December 27, 2000
Photo phone book makes connection
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Ringing with enthusiasm, Penny Campo-Pierce has visions of a best seller dancing in her head this holiday season.
With her first printing of My Photo Phone Book in mid-November, Campo-Pierce hopes that an idea she dreamed up when her daughter was a preschooler will bear fruit. When her daughter, Elizabeth, now 14, was just two years old, Campo-Pierce made her a phone book so she could call grandma or other family members on her own. She pasted one picture per page and wrote in the corresponding phone number. This way, long before her daughter could read she could look up phone numbers and keep in touch with relatives and friends.
While this prototype of the My Photo Phone Book is tattered and yellowed with age now, mushed from years spent crammed on a shelf, it still gets some use.
"Elizabeth will still pull it out," Campo-Pierce said. "When she was little, she would just talk to the pictures, like if I said Grandma was at work and she couldn't call her, she would talk to Grandma's picture."
Campo-Pierce dusted off her idea this fall when she went shopping for her husband's niece, who is expecting a baby. Her niece has admired the photo phone book before and Campo-Pierce went in search of one.
"I figured I would just go to the store and get her one," Campo-Pierce said. "But there wasn't one there, I was surprised no one had thought of the idea and I decided to make one."
She designed the pages, chose a more durable paper that her first one made of typing paper and printed up 250 copies. She also chose a spiral binding so the book would lay flat, picking a bright red color to attract a child's attention.
Then Campo-Pierce began making the rounds of area book and children's stores, pitching her idea. Most stores were receptive to putting a few copies on the shelves and seeing how they did. Campo-Pierce did not stop there - she cheerfully talks about her idea to people everywhere she goes.
"According to my daughter, I accost everyone I see," laughed Campo-Pierce, who also works part-time at the Old Mission Library. "It was so exciting to see it the first time. You think something is a fun idea but when other people also think it's a fun idea it is even more exciting."
Between retail sales and sales to friends, half of her books have sold within the first three weeks. Campo-Pierce is giving more than a dozen as gifts to family and friends this Christmas, bundled with a disposable camera, double-sided tape and a fun pencil.
She is already planning a few changes to My Photo Phone Book for her next printing, including adding space for the owner's address and phone number.
Campo-Pierce believes this idea is also ready made for people with Alzheimer's disease, developmental disabilities or visual impairments. She believes the phone book will be one way for these people to be more independent. She has discussed her idea with adult educators at Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District, the Cognitive Disorders Clinic at Munson Medical Center and with caregiver's groups.
"I've had so many people so excited about this," she noted. "I'm really pleased with the response I've gotten."