Scott and Janine Fitzgerald, owners of Fitzgerald’s Bicycles in Victor, ID are launching a campaign to promote the healthy lifestyle of cycling in a children’s book. Fitzgerald’s is the most positive and welcoming bike shop I have ever been in, and it stems from the hearts of the owners. Their mission is to promote cycling in as many ways as they can, and this is the latest addition to that goal.
The Fitzgeralds have won recognition for their work, including the annual Clay Mankin award from distributor QBP in 2012, being the founders of the Fat Bike Summit, and running a local Go by Bike – School Challenge which awards students for choosing to ride to school. Being a small bike shop in rural Idaho, the accomplishments are already impressive, and now they are looking to add another.
B is for Bicycle is a book with the end goal of developing a cycling lifestyle for children. They credit the idea to looking for such books when they had their son, and finding almost nothing. Being the activists they are, they decided to do something about it, and launch a Kickstarter to get it done. Click more to learn about the campaign…
From the campaign:
We want more kids to not just ride bikes, we want them to develop a cycling lifestyle.
- In three decades, childhood obesity rates have tripled in the United States.
- Conservative estimates show that kids between the ages of 2 and 5 average over 2 hours of screen time daily.
- In the last 10 years, cycling participation of children has dropped 42.9%
After running a successful bicycle shop for 12 years, we have seen time and time again the positive impacts cycling can have on people individually as well as to communities as a whole. Now, we’re ready to do more to grow cycling participation, and we feel it starts with the kids.
Furthering their mission, one of the options in the Kickstarter is to purchase 4 books, but have them sent to the libraries of your choice. The book will be hardcover and glossy paged with a smythe sewn binding to insure that it will last. They have already built the first four pages with an illustrator, and have created characters for the book, based on dogs that were part of their family in the past.
More than just creating a book, it appears they are investing a piece of themselves and their personalities in the creation. Check out their Kickstarter project here.
