Friday, April 22, 2011

Friday Flashback: The Easter Adventure

In fifth grade, my class was assigned a creative spring project and one of the options for the project was to write and illustrate a book, and read it aloud to the first graders at my school.

Write a book!

FOR HOMEWORK!!

And read it to my very first audience!

By age eleven, I was pretty darned positive I would grow up to be an author, so naturally I was pumped by this option. Exuberantly, I pulled out my binder paper and markers and got right to work. I ripped off a storyline from one of my favorite cartoon Easter movies, using my collection of stuffed animals as characters instead of the characters from the cartoon.

(Because if you rip off a storyline that has already been proven to be great, yours is automatically great, too. Didn't you know?)

(Also, I didn't understand the concept of plagiarism until middle school)

My story is long, but here is a sample:

The story is about a group of curious animal kids who are excited by the idea of the Easter Bunny coming and decide to go on an adventure to find the Easter Bunny's workshop.

They fall down a rabbit hole...


Find the workshop (although for some reason they do not recognize the workshop as a workshop. You'd think the painted eggs, candy, toys, and the fact that the head office door has a sign reading: MR. EB would give the Easter Bunny's workshop away, but nope).

They wreak havoc.

And at the very end, they have a story they can pass on for generations of enjoyment.

An EPIC adventure tale, I tell ya.

Gracie had me read this story to her the other day, and she thinks eleven-year-old Marisa was brilliant. It's so very nice having fans. However, in usual Marisa fashion, I then proceeded to give her a lecture on plagiarism and after a couple minutes, her eyes glazed over and her head exploded and she shouted out, "BOING!"

(In our house, BOING! is the girl's mercy word, which they came up with in order to handle situations in which Mommy talks too much about boring, over-their-head subjects)

Sometimes I forget she's only five.

Have a flashback of your own to share? Head on over to Tia's blog and join in the fun!

Happy Easter to all you Easter celebrators out there! And to everyone else - have a great weekend!

xoxo,

4 comments:

Alyssa S. said...

Plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Know what's really sad? You're 11 year old illustrations beat my 30...well you know...year old best attempt at drawing. You are a goddess. Again, the sense of high drama, even at a young age is SOOO you!

Tia Colleen said...

I'm not going to lie, I lol'd at this. I would have wanted to be best friends with 11 year old Marisa.

Meeling said...

Too cute!! I get such a kick out of reading your stories and seeing the drawings from when you were a kid.

How fun to be able to share them with your own kids now!!

I love the "boing" word...think I need to come up with a word for me to say when my hubby starts talking about work too much...LOL!

Happy Easter!

Unknown said...

BOING! I'll have to remember that. :-)

I'm with AlyGatr - Your illustrations at 11 are so much better than anything I could ever create now. And cute story. ;-)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...