AboutUs

Brain Child Press, Inc. is a privately held corporation based in Little Rock, Arkansas. We are an independent publisher of children's nonfiction picture books, related teaching materials, and educational games.

Dr. Peggy Sissel-Phelan founded the company in 2005 to respond to the crises of childhood obesity, poor health, and low literacy in the U.S., and the need for easy-to-read books on topics essential to the development of the whole child.

Dr. Sissel-Phelan received her Doctorate from The Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University, and holds a Masters degree in Education from Michigan State University. She completed her Bachelors degree in Communications at the University of Iowa.

She has over 25 years of experience as a classroom and community educator, professor, researcher, author, advocate, and consultant. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Kellogg Fellowship, is the author of four scholarly texts, and has provided expertise to dozens of organizations at the local, state, and national level.

To download her complete Curriculum Vitae click here

Our mission is to develop child and family-friend books and materials that help create healthy individuals and communities.

At Brain Child Press, we consider this to be helping children reach their cognitive potential, promoting their physical health and emotional well-being, teaching under-standing and respect for others, creating awareness of the environment, the world, and their place within it, and encour-aging involvement in their communities.

Our focus is on developing kid and family friendly resources for use by professionals, teachers, program coordin-ators, parents and others in their efforts to create healthy, literate, actively engaged children, families, and communities.

In 2001 a nonprofit organization called AR Well Child READs! was founded in Arkansas by Chad Rodgers, M.D., FAAP and Peggy Sissel-Phelan, Ed.D. as an effort to promote pediatric literacy inter- vention programs in the state. Arkansas ranks among the lowest in the nation in literacy acquisition, educational attainment, income level and health status.

The aim was to disseminate the Reach Out and Reach Program to every doctor's office and health clinic, and to develop and promote similar programs for WIC clinics and human ser-vice programs that serve low-income families.

The idea of Brain Child Books grew out of the awareness of the need for easy-to-read picture books about nutrition, health, and development that would both educate children and families and provide them with a stimulating literacy exper-ience. Dr. Sissel-Phelan's review of available books in print resulted in almost no books in this area that fit the criteria she deemed necessary for optimal education and primary prevention.

Thus, Brain Child Books, and its parent company, Brain Child Press was born.