Read the interview by clicking on the link below:

http://bfkbooks.com/interviews/tina-turbin-on-danny-the-dragon-et-al

Tina Turbin
www.GlutenFreeHelp.info

b.a.

Some people accomplish extraordinary things. When they do, it’s nice to recognize them and applaud them for their accomplishments. Tina Turbin is one of those people. She’s well known by many of you because of her involvement in the celiac community.

Who is Tina Turbin?

Tina is an activist in two main fields: 1) She actively works to make improvements in children’s literacy and education, and 2) She works diligently to raise awareness about celiac disease. She speaks regularly on these topics on national radio shows and writes articles and columns for a wide variety of publications and websites. You can learn more about Tina at http://TinaTurbin.com.

Why the “Congratulations!”?

Tina wrote the award-winning children’s picture book Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy. iSTORYTIME (the iPhone App Developer for Dreamworks) has recently signed to turn the DVD of this book into a children’s book app. This production is unique because its the first of its kind to have sign-language interpretation added for the deaf to assist this under-served population.

Imagination Publishing Group President Alan Wayne said, “I’m pleased to say that this is the first of many apps to be created through iStorytime for the Danny the Dragon series.” Profits from the sales of the Danny the Dragon DVD are donated to the Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf. Learn more about her books, DVD, and what she does to help celiacs at her website.

Congratulations Tina!

Connie Sarros

www.gfbooks.homestead.com

Ivan Nikolov- owner Viitals

Tampa, Fla. October 7, 2009  Viitals owner Ivan Nikolov announced the opening of his new retail storefront, which offers gluten-free healthy choices for those trying to live a healthier lifestyle. The bakery had been strictly wholesale until its grand opening.

This bakery offers gluten-free, hypoallergenic, high in protein, organic ingredients snacks, such as muffins, crackers, cake-bars, loafs, and more.

The Bulgarian bodybuilder, Ivan and NPC Tampa Bay Classic overall winner and his wife started this bakery to service the needs of the growing community with allergies, celiacs and the general public looking for higher protein and nutritious snacks.

The opening of his new storefront, Ivan said, now makes him not only a wholesaler, but also a retail gluten-free cafe.

Ivan states that his products are made in a dedicated gluten-free facility, and they are hypoallergenic, vegetarian or completely vegan, all-natural with many ingredients that are organic. He balances his products by adding protein, making them a complete meal.

Ivan said customers will be served gluten-free bread, cookies, brownies, cakes, VIITALS smoothies with organic fruit and protein, gluten-free sandwiches and gluten-free soups.

For more information about VIITALS Bakery visit:http://www.viitals.com

And their awesome menu they updated this month: http://www.viitals.com/VIITALS-Menu.pdf

Tina Turbin

And a pleasant review it was!  I do hope you’ll visit her site to read the review and leave her a comment.  Click here and scroll down to the blog entry from January 21st 2010.

Thank you!

Tina Turbin

Florida-based organization Allergies and Me is an incredible resource for children and adults with food allergy and intolerance issues.

Therefore I’m very proud to be associated with such a dedicated organization and to have contributed a gluten-free recipe to their website.

I invite you to take a look by clicking on the following links:

Allergies and Me press release

Browny muffins  and more Browny muffins

A short paragraph from their website is excerpted below:

“Tina Turbin is a children’s book author, Danny the Dragon, and provides gluten-free support on her blogsite, www.GlutenFreeHelp.info as well as her main website, www.TinaTurbin.com . Tina has donated one of her favorite gluten free recipes, “Browny Muffins”, and it should become a household favorite. “

Adline Ghani from Malaysia and of the website “Writing by Moonlight” has posted a most wonderful review of my children’s book Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy.

I am so pleased to share this with you and I do hope that you leave a comment at Adline’s beautiful website. Click here to read the review.

Sincerely,

Tina Turbin

I want you to know I get nothing for writing this. This is simply my recent success as a celiac:

I was diagnosed celiac many years ago and despite being off of gluten I still lacked “something.” I was on vitamin B injections to help get more nutrients in my diet and these helped me loads but did not totally handle the occasional changes in my digestion.

