The purpose of this project is to give students all over the world a safe place on the web to publish stories about animals and their interaction with other living things. We hope that this site will inspire and encourage authorship among students of all ages as well as a love of reading.

Participating classes/students will become authors and illustrators through the writings on animals and their interactions with other living things. We offer several interactive topics for students... such as animal diaries (humorous or serious animal adventures written by students from the animal's point of view), animal cartoons, animal illustrations or photos that students wish to share, travel buddy stories ("animals" who travel the world and have many adventures to tell), becoming a co-author by being a part of a progressive animal story which changes according to the school/ town/ or country that adds the next chapter, a chance to chat or email your favorite author of children's stories, and even a place to create animal greeting cards to send to friends.

Our project encourages creativity, diversity, and above all creative expression. Again, as stated earlier we hope that this site will inspire and encourage authorship among students of all ages as well as a love of reading. With topics like animal diaries, animal drawings and photographs, progressive stories, meet authors and illustrators, nominate your favorite author/illustrator, travel buddies, animal-grams, and more we feel we have provided many opportunities to foster the students appreciation for reading and writing. We will support your students' authorships in any way we can, however, we will not publish anything that contains foul language or anything of a suggestive nature. We believe in using the Internet positively and safely, therefore we will not be publishing any last names of student authors or give out any student personal information. We also have a safety page which we encourage you and your students to read. We have included information on copyright issues and curriculum ideas. We hope you will join us in our efforts to encourage students to become lifelong readers and know that they too can be authors. We look forward to hearing from you at Animal Diaries!

We will accept registration for participation now and indefinitely- Any classes wishing to participate should email us at the following E mail address: animals@tip.nl - or go to the Participants page at http://www.tesan.vuurwerk.nl/diaries/home.htm on the website and fill in the form. (Important: each class must register seperately by mentioning grade-number, teacher, etc.) . Please include the following in your email message (copy and paste the lines below): Your name : Your email address: Your school's name: Your school district: Your school address: Your school's URL: Zip code: Grade/s participating: Number of students: Subject/s taught: What are you submitting? (story/stories, poem/s, illustrations, cartoons, photos of animals...) It would be great if whole classes could get involved. If you are thinking of doing that and you are going to publish student work on your own site, that is great...we would only need to link up to your pages. Let us know what your specific ideas are and we will work to accomodate!