New Blank Books

The girls are delighted by the new blank books, colored pencils, and crayons that they received for Christmas from their aunt, uncle, and cousin.  Today they sat down together to write their own chapter books.

MADELEINE: Julia.  This is gonna be SO great.  This book is gonna be called "No, No, No."
JULIA: (silence)
MADELEINE: (reading aloud to herself what she's written) "No, no, no."  Julia?  How do you spell "Made From Madeleine?"
JULIA: M-A-D-E
MADELEINE: No! No!  Julia, "MADE FROM Madeleine."
ME: Honey, "M-A-D-E" is how you spell "made."  It just also happens to be the first letters of your name.
MADELEINE: Oh!

As I stood by the garbage sharpening some of Julia's colored pencils for her, I overheard this:

MADELEINE: Julia?  Why am I writing a book where the Mom is SMOKING and the little kid is saying "No, Mommy, No"??

Oh.  My.  God.

This is just disturbing on so many levels.  The mom smiling in contentment while she exposes her daughter to second-hand smoke?  The fact that the daughter has blue hair and a blue nose, probably because her mother was smoking when the daughter was in utero?  THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF THIS PAGE?  Madeleine.  I repeat.  Oh.  My.  God.


And speaking of God, here's how Julia dedicated her work-in-progress:

For God.

THE ICE PRINSSES.


Luckily, Madeleine's book does not seem to be following any sort of thematic plot.  After the smoking mother page, Madeleine drew a Christmas tree with gifts underneath and made me dictate this to her: "On Christmas I ran over to the tree.  I found Pictionary."  This amount of text was too much to fit around her illustration; however, Madeleine staunchly REFUSED to carry over any text onto the next blank page.  Apparently 30 pages of blank paper were too precious to waste in any way, and she simply HAD to fit the entire amount of words on this one particular page.  Therefore, she was forced to get a little creative with the placement of the words, so in reality, it reads more like: "On Christmas I ran to over the I found tree Pictionary."  But we all know what she means, right??

The next page was a Madeleine classic.  A Madeleine book just wouldn't be a Madeleine book without an all-black page, am I right??:

"HUH WHERE IS EVERYBODY"


Julia, meanwhile, is very hard at work on her book about Ashley Omada, a young girl living with her aunt, uncle, and cousin in the 1800s, who so very desperately wants to meet the Ice Princess.  To make this book as authentic as possible, Julia is even decorating the back cover with a description of the book.  Or, as she put it, looking up and beaming proudly, "Mom?  I'm writing a BLURB!"

Julia's blurb


I cannot wait to read each kid's 30 pages in their entirety.  Stay tuned!