I am a children’s author and travel a lot on Tours as well as visits with my books here and there. I need to eat out quite a bit as a result. I have a hard time eating out as many celiacs yet bring my own dressings, bread etc. to help myself the best I can. I still seem to get the cross contamination here and there and the set-backs can be a bit rough. Some days it will take a few days to get the digestion back to normal. This has been going on for years since the diagnosis. As long as I was off of gluten, I am good but not thriving physically as I knew I could and should be. This all changed on my recent book tour up in the New England area.

I also need to mention I take a lot of supplements to try and get the nutrients I felt I lacked. On top of this as a celiac, I am never 100% sure with all the fillers what I am getting. The hunt is always on for a more pure herb, vitamin or mineral without fillers to ease the digestion of the supplements themselves.

While on my Book Tour in New England I walked was into a Whole Foods and looked in the vitamin section, as always. (I had had a rough three previous days due to getting gluten in a salad that the chef said was not gluten, and he knew nothing about gluten after all) I saw this Bio-K product in the refrigerated section which I have seen often yet never took as it had dairy. As a celiac I am like many who do not tolerate the casein or dairy. Today I saw something I had not seen before, Bio-K Plus, DAIRY FREE. Wow, this was interesting and for some reason it was one of those things that sort of jumped out and I ‘knew” there was something right about it. I took one little bottle in my cart and proceeded down the aisle. About 10 minutes later, still shopping I decided to taste the Bio-K and my world has not been the same since!

I took a little sip and my body went “zing!” I mean my stomach felt great, then a short bit later my intestines felt soothed and I felt like this was doing something real good for me and to my body. I went right back to the refrigerated section and grabbed up the rest of what they had. I knew I would need and want this for the remainder of my Book Tour.

Every day I drank a half to a whole little 3.5 ounce of my Bio-K plus Dairy-Free bottle. Every day I felt better and better. I felt like my food was starting to absorb, I felt healthier, I felt like my wonderful additional supplements which I placed in my shakes were rapidly absorbing and going right into my every cell. The Bio-K was healing my small intestinal lining (I know it) and giving me the good intestinal flora I could not maintain as a celiac.

I went back to my home town after the tour. The changes have been phenomenal. No I can not eat gluten, that is a given. Yes, I am stronger; I have gained a couple pounds, actually muscle. This is another issue I must mention. I have not been able to gain muscle. I had lost weight over the years of not being diagnosed properly and lost tremendous muscle tone. I was an avid athlete as a kid and very strong and vibrant and had terrific muscle tone even through three children. When I started later as an adult having symptoms I ended up with a different body. As a woman, so many of us love to be skinny in fact so many strive to be. It was sort of nice to have no weight problem, be tiny and all that but still I could not get a muscle for the life of me.

Since the Bio-K has been a part of my life for now just about 3 months I can honestly say I feel this product can help a celiac heal and get back to normal. I know many celiacs who do not look like pictures of health still. I feel that any adult or child diagnosed should give this a good try. I was amazed and I will keep on using it.

I am now hooked on the taste too!  I believe I have fortified my body so well now and that it has helped me to absorb two other incredible products I could not absorb and they too have helped me gain in health and strength. I feel as good as before I was ever diagnosed with celiac. I NEVER thought I’d ever say that.

Thank you to everyone at Bio K Plus Pharma!

Tina Turbin

Not only does the showcase feature my own personal insight about the book, but it also includes a lovely response towards the book from a well-known celebrity. 

Click here to read the showcase.

Thank you, 

Tina Turbin

In addition to sharing the story of the Fowler family and their journey through all things gluten-free and celiac, I’d like to also announce that all 4 children including Tyler (7 yrs), Parker, Isabell and Peyton (4 yr old triplets), pictured above in their Halloween costumes, were the winners of the October Danny the Dragon contest as part of the Danny the Dragon Gluten-Free “Halloween” cupcake party which I hosted in Florida.

The kids received a Danny the Dragon gift basket loaded with goodies and Danny the Dragon give-aways!

