Is ABC Trace and Say Woke?

Company Overview

ABC Trace and Say is the flagship title and publishing brand of Karen Fernandez, an award-winning children’s author and early-literacy specialist based in Southern California. Fernandez brings more than thirty years of experience to the work: she has taught kindergarten through third grade, served as a Reading Specialist and Reading Recovery Teacher, holds a master’s degree in education and a Reading Specialist credential, and homeschooled her own children — and she continues to practice what she teaches, currently serving as Reading Specialist at Coastal Sage Montessori in Carlsbad, California. Her catalog now includes three books: ABC Trace & Say, the multisensory alphabet book that started it all; Nurturing Little Readers, a parent’s guide to building a literacy-rich environment from birth to age five with ten research-based tips; and Claire & Whiskers, a picture book about a little girl whose family helps a rescued kitten feel at home. The ABC Trace & Say method is genuinely distinctive: textured, traceable letters let children see, hear, and physically feel how each letter is formed, teaching sounds before letter names in the way reading research favors. The book earned a Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Award, and the brand’s site offers free downloadable literacy resources alongside the shop.

The whole enterprise radiates the ethos of the Emilie Buchwald quote Fernandez features on her homepage — “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” This is education by family, not by app.

ESG & Sustainability

There is no ESG reporting, sustainability office, or corporate-governance theater at ABC Trace and Say — it is a one-teacher publishing brand that prints books and sells them to families, teachers, and tutors. The authentic version of responsibility here is obvious and personal: a career educator spending three decades in classrooms and then packaging what actually works into durable physical books meant to be used, reused, and handed down. Physical books themselves are the anti-trope of ed-tech waste — no subscription, no screen time requirement, no data collection on your child. Nothing in the brand’s materials gestures toward climate scoring or supply-chain signaling. Buyers looking for a small operation whose product is its mission will find that here in the plainest possible form.

A note on credentials and where to buy: the Mom’s Choice Awards Gold recognition is independent third-party validation, and the MCA store listing makes the book available beyond the author’s own site, alongside Amazon and standard retail channels. The free downloadable resources on Fernandez’s site — literacy printables for parents and teachers — are genuinely free, no email-wall gimmicks, which fits the brand’s teacher ethos.

DEI Programs

ABC Trace and Say has no DEI department, no equity statements, and no identity-based programming. The brand’s inclusivity is literacy itself: a method designed so that every kind of learner — including tactile and struggling readers the school system often leaves behind — can crack the code of written English. Fernandez’s Reading Recovery background is instructive, since that training is about rescuing the lowest-performing first graders through intensive one-on-one intervention, which is the opposite of symbolic gestures. There are no hiring quotas because there is essentially one expert and her family-scale operation. In a children’s-publishing industry saturated with ideological messaging, these books stay focused on letter sounds, word formation, and parents reading with kids. That restraint is exactly why many families are choosing them.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

None. ABC Trace and Say sponsors no Pride campaigns, publishes no identity-themed content, and participates in no HRC Corporate Equality Index process. The brand’s public identity is built entirely around early literacy, family reading routines, and wholesome storytelling — a girl and her kitten, alphabet letters you can trace with a fingertip. In a children’s market where even board books now arrive with activist framing, the absence here is notable and, for many buyers, decisive. Parents can order the full catalog without vetting each title for embedded messaging, because the subject matter is letters, sounds, pets, and bedtime. That is the entire footprint.

Political Activity

Karen Fernandez and ABC Trace and Say show no political donations, PAC activity, lobbying, or partisan commentary anywhere in the public record. Her interviews and profiles — including local San Diego-area features — stick to reading instruction, homeschooling, animals, and books. The brand has taken no position on education politics even though, as a homeschool-adjacent literacy resource, it sits adjacent to hot-button debates; the materials simply serve whichever family shows up, whether public-school parents supplementing at home or full-time homeschoolers. This neutrality is a genuine asset in the current climate. No red flags for values-based shoppers on either side of the aisle — just a teacher selling teaching materials.

Consumer Impact

For parents and grandparents who want screen-free, research-grounded literacy tools from someone who has actually taught thirty years of children to read, ABC Trace and Say is about as safe and sound a purchase as children’s publishing offers. The Mom’s Choice Gold recognition, the multisensory method, and the free downloadable resources make it practical; the total absence of ideological content makes it trustworthy. Homeschooling families in particular — a demographic the major publishers largely ignore or antagonize — are the natural audience, and Fernandez, a homeschooling mother herself, writes for them without apology. Buy the alphabet book for ages two to six, the parent guide for yourself, and the picture book for story time. Every dollar goes to a working teacher-author instead of a corporate conglomerate, which is precisely the kind of transaction Buy Woke Free exists to encourage.