Thank you for taking an interest in The Very Confused Pineapple. As a reader or listener, you will be tempted to follow along with Carl on many of his adventures. If you do you will not be disappointed. Come along and let's laugh and learn together with Carl and his new friends. This is the first installment in an ongoing series about an adventurous young pineapple named Carl who chose to leave his beautiful home in a rainforest on the Caribbean in order to fulfill his dream of making friends and exploring the world. Please do not underestimate the amount of lasting value that is delivered to the audience as the pages of this book begin to turn. There is an enormous amount of real-life lessons for young and old alike. In this intriguing and captivating story, children can see how to deal with difficult problems at an early age as well as of observing Carl (the main character) struggle with many different emotions throughout the story. For example, the reader will see Carl grow intellectually. The reader will witness Carl transform from indecisive and confused, to making driven and focused decisions. This is a process that we all must learn in life if we want to be successful. It is my belief, as the author, that most parents want what is best for their children. In this book and in this series, my staff and I have certainly worked hard to deliver you a fun product that reflects these values. The audience will benefit by watching Carl deal with difficult and sometimes extreme emotions that we all must learn to control if we are to be successful in our social interactions. Carl works and plays well with others while simultaneously recognizing positive and negative traits in the individuals he confronts on his journey as well as his friends, who are consistently around him. Carl learns the value of true friendship and kindness, while at the same time he is forced to recognize the sad truth that there are individuals in the world who are unnecessarily rude, mean, controlling, and hateful. The latter of these two, being an essential intellectual asset, if not a mandatory requirement for children growing up in the world today. As the reader, you will see Carl successfully navigate situations and scenarios where he is forced to deal with sometimes overwhelming emotions both positive and negative, such as fear, awkwardness, anger, frustration, doubt, and despair as well as excitement, joy, bliss, compassion, and friendship. I believe a person would be hard-pressed to find any children's book of equal size that contains as many life lessons and challenges for the protagonist as in this short story. This work is an attempt by the author to provide quality material to children, parents, guardians, teachers and any other person or entity who is militant about creating healthy mental and social views for the minds of tomorrow. As the author of this book I can promise you two things, first, I believe this book is extremely beneficial for readers of all ages. My desire to deliver you a better book exceeds my talents and abilities to do so. Second, I have in my heart a desire to create stories where every text and image will breathe strength, soundness of mind, clearness of thought, as well as enormous amounts of self-esteem into the developing minds and hearts of the audience. My intention is to prepare them with the mental tools of good decision making and self-worth that are required to face daily life. I have strived with these as my goals. I know there are far more talented authors (and readers for that matter) but, I have done my best. I hope you enjoy the story, and the illustrations as much as I have enjoyed putting them together for you. All subsequent Carl Pineapple adventure stories are exclusively available to members on our website at www.carlpineapple.com along with other titles that you may or may not find published here on Amazon Kindle.