. Kemnitz
President

About the Quality of Our Books

Everything we sell has been manufactured by us at our facility in Unionville, New York. We take pride in our manufacturing. We are kind to the environment; we use recycled paper and environmentally-friendly processes and materials. We are a craft-oriented printing shop; one shift of people trained and skilled in the traditional printing crafts makes all our books in the daylight. We do not cut corners in the manufacturing process; we make books that are intended to survive use by children. We expect that your children respect books, but with all kids accidents will happen. Our books should survive those accidents that do not involve fire, water, or tearing pages and covers.

Homeschool Catalog

We have both a printed and an e-version of our homeschool catalog: online version

Manuscripts

If you have a book or project you would like to discuss, we are always pleased to hear from you. Please see our Guidelines for Submission of Manuscripts.

Some Book Suggestions for Homeschooling

Some of our books are well known to homeschoolers while others are used far less than they should be. Most parents simply use our curricula, particularly the Royal Fireworks Language Arts curriculum by Michael Clay Thompson. This extraordinary pedagogic tool will enable you to deliver the highest possible structured language arts instruction to your children.

Parenting

Some of our best books are reflective books that every parent should read whether or not he or she is homeschooling. How To Build a Child’s Character by Tapping into Your Own is such a book; it almost instantly makes most parents better at raising their children. A good book on parenting girls is Reclaiming the Lives of Gifted Girls; it gives real insight into the forces that keep girls from achieving in our society. Boys Should Be Boys is a useful book for the parents of boys.

Teaching strategies

Some books deal directly with fostering giftedness such as Jerry Chris’ useful 60 Ways to Assure Success for your Gifted Children.

A few parents really think about teaching, and they can benefit from the books designed to help teachers write language arts curricula or structure learning experiences. Two more books by Jerry Chris are designed to help you structure learning experiences in exciting ways: 50 Ways to Stimulate Low-Ability and Reluctant Learners Vols I & II, which despite the title give you wonderful scenarios for learning experiences.

For sophisticated parents there are Gemini and Pegasus. Gemini lays out education into a series of thinking skills and the behaviors that are associated with them. Pegasus shows how to structure teaching to develop the behaviors you want in your children. Gifted programs around the country have been built on these books, and they can be extraordinarily useful to parents who are concerned about their children’s thinking skills.

Math

The Problemoids Math Challenge Program is very useful for parents of children who are gifted in math. It is designed for 4th through 6th grades; its purpose is to teach children the problem-solving strategies identified by Polya when he was at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton with Albert Einstein. There is an inexpensive problem book for the student. The teacher/parent manual contains the solutions to the problems as well as the answers. Homeschoolers need both the student book and the teacher manual. We have kept the cost as low as possible so homeschoolers can take advantage of this program.

Thinking skills

When we grew up, we experienced the huge benefit of parents willing to play thinking skills games with us. We believe that these games are an important in a world where the life of the mind is valued. We offer several books to give parents games to play with their children that are particularly useful for homeschooling gifted children. Among them are Educational Play: Math and Educational Play: Language Arts. Both books provide a menu of games and activities, many of which are appropriate for time spent in the car or at the dinner table. A much more structured set of games and activities is to be found in the Muscles of the Mind Program, where all four books are designed to develop a wide range of thinking skills.

Science

Dr Dave’s Science Manuals are packed with ideas for home experiments and demonstrations and come highly recommended.

Publishers for gifted and talented children since 1977