You can not go wrong with Max. He is a delightful well-mannered dog, always polite, positive and eager to learn. In this volume, you will have great fun with Max as he travels to a cowboy ranch and learns an amazing array of new skills in the dazzling American Southwest. Children bond with Max immediately, delighting in his various adventures and engaging with him in their fertile imaginations. Max is a dog with a dream. He is always ready to try new and different things. The exceptional drawings in this book fill the pages with the brilliant colors found in the Southwest-those that children find most appealing. Max finds the desert a magical place. Here, he learns he can make many of his dreams into reality. He learns to hike then discovers exactly why he should remember a rule to avoid touching strange new desert plants. Max learns that diligent practice and asking for help make it possible for him to learn guitar playing, horseback riding, and even roping. Max loves to pretend; his friends on the ranch even help him to become the honorary sheriff of the whole ranch. Children adore this book of adventure and fun. Parents are delighted that the questions peppered throughout the book help them learn about their children's dreams and ideas. Parents utilize this information to lead into meaningful family discussions that strengthen familial relationships. As Max becomes the hero of his readers, they pick up his good manners and learn to understand how the world works through Max's examples. Max's Magical Journey is certain to become a favorite and well loved book over the generations. You will find this Grow as You Go book perfect from the Read to Me stage through the lower grades as children read to themselves. Pre-teens and even teens are reluctant to give up their copies of Max's Magical Journey.
About the Author: Like her protagonist Max, Annette Kelly is extremely curious and an unshakable positive thinker. Raised in the Northwest by loving, super-active, high-achieving parents, Kelly learned early that whatever they dreamed and backed up with hard work would become reality. At the age of 29, an accident with a VLRT (Very Large Red Truck) and resultant physical challenges forced her to retire from the growing, successful business she built from the ground up. It also spelled an immediate, forced retirement from the12 individual sports she enjoyed. Following surgery and intense therapy, professionals called her 'unrehabilitatable'. Instead of giving up, Kelly took her early training to heart converting that "hopeless" comment into a challenge to surmount. She rehabbed, regrouped and retrained herself working with the skills and abilities she retained. Her family, especially her husband and her daughter, supported her unconditionally; they took over what she could no longer do. Confined to bed, Kelly utilized her time to educate herself, developing into a professional writer. Two years later she injected her enthusiasm for life into her new business, moving toward success once again. She found enjoyment and satisfaction in selling her feature articles to a wide variety of magazines and newspapers. Kelly and her husband adore children. Through this all they were raising their extraordinary daughter-a lover of stray animals whose first word was "DOG" and made their home a positive, welcoming hub for their daughter's friends. During five of these years they found gratification serving as foster-parents to a series of 15 newborn infants awaiting adoption. As the years progressed, so did a disease that drastically diminished Kelly's abilities and energy. After 16 years as a professional feature writer, intensifying symptoms sent Kelly an unmistakable signal. Another major life change was required. Their deep faith in God helped Kelly and her husband through these new and deeper challenges. Assessing her remaining skills and abilities, Kelly resolved to remain a writer. With the aid of her husband Dave and a laptop computer, she now writes mainly from bed. She also chose to shift from magazines and deadlines to writing books. Since publishing Max's Magical Journey Kelly is devoting her energy to completing a guide to living well with disability and long term illness. She is also selecting artists for the three additional children's books she has written to date.