The CD format: We have taken the stories and the beautiful original water color illustrations from our Soccer Storybook and formatted them for your child to view at home on CD. The CD uses simple icons such as a 'house' for returning 'home' to make it easy for you and your child to read. We've even included audio files for your child to listen to when you are not around.

We drew from the experiences and developmental issues that we observed from working with young children in our soccer classes. We wanted the stories to verbalize some of the feelings and thoughts that are part of growing up. Life presents all of us, from the time we are young, with a series of challenges, and we develop as we learn how to think about and solve these issues. It was time to have stories for children that reflects the richness of real life.

The stories cover a range of issues (some serious, some funny) faced by young children engaged in physical activity - from worrying about falling down to not liking to sweat, from fear of failure to avoiding goose poop. Our characters are realistic looking children that the child hearing the story and looking at the illustrations can identify with and root for.

Imaginative and Fun-Loving - like the children: We also wanted to avoid preaching morality lessons to young children in some adult-like, serious tone that loses the fun loving and imaginative energy that we see in these children all the time. So while our characters are always realistic children faced with a variety of real world issues, we celebrate the fun and imaginative dimension of young children throughout the stories and illustrations.

Make Reading Fun - and Children will Read: We have always maintained that the most fundamental issue in the physical development of young children was to make the experience fun - so that they would enjoy it and want to repeat the experience. The same principle holds true with reading - if young children enjoy the stories and the pictures and the process of being read to - they will learn to love stories and books, and they will learn to read with enthusiasm.

Professional, Richly Textured Illustrations: Knowing that illustrations are a major part of the reading experience for young children, we recruited LeoWinstead, a professional artist, to do the watercolor illustrations that you see in the storybook. We think the children will love the highly realistic scenes from our soccer program combined with many whimsical and imaginative images.