Welcome to the Learn By Chance Book Series

I soon realized I had more than enough photographs and my one little book had grown into more adventures. Book 1 Things That Happen By Chance came to life in the Fall of 2015 while book 2 More Things That Happen By Chance is due for release in 2020 and hopefully followed quite soon after by book 3 Even More Things That Happen By Chance offering children an even wider variety of real life lessons to learn and share.

My process to this stage of the book brought me to the following conclusion. It seemed obvious to me that on any given day while shopping or walking near a children's playground, past a school yard or on a busy street one can easily see that children are children and they require guidance and advice from others no matter where they live or their personal circumstances. This led me to believe this little book can easily be shared with both children and adults in many countries throughout the world.

I had also explained to Chance that whenever possible you should try your best to find the positive in a negative situation. One morning we woke up to find a broken water pipe and a flooded storage room in our home that forced me to try and salvage anything I could before it was ruined. This is when I came across several boxes of our old family photographs and so began the idea of my graduation gift to him and a positive lesson to share with others.

Children that have the opportunity to read a little book of Chance will get hours of enjoyment, and laughs from seeing real photographs that were captured in moments in time when he was learning them. My common sense tells me these simple life lessons are tools they will be able to learn, use, share and pass on to others every day.

As our world today revolves around multi-cultural families it seems only fitting that Things That Happen By Chance should also be made available for children to read and enjoy in other languages. After all words such as please and thank you, or wind and thunder have the same meaning everywhere.

The first book is currently available in print in the following languages: English, French (CDN), Spanish, Farsi, Arabic with additional translations planned for the future. An e-book is available in English. There is also a Dyslexic edition printed using the OpenDyslexic font which was created for children who may be experiencing difficulty learning to read: https://opendyslexic.org/

An Audio CD of Chance narrating the book is also available. His voice has been studio engineered to sound similar to how he spoke as a child.

To make the book personal for Chance I thought it would be fun to have it printed in a font I created using some of his own early hand writing. As luck would have it, some of the papers I had saved from the flood contained works from his early school days of putting pen to paper.

As I looked through the photographs of him as a child I laughed to myself and remembered telling him to try to see the funny side of life. Have the confidence and courage inside to laugh at yourself. You will learn that most often others will enjoy laughing with you. It's a fast and crazy world we live in. We all need laughter to share as it makes us feel good inside.

While looking through some photographs of my son Chance growing up they instantly took me back in time to a place where I could enjoy once again some of his earliest childhood memories.

As a gift to him I put a collection of these photographs together into a little book. My intention being that he would be able to reflect back on some of the everyday real life lessons he had learned as a child that helped form the person he has grown up to be. I wanted to give him the opportunity to one day share his childhood and similar moments with his own children. I thought that together they would be able to enjoy the book with a smile and talk about their own real life lessons learned.

I had explained to Chance while he was growing up that opportunities often come about when you least expect them and that it is a wise person who recognizes these fleeting moments before they are lost forever. In this case I had been trying to think of a special high school graduation gift that had no monetary value.

A smile is free, saying please and thank is courteous and being honest, respectful and considerate of others is a simple state of mind. I hope that this little book can in some way bring about a discussion between children and adults everywhere to share and enjoy learning some of these real simple life lessons.