Dr. Tinita O. Kearney, speech pathologist and author, turns to alternative funding sources for her children’s book, Lola Koala’s Travel Adventures: Who, What, Where & Yes/No Questions, the first in a series that combines travel and fundamental language concepts to make growing children’s communication skills easy and fun for caregivers.
Upper Marlboro, MD, (June 2020) – Dr. Tinita O. Kearney, speech pathologist, is looking to make it easier to teach critical language skills to young children and she is using an adorable globetrotting koala bear to do it. Dr. Kearney’s latest project is a book series about a travel-loving koala, Lola, who whisks children to various destinations while teaching them specific language skills along the way. Dr. Kearney has expertly applied her decade of experience as a pediatric speech pathologist to create an interactive journey for young readers and she is taking to Kickstarter to make this project a reality.
Many creators use Kickstarter as a means of funding their projects – over 180,000 have been successfully funded to date according to Kickstarter. There’s a catch, however. Kickstarter campaign creators only have a set number of days to raise all the funds, and if unsuccessful, the project receives nothing. Dr. Kearney’s book has a 30-day fundraising window, from start to finish. If the allotted budget ($8,000) isn’t raised prior to August 6, 2020, all pledges are canceled and the book will not be funded. The campaign is currently 55% funded.
Book 1 in the Lola Koala’s Travel Adventures series targets answering ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘yes/no’ questions, a skill that Dr. Kearney often works on with clients. When asked why these skills are important to target at a young age, Dr. Kearney noted,
“The ability to ask and answer questions is a critical language skill that is needed to functionally engage in conversation, to demonstrate and gather basic knowledge and to meet the Common Core standards of kindergarten and beyond. This skill is just one of many that I work on with a large number of my young clients and it’s my mission to empower caregivers to grow their children’s fundamental language skills at home, before they get to me, so that, hopefully, some may not need me at all.”
Dr. Tinita O. Kearney is a speech-language pathologist who hails from New York. She owns a speech therapy private practice and lives to empower families to be their child’s very best advocate and resource. Interested parties can support this Kickstarter campaign or learn more about the book series by visiting lolakoala.com.
