At Pachyderm Tales, we believe that a young writer’s journey deserves to be noticed along the way. Every story written, every idea explored and every little step towards becoming a more confident writer matters. This is why the Young Author Program has its own way of celebrating progress — Jumbo Milestones.

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The Young Author Program is built around four simple and powerful ideas — Write, Create, Make and Discover. Writing gives children a space to express themselves and develop their craft. Creating allows their imagination to take shape through stories, characters and ideas. Making takes those ideas further into books, projects and other creative outcomes. Discovering opens the world of books, authors, genres, people, places, cultures and ideas around them.

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These four experiences keep returning throughout the programme, while the experiences within them keep evolving. A young learner may discover characters, stories or poetry at different points in their journey, each time bringing a little more experience, imagination and confidence to the work.

Across a year, our young authors receive 50+ creative invitations. Each invitation opens a different door into writing and creativity. Sometimes it may begin with a book or an author. Sometimes with an object, a place, a memory, a question or an unexpected idea. It may lead to a story, a poem, a character, a creative project, a book or simply a new way of looking at the world.

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The beauty of this approach is that the programme can grow alongside the learner. A five-year-old beginning to play with words and imagination has a very different creative world from a fifteen-year-old developing a distinctive writing voice, and a young adult at twenty-one may be ready to explore independent writing and authorship in yet another way. The same four pillars travel with them, while the depth of their engagement keeps changing.

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At every Jumbo Milestone, we gather a glimpse of that journey. The young author receives a beautifully designed Jumbo Milestone Certificate, a curated collection of their work and an opportunity to take their writing a little further through Pachyderm Tales. This could be a publication, an anthology contribution, a reading, a showcase, a presentation, a conference or another young-author experience that allows their work to meet an audience.

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The portfolio becomes especially precious over time. A child who stays with the programme for several years will slowly build a personal archive of stories, poems, ideas and creative work. One day, they can look back at their earliest pieces and see something wonderful — the evidence of their own growth.

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A Jumbo Milestone, therefore, is a pause in the journey. It is a moment to celebrate what has been created and to look forward to what comes next. Every six months brings a new title, a new chapter and another opportunity to grow as a young author.

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The journey can continue for as long as the learner wishes, because there are always more stories to write, more worlds to create, more ideas to make and more of the world to discover.

Write. Create. Make. Discover.

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Every six months, another Jumbo Chapter.