Mommy's Work Plane

Started: 2012-10-04 21:00:04

Submitted: 2012-10-04 21:24:38

Visibility: World-readable

In which the intrepid narrator finally scans his second children's book, "Mommy's Work Plane"

Back in March, Kiesa flew to Washington, DC for a conference titled "computers in libraries", which ought to leave very little doubt as to what it's really about (or why she would be interested in it). She left Calvin and I to fend for ourselves (give or take; for the most part we did ok), but on the last night, as she was flying home, Calvin got fussy and refused to go to bed and insisted I draw him a story (along the lines of My First Long-Haul Flight) titled "Mommy's Work Plane" in which Mommy flies to Washington, DC and meets Thomas the Tank Engine at her library conference. This story featured crude stick-figure drawings in crayon, but unlike my earlier effort, I did not actually write copy at the time. I posted the panels on the walls of Calvin's room, and when Calvin wanted me to read the story I'd make up a slight variation of the story every time, using the pictures I'd drawn earlier.

A couple of months ago, Kiesa bought an iPad 2 for her and Calvin, and Calvin has been amusing himself with various games and other apps. Yesterday evening, in preparation for our trip to Walla Walla tomorrow, Kiesa checked out various children's ebooks, and during storytime last night, I read a couple of the books to Calvin, which he enjoyed. It then occurred to me that I could read "My First Long-Haul Flight", since the book was in fact already online in PDF format (which proved easily downloadable on the iPad). Calvin was impressed, but then he asked for "Mommy's Work Plane" (since the two stories are closely associated). I did not have it scanned and ready to read, so I read the paper copy, and told Calvin I'd have the electronic copy ready the next day.

Today, during lunch, I finally wrote down the copy (in which we learned that the various engines from The Railway Series that make an appearance in the story -- at Calvin's specific request -- spoke at the conference; James gave a well-received talk titled "Anthropomorphizing industrial machinery in modern children's literature"; I had to look up how to spell "anthropomorphizing", which probably explains why I'm not normally an author of children's books) and scanned the pages, but I didn't like the quality I got from the sheet-feed scanner in the office and found that I was more familiar with the flatbed scanner at home. After Calvin went to bed tonight, I scanned the pages, and now I present them to you in their full glory:

For your Calvin's downloading pleasure, here's Mommy's Work Plane.