About the Author

The author, Marlene Greenwood, (nee Whalley) attended Leeds University from 1981-1984, where she gained an honours degree in Mathematics and the History and Philosophy of Science. She then went on to gain a PGCE in 1985 and taught Mathematics to pupils aged 11-18 up to A level Pure and Applied in secondary schools in Ilkley and Harrogate. 

After leaving teaching in 1996, Marlene began writing and illustrating phonic reading material for her family. Her first attempts were 48 stories about two bears called Tig and Ted.

When the National Literacy Strategy was published in 1998, Marlene realised that her stories fitted the phonic progression of this document. She had coincidentally anticipated the guidelines to teachers. She had a store of phonic material now likely to be in demand.

However, the Tig and Ted characters were proving to be very difficult to illustrate, and it was when two pet kittens came into the family in June 1998, that the inspiration needed to write and illustrate the Jelly and Bean books was complete.

The first sets of books were developed over the next few years with the help of staff and pupils at Harrogate based Saltergate Infant School and Beckwithshaw Primary School. The first Jelly and Bean books were published from home in March 2000 and since then they have enjoyed tremendous success.

The books were commercially printed for the first time in 2005, and Jelly and Bean Ltd was set up in January 2006.

In January 2007 the company moved to Follifoot Ridge Business Park, and it was a luxury to have a warehouse and an office in the same building.

The books were the first phonically decodable material available to schools in England and fitted the bill for the Rose Review in 2006.

However, they were not compatible with the phonic progression of the government's new phonic programme Letters and Sounds launched in September 2007.

Some of the vowel spellings in the More Vowels Series of books, written for children in Year 2, now had to be taught in the Reception Year.

The first attempt to reconcile these differences was a revision of the More Vowels Series. Each story was shortened and written with simpler vocabulary, so that it was accessible to younger children. The series was renamed the English Vowels Series and the books were published at the end of 2008.

However, this revision was not enough. The books were still too difficult for children in the Reception Year and Year 1. Shorter simpler stories containing the vowel digraphs to be taught in Phonic Phase 3 of Letters and Sounds were needed.

The Follifoot Farm Series 1 was written with this in mind and published early in 2010. The stories in this series use vocabulary containing the vowel digraphs 'ar, er, or, ow, ou' in words like 'farm, water, corn, cow, loud'.

Follifoot Farm Series 2 was published later the same year. Each book in this series of 6 books is part of the same story. The cliffhanger ending on the last page of each book encourages children to read the next one. The two new cat characters, Rumple and Pippin, are the latest additions to Marlene's real life family.

In February 2011 Marlene decided not to reprint all the fourteen books of the Consonants, Blends and Clusters Series because they delayed the introduction of crucial vowel digraphs.  This led to only five of them being revised and reprinted as the Combining Consonants Series.

Since then the focus has been on providing reading material which uses words containing easier vowel digraphs. The Early Vowel Combinations Series was published in February 2011. The word content and the number of sentences per page were kept to a minimum so that children were not overwhelmed by the amount of text on a page.

Follifoot Farm Series 3 was published in the autumn of 2011. These six books, again each one part of the same story, provide children with words containing a magic 'e' or split digraph 'a-e, i-e, o-e' in words like 'cave, white, stone' all within an exciting meaningful story.

Early in 2012 the AB Starter Pack was launched. This pack consists of the first 3 books in the A Series and the B Series, together with a new book 4A, 'cats in the mud', and a new book 4B, 'a pet rabbit'. The addition of these two books means that the series covers the 19 letters of Phonic Phase 2 used in very simple words which all children understand.

March 2012