Assignment: I had to take 30 minutes to sit in a public place and watch and listen to my environment without talking to anyone or having no access to any electronics and then jot down my experience. Then, I had to take those ideas and try to come up with a story for an audience ranging from three to seven-year-olds. I then had to take seven minutes to create a 10-12 panel storyboard. I also need to try and come up with a plot, explain the story through sketches, and try and find a moral to the story.
Info from my notes: The people around me were talking of the costumes that they were thinking about wearing for Halloween and favorite books.
Plot: A young boy who loves to read is sucked inside a magically book and learns to befriend its unique inhabitants.
Moral: Kindness is important and it can affect the lives of everyone around you.
Story: The beginning of the story will have a sickly boy name William, who could not sleep, wandering the library of his family’s mansion. Since the boy is always sick, his only escape is reading, so whenever he can, he engulfs himself in a book. While wander the library that night, he runs across a large book that is flipped open and radiating light. As he nears, he sees words lifts off its pages, which then surround him and pull him through a portal into the book. Once he begins to adventure the world, he sees all kinds of interesting creatures; knights, dragons, fairies, giants, tiny giraffes and other animals, and flowers as tall as trees and trees as tall as a blade of grass. He then befriends a fairy named Lily and her faithful friend, a tiny giraffe named Geoffrey. As the story progresses, the fairy gets William to hide from the creatures that evoke fear in all of the inhabitants of the land. There, he saw Vlad the Vampire King, leading his servants: witches, werewolves, skeletons, ghosts, jack-o-lantern men, and vampire bats. William asked Lily and Geoffrey why Vlad the Vampire King and his minions were feared, and she said they were terrifying everyone. William ended up discovering that Vlad and his minions were actually really kind and only wanted to become friends with the inhabitants of the strange world. When William explained this, Vlad and his minions befriended William, Lily, and Geoffrey, and things soon changed for the better. Before going home, William promised them that he would visit again real soon. The End.
So, this was challenging for me, I have a hard time coming up with ideas for children’s books. But it was fun anyway. The challenge is good though, and this is a good way to come up with creative ideas.