Free activity guide for Loreen Leedy books

What happens when a web site is out of date? Google sends you ominous emails saying your site is not "mobile friendly," which is clearly a bad thing (...cue the scary music.) The tricky part was that each one of my 40+ books had a separate page with a good amount of relevant information and I couldn’t figure out how to easily transfer all these pages to the new site. This stalled all progress for awhile until I decided to downsize the new site, leave out the older book pages, and create an archive instead. All of the individual pages have been reformatted into a free downloadable PDF guide to Loreen Leedy books available on this site or in my TPT shop.

The cover image from the Guide to Loreen Leedy Books, a free downloadable PDF

My books relate to many topics in the elementary school curriculum so this guide is designed to be helpful for parents, teachers, and librarians. The titles are divided into the categories Math, Language Arts, Science and Nature, Social Studies, Holidays, and Fiction. Each page has a summary, reviews, excerpt, cataloging and illustration details, an image, and an activity related to the subject matter. Some sections have an bonus page or two of additional book extensions. The guide is 50 pages, and will be updated when new books are released.

An example from the free Guide to Loreen Leedy Books, showing the page for Step by Step

Redoing a web site is a big job but we all live online these days and increasingly on our phones so one has to channel Hansel and Gretel and toss out those breadcrumbs so people can find us. I had been using an old version of Dreamweaver which was functional but only just, and could not create a mobile site (or it was beyond my ability to figure out how!) What I was looking for in a site-builder was the following:
 • Behind-the-scenes updates to keep the site functioning without me having to think about it
 • Good design options with a variety of themes, fonts, colors, layouts, and so on
 • A built-in blog
 • Reasonably easy to update and figure out the tech stuff
 • The ability to have an online shop (haven’t utilized it yet...)
 • Not overly expensive

Squarespace was the one I ended up using and it has worked out well. Like most interfaces it was kind of confusing at first but I kept looking stuff up in the Help files and sent an email or two to Customer Support. The answers came within a few hours and helped me fix a couple of glitches such as navigation links hidden behind images (the pages needed more “padding.”)

I haven’t added everything that could potentially be on my site but at least the major breadcrumbs have been sprinkled around, such as information about my recent books and links to my classroom resource shop. So far I’ve left my old Blogger blog as is, with a final post directing readers here. Someone knowledgeable suggested that I redirect posts from my old blog (somehow) but honestly it doesn’t seem that urgent to me. Maybe if I planned to “monetize” this web site the traffic numbers would matter but since I hate random ads in the middle of blog posts, that’s not going to happen.

Quite a few blog subscribers have signed up so that’s nice! If you’re new here, the post topics include writing and illustrating children’s books and educational materials, demos, tech tips, and no doubt a pretty random post here and there. If these sound interesting, please subscribe to my blog >>> in the sidebar >>>

Thanks for stopping by and happy reading, teaching, creating, or whatever you're up to!

Loreen Leedy
Children's author-illustrator
Instagram: @loreenleedybooks
Pinterest: @LoreenLeedy
Facebook: @authorLoreenLeedy

Free guide to children's books with math, science, and language arts content by Loreen Leedy  

Why printouts are wonky (and how to fix it)

It's so annoying to print out a PDF and what you see onscreen is NOT what gets printed on the page. To achieve WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) may seem an impossible task with many desktop printers or maybe it's just my HP Officejet. But with just a tweak or two plus some test prints, there IS hope.

Troubleshooting a printout that is not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

These are banner templates in progress, designed to print 2 per page and sized so that you only have to cut the paper in half and trim off the little triangle of paper at the bottom of each banner. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work! The next two photos show examples of how the printout can be off-center and/or too large or too small:

Because the printed image is too small, this would require a lot of extra cutting to trim off the excess paper.

The image in this printout is so large it has run off the edge of the paper, making it useless.

What causes these glitches? Generally more than one control affects the size of the image so use the list below to troubleshoot:

• Paper size: check to make sure the paper size selected matches your actual printer paper. For example, my printer includes some custom dimensions such as postcard size. In my software you click the Printer button to get access to the Paper Presets.

Use the built-in paper presets or create custom sizes and paper types such as glossy photo paper, cardstock, and so on.

• Percentage: some programs allow you to choose a specific custom percentage larger or smaller than 100%.

• Borderless: often runs the image off the edge of the paper. It may work in combination with a reduced image size if that option is available. In other words, using a Borderless option with a 95% image size might be just right.

• X and Y Controls: these allow you to enter numbers to fine tune the position of the image on the paper, but only some programs have them as an option (Adobe Illustrator, for example.)

• Size Options: Fit, Actual Size, or Shrink Oversized Pages are controls in Adobe Reader.

• Software: Outdated printer or PDF reader software can cause a myriad of issues such as entire sections of the image disappearing, looking grayed out, or other anomalies.

You just have to try the options because the little preview image of the page isn't very precise. To get an accurate printout from Adobe Reader, what worked in this case was to select Actual Size with a 8.5 X 11 inch Letter size plain paper preset. However, settings can change depending on the image being printed so ••• always make a test print first ••• to be sure. Because, what's even worse than an off-center printout that's running off the page? Printing 30 of them!

The photo below is what I want, banners that are easy to cut out with very little trimming needed. Now I can go ahead and add the lettering and details on them, so yay!

It's not always important to have a file print perfectly but often it does make a big difference. Printer options and controls do vary but hopefully these tips will help the next time your printouts get wonky.

Thanks so much for coming by! If you would enjoy more posts about children's books, classroom activities, educational resources, and freebies >>> please subscribe on the blog sidebar >>>

Happy reading, teaching, creating, and whatever else you're doing!

Loreen Leedy
Children's author-illustrator
Instagram: @loreenleedybooks
Pinterest: @LoreenLeedy
Facebook: @authorLoreenLeedy

Good printouts that are aligned mean less cutting and trimming