Resuming the Book-Writing

Now that we are back home, Julia has wasted no time getting back to work on her historical fiction book, "Lydia Tells the Truth."

I must admit that I had forgotten the name of this book, which was in the works BEFORE we left on vacation.  Last week, Julia had dutifully listed the names of all the books in her next American Girl-esque series, and like the complete nincompoop that I am, I totally forgot which book comes after the completed "Meet Lydia." 

ME: (starting to type this blog post) Julia?  What's the name of the book you're working on?
JULIA: Mooom!  You know what it's called!
ME: Uh...can you remind me?
JULIA: Mom.  "Lydia Tells the Truth."  Remember??

Uh, yes, I did remember.  You told me a week ago, and I had absolutely no reason to forget the name of book two of your series amongst the other thoughts in my brain.

At any rate, Julia was hard at work on this book today, and after completing chapter two, she was ready for a read-aloud.

JULIA: Mommy, Madeleine, want me to read you what I wrote so far?
ME: Uh, sure.

Julia began reading, and I was especially struck by this passage:

"When Lydia got to Father's store, she forgot all about Caroline.  Lydia stopped dead in her tracks and lictened intently to two English girl's haveing a conversation."

ME: Wow, Julia, you're turning into quite an author.
JULIA: (beaming, continuing her reading) "Eliza, well, maybe Mr. Jolliman's daughter knows how much penny's this cost's," said one girl.  "I'll ask," said the other girl.  "Acuse me.  How much does this lace cost?"  "Five pennys.  I'm Lydia Jolliman," said Lydia.  "Thank you.  I'm Eliza Smithens, and this is my sister Mary, Lydia," said Eliza.  "Pleasure to meet you, Mary," said Lydia.  "You two, Lydia," said Mary softly.  "Mother said I could get anything for winter!" said Lydia.  Eliza's eyes grew big.  "My mother did too!"

At this point, Madeleine came running to me as I hung wet laundry on the railing in the hall.

MADELEINE: Mommy.  Julia is SUCH an arthur.  And...Caillou is an arthur, too, because he wrote a book.

I definitely agree.  Julia has most definitely blossomed as an arthur.  Not only is her writing more sophisticated, but she is starting to master the art of punctuation and spelling.  Maybe instead of a waitress or a lifeguard or a historian, Julia should aspire to become a published arthur when she grows up!

Madeleine didn't want to be left behind her sister's success, so she sat down to write a book as well.  And, by "writing a book," she apparently meant drawing pictures and verbalizing the plot behind each picture. 

Here is what she has accomplished so far:

Now, despite the fact that there are words on this page, the characters are not actually talking about the things that appear in their speech bubbles.  Clearly, Madeleine was just writing words she knows how to spell.  "No," "on," "Mom," "you."  (Although the "YOU" coming out of the skeletal mouth of the brown-haired girl makes this picture especially spine-tingling.) 

According to Madeleine, here's what's actually going on in the story.

MADELEINE: So, Julia and Liza are going up to bed, and Julia is more, like, EXCITED, because tomorrow is her birthday, but she doesn't know that she gets sick tomorrow from her mom yet, cause she's too excited.  When she gets sick, her mouth is, just, like, STRAIGHT, because she doesn't FEEL very good, and, like, she's got these SPOTS all over her, cause her mom did when SHE was sick, and she got the same cold as her mom, and it was called MOLLUSCUM.  And she got it all over her body.  They had to skip her birthday onto a different day cause she was sick.

So I guess the "Julia," complete with backwards "J," at the top of the page, is the title of the book, given that one of the main characters is named Julia??

Here's pg. 2:

We haven't seen this character so far in the book.  Here's how she ties in (or doesn't):

MADELEINE: So, her name is Lily, and she loves reading, but she doesn't have very many books, like, LOOK how many books she has.  That's not very much, right?  Um, she's just standing around, waiting, until someone knocks on the door.  Lily's mom comes over and Lily's mom is named Miss Lavondo, and she helps teach them how to cheerlead cause she was a cheerleader when she was a little girl.

Yeah.  So I'm still unclear as to the connection between the Julia/Liza plot and Lily the cheerleader wanna-be.  Maybe as Madeleine put together more pages of her book, things will tie together more securely.  For now, I'm still putting my bets on Julia as future arthur, but Madeleine is not off to a bad start, herself!