And if they take out paper and staples....

The Author, hard at work
...there's going to be a story written.

There is a reason the stapler was invented. It must have been invented by a parent whose child loved to write.  It must have been thought up by someone whose child loved nothing more than to fold a few sheets of paper in half to make a book.  Some child's mom or dad got smart and figured out an ingenious way to hold those folded papers together.  At our house, we seem to go through paper and staples like other people go through peanut butter and jelly.  Someone always has something to write about.  Oh, how I love it when they get out the paper and staples!

Pausing, thinking...

Seeing paper and staples on my kitchen table, of course, means that someone in my house is also pulling out his imagination.  There have been many paper-and-staples books created here over the years.  Many well-meant attempts at writing (and cute, nonetheless!) have been sent to the recycling bin, buried deep beneath a mound of crushed cardboard, newspaper and cereal boxes, so that aspiring writers won't have their feelings hurt.  I have accepted that I cannot possibly save everything my children have written or drawn.  I just can't.  Some great books have also been sent "to Daddy's office" so that "Daddy's friends can read them".  And a few of the really choice ones like Diggers, Big Cats, All About Fire Trucks, I'm a General in the Army, Who Is Darth Vader?, and All the Planets, are mixed in with many years' worth of treasured baby fingerpaintings, restaurant tablemats etched with first scrawled uppercase letters, preschool handprint artwork of every kind, stick family drawings from Kindergarten, letters to Santa, first writings, and report cards.  I keep all of them in large Rubbermaids, one for each Little Nguyen, that we rummage through once or twice a year.  And going through them is like wading through both a museum of abstract artwork and a warehouse of textbooks on writing development.  Amazing, priceless masterpieces and one-copy bestsellers are stored there.  It's heartbreaking every single time I visit. 

Back at it again...



Working on his illustrations
As I was finishing up the dishes after dinner one night last week, I realized that it was suddenly quiet in the room, which, you know if  you are a parent, either spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E or means someone has fallen asleep. The thump-thump-thump-thump-boom of busy feet on the stairs had come to a halt and all I could hear was the scritch-scratch-scritch-pause-scratch of a fat Ticonderoga on the kitchen table. There he was, sitting in a cloud of concentration, with his supplies spread out on the "desk" before him. He was busy at work on a masterpiece of epic proportion. Star Wars? I wondered.  It's got to be Star Wars.

 

Tom and Jerry by Thomas
But it wasn't Star Wars.  It was -- gasp!-- our newest obsession....TOM & JERRY!  What a pleasant surprise!  The Second Little Nguyen wrote a charming little retelling of some of his favorite Tom & Jerry cartoon scenes.  You know, where Jerry steals the cheese or falls in the water, or where Tom gets hit over the head with a blunt object or trips over something Jerry has left as a booby trap.  And it was complete with stick figure Toms and Jerrys.  Ladies and gentleman, this newest paperback in our collection is a keeper!  It may not win a Caldecott or Newberry Medal, but it gets Mom's Blue Ribbon for great sight word recall, super awesome temporary spelling, capitals and punctuation (in almost all the right places)!  I totally love it.



"Here is Jerry.  Oh no  Jerry stole the chees."



"Jerry fell in the water."
The Second Little Nguyen promptly scheduled a reading of his most recent publication, and there were three audience members and two dogs who got to hear it.  It was fabulous!   So now you know, if you see paper and staples lying on the kitchen table at your house...



And that's The End...

...some little writer will be adding a new book to your collection!

Happy Reading!