Dr Kathryn Macfarlane
Founder & Director
Kathryn is passionate about language and language development for young children. She is a bilingual English/French speaker, is the mother of three bilingual young men, and has spent 30 years in education promoting language learning outcomes.
Kathryn has worked as a language teacher, a curriculum advisor, and an education consultant in Australia, France, and New Zealand. Her tertiary studies include a Bachelor of Education (Primary and Secondary), a Master’s in English Lexicology with a research-based thesis focussing on bilingual parenting strategies, a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (Linguistique Générale) with a research-based thesis on bilingual education, and a PhD (Applied Linguistics) evaluating a professional learning program which focussed on assisting schools to introduce transformational change in primary years’ foreign language programs, with a focus on developing oral language competency and confidence. Kathryn's thesis was awarded the joint ALAA/ALTAANZ/ ACTA Penny McKay Memorial Award in 2020 for its innovative contribution to Languages education for school-aged children.
Kathryn is available to partner with schools in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and western Europe to enhance their Languages program, either as an independent consultant or through Creatives in Schools programs as an independent author/publisher.
Illustrator and Animator
Kateryna is the animation artist who brings to life many of our eBook illustrations. She has a Bachelor's degree in architecture and art, and her Master's thesis focussed on the restoration of famous, historical botanical gardens. She opened an art studio for children with a colleague, where students currently receive free or tuition-based education depending on their financial capabilities. She also worked as an architect for several years and opened an architecture school for children with her colleague, for which she developed her own class curriculum. A few years ago, she decided to pursue her childhood dream of becoming an animation artist. She completed a 2D and 3D animation course and is continuing to study while working as an animator and illustrator.
Kateryna is a digital nomad. She works and supports her studio and school (which continue to function in Kyiv) while she travels with her partner around the world, living like the locals while studying the cultural traits of the countries she visits. In her free time, she studies foreign languages, draws pictures, is learning to play the piano and takes videos of her travels.
Voice Artist (Australian English)
Dani is the bright voice of our Australian English female narrations. As a book lover from all the way back when she was too tiny to do the reading herself, it is perhaps inevitable that Dani ended up working with words.
Dani enjoyed a career in commercial radio, where she was often the station’s only female and therefore frequently called upon to voice all the ads that needed a ‘lady’s touch’.
Finding she quite liked and was rather good at the voicing side of things, Dani made the leap into full time voiceover work where she much prefers the dress code of her home studio.
Voice Artist (French)
Leyla is the playful voice behind our French eBook versions. She was brought up in a multicultural family and is a bilingual voice over artist (French and English) who is passionate about singing, music and acting. Leyla started singing before she could even talk—as soon as it was possible, she used her voice to read stories out loud using different intonations, create characters and scenarios, and to imitate funny scenes.
After completing secondary school, Leyla studied music and singing, then languages (English, French and Spanish) before working as an English Teacher for Professional Purposes. Leyla has also created and developed a project to introduce English to children in more than 20 crèches in Paris, a project that enables her to express her creativity and use her voice and language skills in many different ways.
She loves to lend her voice to children's projects and is very happy to contribute to our innovative language learning project!
Voice Artist and Translator (Spanish)
Marta is the voice and language expert behind our Spanish eBook versions. She is also a writer herself, with two published novels. She is a proud mother to two wonderful boys, with whom she lives in the countryside with their dogs, cats and a chicken.
Author
John is the author of the Sascha Martin series, featuring the wild, funny, deliciously silly adventures of an eight-year old boy whose genius knows no responsibility. John has also published two books of limericks based on the works of Edward Lear. He has at last understood that his lapses into rhythmic, rhyming language are not a condition, but a vocation. It’s only taken him a lifetime to work that out. After careers as a primary teacher, public servant, mail deliverer, salesperson, webmaster and animal wrangler, he is now focusing on the thing he does by default: writing poetic narratives that make him laugh. He very much hopes that others will laugh with him. We certainly did, and we're sure you will too. We couldn't be more delighted that he's agreed to share his series with Reading's a Breeze!.