Well, the initial books that I wrote with Henry were Hank Zipzer: World’s Best Underachiever and those were inspired by his experiences or his primary experience in school of being very successful in so many areas of his life but not successful in school and they were funny. They were funny stories. This isn’t a woe-is-me tragic story.
This is a great kid, a popular kid who has everything but good grades. And as those – we completed 18 of them and they sold almost 4 million copies, you know, they were really successful and we got so many letters from parents of younger kids who said is there anything like this for my kid who’s in the first grade or second grade because kids start to feel right away whether or not they’re diagnosed with a specific learning challenge it starts to make itself clear early on in kindergarten, first grade if they’re going to be the academically successful kids or not.
So we developed the series Here’s Hank. Here’s one of them. This is our newest one. It’s called There’s a Zombie in my Bathtub. And it finds Hank Zipzer when he’s in the second grade before he’s been diagnosed with any specific learning challenge but when he’s still suffering the effects of it so he’s kind of just goofy in school.
Reading is hard for him, spelling is hard for him, math is hard for him, handwriting is hard for him, recess is easy for him, social interactions are easy for him because he’s a great kid so we developed age appropriate stories for kids at the first and second grade about Hank before he’s diagnosed with a learning challenge but when school is still presenting challenges for him.
