1. What is your book, Unicorn Blue and the Caradoodle
Quest, about?
Unicorn Blue has just been
born and is clueless. How will she learn to be an epic
unicorn let alone find her Caradoodle? Mahoo's top-notch instructors will guide
her on her quest to become the unicorn she was meant to be and find her
kindred-spirit child. Jay and Luk will charm
readers as they prepare Unicorn Blue for her encounters with devious
leprechauns, mischievous donkeys and elusive Caradoodle.
With double crosses and double trouble at every turn, will
Unicorn Blue discern her true blue Caradoodle? Or will she reveal herself to
the wrong child and cease to exist? Caradoodle Quest is an engaging coming-of-age tale that whisks
readers off on a fantastic flight of fancy through the majestic granite peaks,
cascading waterfalls, and celestial sunsets of Yosemite Valley.
2. What inspired its writing?
Two years after the
release of our first mixed-reality game, the Mysterious Disappearance of
Unicorn Blue, we received feedback from hundreds of children who told us
they longed to know how their favorite Unicorn from Unitopia came to be.
Research from the National Association of School Boards found it’s important
not to focus on skill-based subjects like reading and math, shorn of any
connections to history, science, and literature. This approach inherently lacks
deeper purpose. Caradoodle Quest gives our mobile STEM games a deeper
sense of purpose. Knowing my children’s favorite fairy tales like My
Father’s Dragon, The Last Unicorn and The Firebird and
my own love of English literature by Donne,
Tolkien, Rowling, and American folk tales by Irving, MacGillivray, Kellogg
makes it heartfelt.
3. The main character, Unicorn Blue, straddles two worlds
and is on a quest to find her Caradoodle. What is a Caradoodle – and how does
she go about her journey?
Cara means friend in
Celtic, and doodling is every child’s playful imagination calling. So, a Caradoodle is the kindred-spirit child
of a unicorn. Mahoo, Unicorn Blue’s mentor, informs her she will cease to exist
if she reveals herself to the wrong child, and that she must discover her own
discernment on what makes a true-blue Caradoodle. Before she can encounter any potential
Caradoodles she must first learn to fly, find magic gold dust, and disguise
herself. Top-notch flight instructor
Jay teaches her to fly. Illusionist Luk
teaches her how to outwit a leprechaun, find magic gold dust and apply it to
disguise herself. At first, Unicorn Blue, gets fooled by some potential
Caradoodles, but not for long. She soon
learns to focus on character and substance.
4. Unicorn Blue is on a quest and others try to help her
become the unicorn she was meant to be and to find her kindred spirit child.
How do young people often struggle or fall short in trying to live up to their
intentions or goals?
Young people are often strangers to
themselves, making decisions based on feelings they don’t understand. This
ignorance leaves them susceptible to emotional overload. Mapping out long-term goals
where you want to go and purpose, who you are serving and why it matters,
develops self-awareness. Children often skip breaking down long-term goals into
smaller steps when they lack a broader sense of purpose in their education.
Purpose nurtures deeper focus, exploration and
students' agency, and ownership of their learning. With vision, purpose and focus in-hand, children gain the
persistence to work through difficulties and not give up if they do not see
immediate results. Purpose gives them rigor to pursue bigger problems and sets
them up for lifelong success and responsible
citizenship.
5. Throughout your story, you share little nuggets of
wisdom, such as “Nothing worth doing ever came easy, because if it did,
everyone would do it.” How do we get kids to understand the advice and support
that parents and teachers try to give them?
Caring adults can
help kids feel supported by giving them a framework to achieve their
goals. Writing down a vision statement
where they want to go long term and a mission statement, stating who they are
serving and why it matters, nurtures self-awareness, motivation, and
focus. With a vision and mission
statement in place, the next step is giving kids a tool to divide long-term
goals into tiny, daily actions. Writing
down specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals
provide a clear, trackable, realistic, actionable plan for success. When setbacks occur, encourage them to
discuss it with caring peers and adults. Setting regular check-ins, to
celebrate incremental successes, lessons learned, and next steps builds trust
and is shown to have significant impacts on outcomes.
6. What is a forever technology executive of a Fortune 50
company doing writing books for elementary school children?
Two years after the
release of our first mobile mixed-reality game, the Mysterious Disappearance
of Unicorn Blue, we received feedback from hundreds of elementary school
children who told us they longed to know how their favorite Unicorn in the land
of Unitopia came to be. Research from the National Association of School Boards
found that high achieving countries don’t relentlessly focus on rote skills
like reading and math shorn of any connections to history, science, and
literature. This approach inherently
lacks deeper purpose. Purpose nurtures deeper focus, exploration and a students'
agency, and ownership of their learning. Purpose
gives students rigor to pursue bigger problems and sets them up for lifelong success.
