CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)\u2014A Southwest Florida mother created interactive children’s books to help families cope during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Mary Asaro came to WINK’s Listens<\/a> event in Cape Coral<\/a> to share her story with WINK News anchor Russ McCaskey. During the pandemic, programs were shut down, and schools went to virtual learning, prompting Asaro to take action.<\/p>\n “It was about five years ago, you know, like kids weren’t really understanding why they were home,” Asaro said.<\/p>\n She saw the impact firsthand with her own child. Watching her child on the computer made her realize children needed a way to express their feelings and talk about things.<\/p>\n Asaro decided to do something about it. She created interactive books with follow-up questions and activities to help children express their feelings.<\/p>\n “I wanted to write something that was going to be impactful, because all the books that I’ve looked at have been just busy stuff like coloring or an activity. I wanted something that was going to be interactive,” Asaro said.<\/p>\n Her first book, “Shelley and Friends,” features an anxious turtle and a mean crab. The second book, “Otto’s Adventure,” is about meeting a character who isn’t very nice.<\/p>\n The books come with 3D characters that accompany the stories. Asaro self-publishes her books and has already sold a couple of hundred copies, but she is pushing to get the word out.<\/p>\n “I just, you know, I think the way that our society is right now, it’s as if we all have these computers that are coming in front of us. I just also think there needs to be an outlet where they can, you know, have conversations and talk, because they’re gonna need that,” Asaro said.<\/p>\n Asaro will be at the Macaroni Kid “School’s Out” event at Bell Tower on Thursday, May 28.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)\u2014A Southwest Florida mother created interactive children’s books to help families cope during the COVID-19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,3837,325,115,4326],"class_list":["post-283985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-collaborator_gen_stories","tag-lee","tag-news","tag-wink_listens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}