Susan Senator

As many of you know, I am married to Ned Batchelder, who is a software architect. He joined a small start-up in January, called Tabblo, and has been working around the clock (except when I yell at him) to get their product launched. On Monday, the “beta” version of Tabblo was opened to the public, so anyone can go try it out. Tabblo is a photo-sharing bit of software, maybe a little similar to a blogging program, but much higher quality. With Tabblo, you can just pull in any of your digital photos, pick from dozens of lay-outs, including addding text, and create and then buy a “tabblo,” a printed-out poster or collage of your own on beautiful paper.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Tabblo provides an incredibly easy and beautiful way to use your photos to tell a story! When I tried it, I realized immediately that this product provides the perfect medium for Nat Books, or Crisis Stories, which are my own version of personalized Social Stories that I have created in the past to help Nat through any new event or experience. We have Nat Books about going to Thanksgiving, Christmas Dinner, Moving, Baby Brothers, Going to Sleep, Going to Disneyworld, Visitng Friends, Making Friends.

Many of my readers have asked me to do a book that explains how to make Nat Books/Crisis Stories so that they can make them for their own kids. I may do that someday, but right now I can offer two things: 1) Go to Tabblo and learn how to use this simple, beautiful technology to create and then purchase your own Crisis Tabblo for your child ($10 for the entire thing on poster-quality stock!) or 2) Have me do it for you: email me your relevant digital photos and your problem and I will construct a Crisis Tabblo for you and you or I can order it from Tabblo.

If I get a lot of interest from this, I will persuade my publisher to make this happen in book form.

Here is an example of a Crisis Tabblo that I threw together in twenty minutes, to show Nat for my sister-in-law’s upcoming wedding. I can order it and then hang it up in Nat’s room, where it will look wonderful, and he can study it and prepare himself for this big upcoming event.