My elementary school used to print and bind books written and illustrated by the students who wanted to participate each year. I'll spare you my illustrations; I am no artiste. My sister and I spent part of this summer with our grandmother and uncle, and she found Grandma's copies of the books we wrote. The four of us had a lot of fun reading them and comparing our (my sister and my) early writing to our writing now. It was especially interesting to see what hasn't changed, although thankfully, those things aren't generally specific to the writing itself. For example, a darkness pervaded my stories even then, which is actually somewhat disturbing, as I was only 9 or 10 when I wrote the first one. In fact, I'm kind of surprised the school published such violent stories, but I'm glad they did, or I probably wouldn't be able to read them now, and thus would never have gained this curious insight into my style of writing. Also, the ending of the second book is decidedly not happy. I don't think good stories have to have happy endings--a good story has a realistic ending that depends entirely on its characters--but it's fascinating that I knew this at 10, and I think it says something about my character as well; I demand honest stories, no matter how grim, and I apparently always have. (I should probably mention that I have a tendency to analyze my self, my characters, and other people and characters to pieces. I don't mind though, because it makes me feel like my psychology degree is not just wasting away on my wall.)
I'll post the first one now and the second (better) one later. Enjoy! And try not to make too much fun of me. I'm happy to say I am nowhere near as exclamation point-happy as I was back then. I marked the page breaks because I couldn't resist showing off my 10-year-old understanding of suspense.
Don't Be Too Curious
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a little pony named Melody. Melody was a very curious little pony. She got into everything!
***
One day Melody was playing outside when, all of a sudden, she heard a voice.
"Hey! Over here!"
Well, knowing Melody, you know what she would do. Melody walked over to a little tree, which is where the noise came from.
***
All of a sudden, a big gray wolf jumped out at her! He grabbed Melody by the tail, and ran to his cave!
Poor Melody! What was she to do? She cried and cried for help, but nobody came.
***
When they got to the wolf's cave, the wolf locked Melody in a cage, and started getting ready for supper.
The wolf got a big black pot, filled it with water, and put it over the fire. When the water was nice and hot, the wolf got a knife and started for Melody.
Melody screamed as loud as she could.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!"
***
Then, when the wolf was ready to pounce on Melody, the cops came rushing in! Melody was saved! The big wolf was arrested, and Melody went home safely with her parents.
Melody learned a big lesson that day. Never be too curious. So Melody lived happily ever after.
THE END
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