Friday, March 20, 2020

Adolf Hitler and the German State essays

Adolf Hitler and the German State essays War, pestilence, and disease just to name a few of the problems facing Germany in 1919. The Germans had been forced to submit to the Treaty of Versailles and surrender after experiencing heavy casualties. Also, the economic downturn post- World War I caused inflation rates to skyrocket thus devastating all classes of Germans with the working class felt the financial strain the hardest. On November 11th 1918, Germany signed the armistice with the allies, effectively ending the war, but Germany's problems were just beginning. In the later years of the war, Germany had began to run out of food, and as such by the war's end there was widespread starvation, with millions dead from lack of food. This was made worse by the face that Germany had near enough bankrupted itself through the war effort, leading to economic crisis, which only got worse in the following years. The other major problem was that Germany still had millions of soldiers when the war ended, who were told to simply pack up and go home. Many of these soldiers were young, and most had done nothing else but fight. They were born and bred to kill and Hitler preyed on that mindset (Evans, 43). An economically worn out country with little to no job opportunities waiting for them. As such, most of these soldiers turned to rebellion, becoming the right-wing group known as the Freikorps, which committed murders , assaults, and general anarchy in post-war Germany. Germany's political and economic problems were only going to get worse following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The treaty imposed numerous provisions on Germany, the main ones being Article 231 also known as The War Guilt Clause which stated that Germany had to accept full responsibility for the war and the damage it caused (Sax & Kuntz, 27). This article required Germany to pay reparations "to the Allied countries for their losses in the war" placing a heavy financial burden on the Germany people (Sax & Kuntz, 27)....

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

My First Childrens Book †A Reedsy Success Story

My First Childrens Book – A Reedsy Success Story My first children's book – A Reedsy Success Story Today, we're hosting a great story by Praveen Krishnan, a debut author who just published his first children's book  to teach kids about science. Here's what motivated him to start writing it, and how he went about the publishing process.Barely a month or two after my first son was born, as any dutiful parent, I was immersed in the world of children’s books. Every day I was reading books out loud to a curious, sometimes annoyed 8-week old. Most people who encounter children’s books for the first time as an adult come away thinking how easy it must be to write a children’s book. After all, most books have 10 pages, with a 5-word sentence in each page and some goofy graphics. I was in that â€Å"how hard can this be† camp.As my son grew into a toddler and preschooler, his books got more ‘sophisticated’. He also started getting humor and absorbing body language from characters in books. The ‘Elephant and Piggie’ books by Mo Willems were huge hits. My son was constantly peppering us with questions, how does this  work, why does that  do this  and so on. I found it fun and interesting to be able to explain real-world concepts and scientific ideas to him. Sometimes I’d be stumped. How do I explain how the internet works to a 3-year old using only terms he understands?I decided that I should try to write a book for preschoolers - one that teaches Science. So, drawing inspiration from a number of popular children’s books, I put together a simple storyline. It would be a story of two friends, one curious and one brainy, learning about atoms and molecules. A friend of mine happened to be a good cartoonist and offered to do the artwork. Story in hand, art talent lined up, I was ready to go.I came across Reedsy on a tech blog and decided to give it a shot. While I was making this book for fun, I wanted to find professionals to guide me through the process. I found a copy editor, Amy Betz, who quick ly reviewed the script and artwork, and provided several helpful suggestions. For example, we didn’t notice that the pictures on each page did not have much variety. She suggested that the characters move around a lot from page to page. Kids love movement!The next part was the hardest - getting everything into a design and layout that would be acceptable for printing on demand. My illustrator and I have no experience with books so we found the learning curve for getting the design laid out to be very time consuming and frustrating. The online resources and tutorials are not very helpful to us. We turned to Reedsy again and found, Annie Beth Ericsson. She was fantastic. She worked closely with us and created a layout in days. She advised on the book sizes, artwork style, font and pretty much everything technical except the story and characters.The book is finally done and live on Amazon  and we are happy with the result. Best of all, the book critics (my kids and their frien ds at preschool) had mostly positive reviews!You can purchase Bobo Sees Atoms on Amazon here.  And follow Reedsy on Twitter for more success stories here.Have you ever thought of writing a children's book? Don't hesitate to ask us (or Praveen) any questions in the comments below!