We are so excited to have Kara Navolio join us today to share information about Movement Picture Books!
Kara Navolio is a children’s book author and freelance writer. Her debut picture book “Everybody Can Dance!” celebrates the joy of dance with a message of inclusion and shows children that no matter what you look like, your physical ability or style, everybody can dance!
Her second book, "Maggie Discovers the Rainbow" was released on March 21, 2023. It's a magical adventure through the rainbow that will help kids feel empowered to try new things and learn how colors can help us express our emotions.
When she isn’t writing for children, Kara tells stories of real-life heroes, artists, and writers for local newspapers and a local magazine, Northgate Living. Kara has been working with children since her college days. Even as she was earning a degree in Business from UC Berkeley, she was volunteering in a local school helping children learn to read. When she had her own two children she volunteered in their classrooms and at their schools for 16 years. Currently she is a docent at The Bedford Gallery where she takes school children on tours and teaches art in local schools.
She loves to read, travel, take photographs, paint, hike, dance, cook, and spend time with her family, especially her new granddaughter. She lives in Walnut Creek, California with her husband and everyday makes it a goal to learn something new.
"Everybody Can Dance!" was a book I was meant to write. Many things in my life led up to the creation of it. Let's start with the summer of 1980 when I was 16. I traveled to Spain as a foreign exchange student and was placed with the Olavide family in Madrid. The parents, Isabel and Javier, had 5 children: Bela and 4 boys. I spent most of the summer following Bela around to her dance classes, get-togethers with friends and cousins, sight- seeing and shopping. Bela went on to become a professional Flamenco dancer, traveling around the world. She returned to Madrid and opened her own dance studio. Although I stayed in touch with the Olavides through yearly Christmas cards, I would not see Bela again until 2016, 36 years later!
When my husband and I decided to take a trip to Spain in 2016, it was a blissful reunion. Bela invited us to see her students dance. I didn't know until I arrived at the show that Bela's students were young adults with Down Syndrome. Seeing the joy in their faces and the pride Bela had in her students made my heart burst. It was beautiful.
Yet, the idea for a children's book was nowhere in my thoughts at that time. I was working on two other manuscripts not related to dance. It was not until 2017, when I was revisiting my memories of that trip, that the idea came to me in a flash. With thoughts of Bela's students combined with my experience watching my daughter dance for 15 years and seeing my niece Jenna, who is a Little Person, dance when she was younger, the idea was born in my mind that every person has this desire to express themselves. I knew then that I wanted to write a children’s book that showed kids that dance is one way we can all come together. No matter what we look like or what our skill level is, dance is unifying. I wanted to write a book that could do its small part to show kids that we are all more alike than different.
I knew that a book about dance needed to have a good beat. I had never written in rhyme before, and it is not easy to do. I soon learned that it is more than just two words that have a similar ending sound. I studied online resources for days learning about the beats of words, and how to create blocks of text with not just the right syllables but also the right hard and soft beats. It took many, many revisions to get it right.
I was thrilled to have the book featured on the BBC’s CBeeBies bedtime stories show in Oct. 2022 where it was read and signed by deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis, winner of Britain’s dance reality show “Strictly Come Dancing.” It was also chosen for a Storybook Walk in Northeastern New York by the CEF Library. I love bringing this book to classrooms where we read and dance together.