Caradoodle Quest deepens connections from
history and literature to our science curriculum. It accelerates understanding,
outcomes and supports teacher practice.
7. You founded Golden Poppy to address the acute national
need to nurture a child’s love of STEM, especially girls. What obstacles are
you finding in your quest?
After 5 years of
rigorous development, we’ve had to adjust our focus time and time again, with
many pivots - to our front facing interface, cloud architecture, and back
facing integrations. And, we’ve had many
late nights debugging -- not knowing how we’d get it to work. However, all our hard work paid off. We are proud
to say that it has led to three-sigma improvements in students across the U.S.
The pilots at Pride Elementary validate our platform's capability to raise the
rate of student achievement to 100% proficient and distinguished on national
standardized tests. With that said, we still need to slay the Goliath of current
policy emphasizing skill-based math and reading over a holistic integrated
science, history and literature approach. So, the saga continues.
8. Your organization is working with a woman who was voted
Kentucky’s Best State Elementary Teacher (2023) to increase performance levels.
How is that going?
Kelli
used our teacher’s guide to teach her 3rd grade students how to make
a plot line of Unicorn Blue’s adventures to find her BFF Caradoodle. She then
had them compare and contrast the plot line in Because of Win Dixie from
a child’s perspective. Kelli’s colleague, Kendall, used Caradoodle Quest to
teach her 4th grade students how to analyze Yosemite’s
topography. She then blended the
learning into our virtual world environment, Unitopia, to identify patterns in
earth’s systems. Using our STEM software, both Kelli and Kendall’s classes saw
significant improvements in achievement across the course of the program. Kendall commented, “after 7 years of teaching
science with traditional resources, this has been the only program that has
shown triple-sigma outcomes: 100% of my
students scored proficient and distinguished on their 2025 national assessment”.
9. How can these results be expanded upon, so that anyone
in America has access to your learning tools?
81% of parents are
concerned with declining test scores and widening achievement gaps. It's
not surprising the top reasons parents choose to
homeschool are the misalignment with one-size-fits all traditional approaches
and lack of purpose. Validated for triple-sigma improvement, Adventures
in Unitopia, provides a purposeful, flexible,
and customizable learning experience for homeschooling families. The
application is Next Gen Science Standard compliant for grades K - 8 so it works
with multiple grade levels. The text-to-speech capability promotes
reading independence and mixed-age collaboration. The interface notifies
students of progress based on real-time analytics of student assessment data.
This empowers students to focus on immediate learning gaps that each
student faces. The student dashboard gives a cumulative summary of all
activities completed making parental verbal check-ins a breeze.
10. How will AI impact classrooms and the learning
experience?
We
know that teachers are a core source of STEM learning, but they lack quality
curriculum and implementation support. We know
1:1 teaching is the best, but it isn’t feasible in the classroom because
1:1 pathways, assessment and feedback are over burdensome to the teacher. We
fix this. We intentionally built Unicorn Blue School to identify gaps in
learning and bridge those gaps with personalized learning pathways so teachers
can spend more meaningful 1:1 time with their kids. Our AI environment augments
cognition: the mental process of learning, thinking, and understanding and
notifies students of progress. Real-time diagnostics give teachers
individualized gap analysis with data-driven recommendations. Our
evidence-based AI software helps students reach triple sigma gains in STEM and
have fun doing it.
About The Author: Carrol
Titus, president of Golden Poppy Inc., is a wife, mother of three and former
Fortune 50 tech executive with $2B of product shipped worldwide. Titus,
who taught herself to code, is a big advocate for encouraging girls to study
STEM and to pursue careers in technology, science, engineering, and math. Golden
Poppy is an American educational multi-media production studio with offices in
Delaware and Silicon Valley. It is an internationally recognized thought
leader for championing the power of play through technology. Golden
Poppy's mission is to utilize mixed-reality learning and social play to drive a
measurable increase in student outcomes. After five years of
rigorous testing of our fused AV/AI software, it has led to three-sigma
improvements in students across the U.S. Golden Poppy was featured in the
news media, including Mamahood, ToyInsider, and GoodAppGuide. For more information,
please see: www.goldenpoppy.net.
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About Brian Feinblum
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For
the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He
formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the
head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the
director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many
first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with
best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen,
Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard,
Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C.
Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.
His
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He
hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and
has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah
Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association,
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Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the
2024 IBPA Book Awards.
His
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and The Washington Post. His first published book was The
Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It
was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.
Born
and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids,
and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.
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