News from MakeBeliefsComix!

From Bill Zimmerman, creator of MakeBeliefsComix.com:

MAKEBELEIEFS COMIX LAUNCHES FREE SUMMER FUN FACEBOOK FEATURE FOR ESL, LITERACY STUDENTS; THEY’LL CREATE COMICS ON NEW THEMES EACH WEEK, AND SOME WILL BE POSTED ON OUR FACEBOOK WALL

Dear friend of MakeBeliefsComix,

I’m excited to let you know about some of the new things available on MakeBeliefsComix.com, the online comic strip generator used in literacy programs.

MakeBeliefsComix.com each week is posting a new theme or topic for students to create a comic strip with our comic strip generator and submit to us. After reviewing all submissions, we’ll select a sample to post on our Facebook wall.

'The theme for [the first week of August was]: ‘’You and Your Friend Share Happy or Funny Memories.’’

Our educational online comic strip site also has added another feature that enables users to post their comic strips on their very own Facebook walls.

Those who create a comic strip and send it to themselves will receive an email with two links: one to view and print the comic, and the other allowing them to post the comic to their Facebook wall to share with friends and family.

Posting or publishing these comic strip creations in a public arena helps validate all the effort a youngster puts into creating the comic.

Since MakeBeliefsComix.com was launched four years ago, over 2 million people from 175 countries have visited our free educational resource.

Google and UNESCO named us as among the world's most innovative web sites that encourage reading and literacy and we won the Parents' Choice Foundation’s Recommended Award.

This year the American Library Association selected MakeBeliefsComix for its annual ‘’Great Web Sites for Kids ’’ listing.

The site offers 80 different characters, blank talk and thought balloons to be filled in with text, story prompts and printables, and accepts text in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Latin.

Our site is used by educators to teach language, reading and writing skills in an easy, fun way. It also is used by students in English as a Second Language programs to facilitate self-expression and storytelling, as well as to gain computer literacy.

Some educational therapists use the online comics for children with autism or for those who are deaf to help them understand concepts and communicate. Parents and children also can create stories together, print them to create comic books or email them to friends. There also are printables and writing prompts on the site.

Please try the new summer fun feature with your students and children! We want to be the best educational web site we can be for you. We hope you will share what we are doing with your colleagues, your family, and friends.

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Bill really is doing some great work, so I hope you'll consider checking out his site.

As well, later this month his new interactive comic book for boys, Your Life in Comics: 100 Things for Guys to Write and Draw, will be issued by Free Spirit Publishing. Readers will be able to help create the book by filling in talk and thought balloons for different situations, as well as creating their own comic strips within the book.

Interactive comics assisting literacy, creative writing, and composition! Gotta love it!!!