Sunday, May 14, 2006

Sarah's missing book . . . found

At lunch a week or so ago, I mentioned a great new story that Sarah had written called "The Magic Tooth." This story was special because it was completely conceived, written, and illustrated by Sarah, with absolutely no help from either Lynda or myself.

I thought that Sarah had given it to her next door neighbor friend, and I lamented that I had not taken the chance to scan it before it was donated to others.

And then, today, I found it lying on the floor near the hallway. I don't know how it got there--either Grace pulled it out of some bag it had been hiding in for weeks or it was just released from the Phantom Zone. In any case, as I am wont to do, I present Sarah's newest, bestest book ever . . .


The Magic Tooth


[Please pay attention to the unusual pagination of Sarah's book. She has decided to eschew the traditional Western cultural norm of reading left-to-right, and has instead decided to mimic the Farsi, Iranian method of right-to-left sequencing. Is it a comment upon President Bush's wrongheaded approach towards bringing Iran into dialogue with the United States? I think so.]
"I lost a tooth." [The tooth is saying "wiggle" to indicate its loosedness. The other photo, in a clever foreshadowing, shows that this is, in fact, a magic tooth. Stay tuned to see how.]
"My mommy says I need to put it in my tooth book." [The illustration is of the aforementioned tooth book. It had red spots on the cover.]


"That night the tooth fairy came to my house." [The house, though hard to see due to its monochromatic yellow color resembles a Cape Cod two-story number. The tooth fairy--as Sarah conceives her--makes her first appearance in the main illustration on the page.]
"The next day when she woke up, she did not see her tooth." [The tooth has vanished from under the pillow with a magical POOF. The protagonist of the story is sad that her tooth is gone, as evidenced by the tears streaming down her face.]


"But I thought you had money, says Mom." [The protagonist thinks of the potential financial windfall, with a pensive Hmmm and a smile. Her crying self, though illustrated again--as reinforcement of her former state of being?--is now a distant memory.]
"She looked in her room. Money! she said." [Six coins of indeterminate value are illustrated. Jackpot!]


"But the tooth fairy did not know that the tooth was magic." [The tooth fairy has a perplexed look on her face while she stands next to her table.]
"But she was happy." [Meaning that the protagonist is happy, not the tooth fairy. We know from the previous page that the tooth fairy, lacking vital information, is well, her emotional state is not described, but her illustrated visage suggests that she is not exactly happy. The protagonist, however, is demonstratibly happy--which we know due to the provided text and the illustration of the happy face.]


"And the little girl likes it too." [What, exactly she likes is unclear here. Presumably the bankroll of six coins the tooth fairy gave for the tooth. I wonder what she would have paid if she had known the tooth had magical properties.]
"That night she was watching from the window to see the tooth fairy." [The protagonist has broken out what appears to be an astronomical-grade telescope to spy the tooth fairy. Perhaps her parents are astronomers and they are residing on a mountainside in Hawaii, away from city lights?]


"The tooth fairy did not come." [The crying girl is lying across her bed, illustrated from above.]
"The next day she went to school." [We see numerous toys that the girl plays with at school. The school itself resembles J.R.R. Tolkien's illustrations for Melkor's mountainous prison of Angband. Trust me, it's true.]



"And she did not stop thinking about the tooth." [You can see an illustration of her brain dreaming about the tooth. Sarah has chosen to zoom inside the head, a la David Fincher, to really make the thought process come alive. That's drama!]
"And she lived happily ever after." [The girl's happy family is grouped in this final picture. We don't have any supporting evidence to show that the parents are astronomers, but the mountainous aspect of the school might be seen as corroborating evidence. I'll leave that up to you.]

1 comment:

lulu said...

Stevie got to Level 5 in Blasterball yesterday. His book, which chronicles his feat, is being published.