Jenny Many is the brainchild of entrepreneur and business executive Steve Hill, a father of two from Hampshire. The series is extremely close to Steve’s heart because it began in the very heart of his home.
When Steve’s youngest son was at primary school, he was diagnosed with dyslexia. A highly imaginative and eloquent child, like many dyslexic children he struggled with the mechanics of reading and was left frustrated and shut out by the traditional teaching methods and relative lack of support within the education system.
Concerned about the impact dyslexia was having on his son and having talked to him about these negative feelings, Steve was keen to ensure his son had access to stories and storytelling. He decided that evening bedtime story sessions, rather than an upsetting exercise wrangling over phonics, should become instead an opportunity to nurture creativity and imagination, with father and son devising situations, scenarios and eventually storylines and populating them with characters they developed together. And so, Jenny Many and her friends were born.
Over the years, Steve’s children have grown and flourished, but so has his passion to help other young children access stories through Jenny Many. Adding relatable and omni-current themes of kindness, teamwork and embracing uniqueness, Steve worked his stories into two full-length adventure stories. He then enlisted the skills of fantastic actor Gemma Whelan (The Crown, Upstart Crow, Game of Thrones) to read them aloud, in order that children could download audio versions. The first book in the series Jenny Many Strikes Gold has now been published using OpenDyslexic, a dyslexia-friendly font with uniquely weighted letter shapes, slanting and wider letter spacing designed to help the dyslexic reader.
Steve continues to learn from and be inspired by those with all types of neurodiversity. He juggles his passion and vision for the growing Jenny Many brand, with his demanding role as CCO at auticon, a social enterprise which supports autistic adults into IT roles and is backed by flag-flying and proud dyslexic Sir Richard Branson.