Mark W.F. Condon: Blog

The teacher and I were making small talk in her room early that morning, when she announced her intention to have a slumber party for the girls in her first grade class. She has 8 girls and she had decided it would be a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of them better, and of course for them to know her as a real person, not just that woman in that room at school. 

Her announcement came while she was talking about errands she needed to run in Gallup, New Mexico (the closest “big town”) that evening. “I need to pick up some nice invitations, some popcorn and stuff for dinner…”

“Wait! Hold it! Why would you buy invitations when you can make them much better right here and now,” I had asked. Tammy Lankford is an expert at using RealeWriter, the picture book software, to make books for her children. If you haven’t seen the “Teddy” books you have missed a real treat. She sends a “Teddy” or some other book home just about every week as the children boarded their Friday afternoon buses. So the shock on her face at the thought of making her own invitations was a bit surprising.

One of the little known features of RealeWriter is that it will print “cards,” or more precisely any kind of simple two outside covers and two inside pages greeting cards you might require. Birthday, Missing you, Sorry for your Loss and similar cards are easy enough to create. Plus they bring card authors into a more intimate place to communicate the feelings and wishes they have. Fundamentally, card authors just proceed to make the shortest of books. Printed on the front and back of nice paper, these cards become special keepsakes with laser accurate “greetings” to match a particular person and occasion.

The cool part of home-made greeting cards is not their economy, which is more and more substantial these days of $4.95 cards. It is the option to personalize a card right down to the pictures used, the font selected and the sentiment that is found inside. The layout options that are available in RealeWriter add even more.

Not to mention that these can be emailed as well as printed.

But Ms. Lankford was considering making 8 cards and these special cards needed to be personalized for her little giggly girls.  Cards are made just like books: There are two covers on a greeting card, back and front, just like on a books. The difference is that when card-books are printed the covers are printed on each one and the inside “page pairs” change each time. It really does work nicely. Make one, make a hundred. All will have the same cover and each will be customized by the contents of an interior page-pair.

Having had her perspective adjusted, Tammy set about making invitations for her little girls. She had a very sweet one ready (including their beloved Teddy on the cover) before the first bus arrived.

Greeting cards may not seem like a contribution to literacy, but in some ways they offer more than almost any other medium.  Consider these qualities:. Home-made cards are shaped with the language of the authors, whatever dialect or “tongue” that they speak. Personally created greetings include digital images of family, friends and community available only to the author (along with choices found in the world of images that can be mined from the Internet). But most important, These one of a kind communications are personal, VERY personal. They carry a sincerity of emotion and sentiment that just cannot be matched with a store-bought card, regardless of the artfulness of the poet who wrote the “applies to almost everybody” language.

Children who get these kinds of personal notes, KNOW they have been crafted by someone they know and care about, who took the time, energy and thoughtfulness to reach out to them. If that doesn’t “sell” children the power of print to create special personal contact, then I don’t know what will.

Home-made is better’n store-bought every time.