A Story Written to Introduce My Daughter to Her 1st Grade Class

Once upon a time there was a girl named Spitfire who loved books.  She read morning, noon, and night.  She read mythology at the breakfast table, stories about magic on the drive to school, and long sagas involving princesses, horses, and dragons late into the night.  Sometimes she even sprinkled letters into her cereal by accident and ate them.  When she finished a story, she would open her magical box of costumes, and coax her brother to act out the stories.  He became a valiant prince or guard, she a heroic queen or wicked witch.  They’d sneak to the kitchen where their mother, a poor wench of a kitchen maid, was toiling over boiling pots, and snatch her away from her servitude to join their adventures.

Now, Spitfire loved stories not just because they were magical and came alive for her, but also because they taught her about the world, about things she might never see or experience on her own.  After all, she was just a young girl who lived in a small house with her smallish family in a cozy neighborhood in the city.  There was a lot to see there, but it was just a fraction of what was out in the big wide world, and all the history of the globe before us.  What could she know about the life of a frontier family settling the Great Plains or a French orphan gamboling around the streets of Paris?  How could she imagine the feats of the young god struggling to become a hero in the shadow of Mount Olympus, or the wishes granted by a magical genie who pops out of an ancient lamp?  Through books, she could learn all about the vast and endless world, and know all the most interesting characters.  She could even learn how to solve problems.

The heroes of the girl’s stories, and sometimes even the villains, became her best friends.  She loved them infinitely.  And she also loved her real friends with every tiny chamber of her heart.  One day, Spitfire’s friend Isabelle had a problem and couldn’t figure out what to do.  She was terribly sad.  Spitfire listened to Isabelle (which is sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend) and really wanted to help her so she would be happy again.  Neither of them knew the answer.  Spitfire thought and thought, but she had never tackled a problem like this before, and problem solving takes practice.  She was starting to despair, too, when a glimmer of a thought struck her—she suddenly remembered when a character in one of her books (a princess, no less) had a similar problem, and remembered exactly what the princess’s friends had done to help her.  In fact, she and her brother had acted out that very scene while careening over the beds and leaping over the old dog in their very own house.  And she had a wonderful idea.

Instead of explaining to Isabelle how to solve her problem, Spitfire invited her friend to delve into the magical box of costumes.  They got dressed in the most splendid dresses they could find, donned their most comfortable shoes—for adventures called for rugged footwear—and armed themselves with any tools they might need for their saga, including a trusty plastic sword for each (you never know when a princess and her maid might encounter a villain—and though, of course, it’s best to solve problems with your words, it’s also best to be prepared—those villains are awfully hard to convince).  Then Spitfire helped Isabelle act out the solution to her problem, and they had a wild adventure, to boot.  Isabelle was so relieved to find a way to solve her problem, and Spitfire was proud to have been able to help.

When Isabelle went home, Spitfire settled into her favorite reading spot with a new book and got so engrossed in the story she couldn’t put it down, even when her mom called her to come to dinner.  They finally had to come to a compromise—that Spitfire could come to dinner dressed in full armor, no matter how much she clanked at the table, and she could go back to her story when they were through.

 Poster for the song "The Princess Who Saved Herself"

by Jonathan Coulton (a favorite song for our daily school commute)