Fowler family story:

Our Celiac Disease Journey started in May of 2007, the triplets were about to turn two and I was questioning the doctor about their small stature. Like most, the belief was that there were 3 of them, so it might just be their size, but at their two year check up we would run more tests if they had not gained any weight.  No surprise, their two year check up came and the girls had failed to put on ANY weight in the 6 month period prior to their checkup.

At that point, we decided to see the Pediatric GI here in St. Pete, FL who immediately thought Celiac or Cystic Fibrosis. He was pretty optimistic and we were sent home wishing for an auto immune disease.  Being a mom with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Auto-immune hepatitis and Thyroid Disease (all auto immune diseases), I only began to worry about what the girls health would look like in the future. Not a promising outlook but the Celiac diagnosis was manageable and that is what we were hoping for.

Halloween 2007 we spent the majority of the day screening at All Childrens Hospital for Celiac and Cycstic Fibrosis. The girls were poked, and encouraged to sweat for their tests, so we walked the halls of All Childrens prompting them with Candy corn.

Long story short, the results were Celiac Disease and after their biopsy’s we learned their small intestines had been effected and they were no longer absorbing the nutrients they needed to grow.  AHHHHHHHHHHH at last a diagnosis, now to change the diet.

My husband and I left the hospital that day and went straight to the health food store in St. Pete and began our Gluten Free lifestyle.  We also have a 7 yr old soon (5 at time of diagnosis) and another son (the 3rd triplet), both who do not have Celiac, so we knew we were in for a big change.

The transition went better than expected and within 6 months the girls blood levels had balanced off and were within normal range.  We finally saw the weight gain, and they were beginning to look like big kids, instead of a year or two younger than they actually were.

The girls are now getting close to being on the growth charts, and are showing signs of growth all around. We still hear that they are small because they were multiples but at least now we know it is not their diets causing it. Overall you can see they are eating more of what they like and just feeling better.

It is a big adjustment to make, but it is manageable and with the right attitude and support you can fine tune the diet so that no child is left out or feels “different” because of what they eat. My girls are sure to ask at every outing, “is it gluten free?”, and that alone puts a smile on my face.  Ms. Fowler

As most of you know, I’m a published children’s author of the award-winning Danny the Dragon series.

I am pleased to share a most wonderful review of the first book in the series entitled: Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy, published in the November edition of the Children’s Bookwatch from the Midwest Book Review (a highly-regarded, premier book review organization since 1976): 

Danny the Dragon “Meets Jimmy”
Tina Turbin, author
Aija Jasuna, illustrator
Imagine Publishing Group
P. O. Box 1304, Dunedin, FL 34697
www.dannythedragon.com
9780980072105, $8.95

“Danny the Dragon ‘Meets Jimmy is a delightful, uplifting book about a boy named Jimmy who finds a very special sea shell on the ocean beach that talks to him. All his family agree it is a very special shell, even though they do not hear it talk. Jimmy is allowed to take the lovely green and white shell home with him, and there the discovery begins. Wonder of wonders, Jimmy finds his incredible shell is home to an even more incredible green dragon named Danny, who crawls out of his shell complete with red tennis shoes and yellow backpack! Last but not least, Danny the Dragon is accompanied by a smaller green creature he introduces as Skipper, his navigator. Jimmy and his family are amazed, but they happily invite Danny and Skipper to stay for supper (vegetable soup!) and to play afterwards and then to spend the night.

Danny tells Jimmy he and Skipper can shrink to crawl back inside the shell if they are sprayed with water, so they sleep beside Jimmy’s bed in their shell. Most wonderful of all, Danny tells Jimmy in answer to his question, “Where did you and skipper come from and where have you been in all your travels inside your shell?” “I will tell you some other time. For now it is bedtime. Goodnight- pleasant dreams.” So clearly there will be a sequel or maybe several to this charming tale. Page -full colored illustrations and brief story paragraphs make this totally kid friendly book even more so. Many healthy ideas are interwoven in the story, for example all the children help clear up the table and wash the dishes after dinner without being asked by their parents. “Danny the Dragon ‘Meets Jimmy’” has definite attraction and value for children age 4-8, all of whom will undoubtedly beg for the sequel and more tales of Danny the Dragon.