Approximately 1 out of 100 children are born with some sort of Congenital Heart Defect. When my daughter had open heart surgery at 6 months old, I began to wonder how we might explain the scar to her, and how she would explain it to others. I ended up writing a poem that turned into a book. www.ziplinebook.com<p>I share this with HN for 2 reasons:<p>1. Awareness -Nearly twice as many children die from Congenital Heart Defects in the United States each year as from all forms of childhood cancers combined, yet funding for pediatric cancer research is five times higher than funding for CHDs.
Learn more @ http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/cardiac-center/heart-disease-awareness<p>2. Provide an example of how sometimes a personal passion becomes a successful product. My only thought when creating it was my daughter - but now 1000's of kids have used it to understand why they have a scar. And feedback from parents has been very rewarding - please read some on the website. It was a fun project and I learned a lot about POD publishing.<p>Cheers