The Dots is the first in a series of children's books that focuses on the basic elements of the fine arts identified as music, art, dance and theater through three silly characters Fleck, Speck and Spot. These three characters are colored with the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow. They engage in all of the artistic forms as the story progresses. There are a few ambiguous appearances from three characters representing the three secondary colors of orange, purple and green. The intent is for the child to ask questions about the three characters, to engage them in critical thinking and to help them make meaning of the relationship between primary and secondary colors. The narration is in the form of a poem presented by the character Professor Sprinkles. His narration is supported by illustrations that relate to the text and are targeted to entertain the child to ensure engagement. The story starts with a land of no color, movement or sound and progresses into a land named The City of Drop that is alive with the cultural elements of the arts. Each of the four fine arts are introduced in a sequential format the ends with the opening night of the Dots City Center for the Arts that includes the performance of a musical entitled The Battle of Drop. The story line is embedded with other instructional elements as well. The humanities are represented as the story line progresses in a historical manner in poetic text and the majority of characters and places are synonyms of the word dot. Again, the intent is to engage the child in inquiry based questions to make meaning of the material presented. There are four books in the conceptualization faze the will focus on each one of the arts to expand content knowledge, development of the characters and set a foundation for future series that will focus on other academic areas.
About the Author: Mr. Dunham has been involved in Fine Arts and General Education in upstate New York for over twenty years. This includes teaching private percussion and drum set lessons at the Hochstein School of Music and the music preparatory division of Nazareth College of Rochester as well as general and instrumental music publicly in grades k-12, nine years as a High School Principal, and most recently the Director of Fine Arts. He holds degrees from Onondaga Community College, Nazareth College of Rochester, SUNY Brockport and Saint John Fisher College: In the mid 1990's he was the drummer for an independent recording artist at the regional level recording three studio albums. He also performed as a pit drummer in musicals at the professional level in Syracuse, Canandaigua and Rochester New York. Mr. Dunham has done extensive research, writing, editing and rewriting for this project. The Dots is the first book he has written and looks forward to continue. The next four books follow in sequence to the original story line with the introduction of additional content elements for each of the four areas. He lives in North Chili, New York with his wife Kelly, and children Jenna and Brandon.