Childhood stories by an aspiring writer

June 11, 2024 — In previous posts, I wrote about the relationship between childhood interests and careers, a topic I find intriguing. My interest in writing started from a very young age. And my writer parents were early role models. My father even “published” my first little picture book before I’d even started kindergarten. He titled it A Jack-O. He cut out parts of pictures and some words I’d drawn in crayon, added to it a bit, and turned them into a little book in a binder. As I’ve blogged before, I still remember the thrill that gave me and clearly, I’ve cherished it, as I still have the booklet to this day. 

I have a folder full of other very early writings, many from the first grade (ages 6-7). There are two small notebooks that I filled with stories. I called one of them (or maybe my teacher titled it) The Adventures of the Mice Family. The other is The Story of a Clown. The mice family adventure was one my teacher typed in a little booklet for me to illustrate. The plot includes an enemy cat, the mice finding gold and becoming rich, then poor again, befriending a nice boy, a mouse becoming sick and surviving and other mice getting caught by the cat and dying. There’s never a dull moment.

A construction paper book that I must have done for school is titled Fairy Tales and includes three short stories. One I found especially cute was about a little dog on Halloween. As it peeked out the front window of their home, he saw children dressed in costumes: witches, ghosts, goblins and a monkey. He was only afraid of the monkey and people wondered why. Now, to quote from the original:

“Sombody* came up and asked him why he was scared of a cute monkey and not witches goblins or ghosts. He told him very quietly so the person reading this story wouldn’t here* what it was. The man he told it to promised he wouldn’t tell anyone. After awhile* everybody in the whole world knew that he was allergic to monkeys. THEND*

I think that was pretty clever! Except that I titled that story The Monkey Allergic Dog (kind of a spoiler!).

Another, called Miss Mop Head, was about a woman whose hair was mop-like. She enjoyed taking hand-stand lessons. One day, a dog snuck into her house and made a muddy mess. You can probably see where this is going. The story didn’t get into this but I hope she had some really good shampoo! 

The influence that really good teachers have on children can’t be overstated. In the back of the Fairy Tales book, my teacher wrote, “EXCELLENT. Gail you are a great writer. Keep up the good work.”

Another school assignment was dubbed The Inch Worm and the Ruler. The basic plot was that an inch worm was measuring marigolds all day long (like in the song) and its back was tired. He was measuring outside a classroom window when he spotted the children using a ruler to measure. 

“…what he saw was fantastic it was like a miricle* it was a ruler.” 

The inch worm went to the store to buy a ruler, which he used to measure from then on. He got so good with the ruler and it was so fun that he joined school, where they did a lot of measuring. The inch worm was happy. The teacher wrote, “Gail your interest in writing shows in your beautiful stories. Excellent.” I can only imagine how happy these positive comments would have made me and encouraged me with my writing. Parents and other caregivers, of course, can give the same kind of feedback to their children.

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Sumera (unsure of the spelling) at Beverly Elementary School, Beverly Hills, Michigan, typed our stories in little stapled booklets made of colored paper for us to illustrate. I just noticed the cover of one says First Grade Publishing Co. I still have quite a few, not sure if it’s all of them or not: A Busy Time For Santa Claus, My Goldfish, The Mother Rabbit, The Squirrel’s Rainy Day, The Frog. I’m noticing a bit of a theme here. 

I didn’t seem too well versed on punctuation, much of it is missing. One story just has the question “punctuation?” written across it. I can still remember my third grade teacher, Mr. Smith, trying to get me to remember to dot my Is. He jokingly said something along the lines of “if you don’t dot your Is, I’ll dot your nose.” I loved Mr. Smith, my first male teacher. He was funny, had thick blond hair and thick black-rimmed glasses. I attended third grade at Bel-Pre Elementary School, Silver Spring, Maryland. 

I’ll mention just a couple more of many other stories in my childhood collection.  One is called The Hole Book. I cut a hole in the middle of it and the drawings incorporate the hole. For example, “A hole is a pumpkin” and “A hole is a dounut* I like them with cream inside.” And “A hole is a lady bug climbing up our tree.” Kind of a clever concept for a kiddo. 

Finally, I’ll mention “The Proud Pine Tree.” A solitary pine tree is growing in a patch of oak trees. Because the pine tree has needles rather than leaves, the oaks “teased the pine tree all thrue* summer but when winter came the big trees lost there* leaves but the little pine tree kept it’s* needles and they were as green as summer grass. The big oak trees now know that all kinds of trees are just as good as an oak tree.” 

This seems a good childhood story to end on. I like the idea of respecting differences in this little tale. The big bullying oak trees learned that they didn’t know everything about the pine tree after all. Given time, we often discover that there’s more to each of us than meets the eye and just because someone looks different than us, it’s not okay to tease them. 

* (sic) = spelling and other errors are transcribed as they were in the original

If you haven’t yet had the chance to read How Happy Is a Lark? I hope you will consider checking it out from the library or purchasing a copy. I’ll be at the Chelsea District Library’s Local Author Fair on Thursday, June 14 from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. and I hope to see some of you who live in the vicinity! I think “little me” would be really happy to know she finally published a picture book (for real).