Liz just wrote her first award-winning story. It’s called ‘Mr. Carrot’s Exciting Day.’
The award was a cookbook given by her Year 5 (that’s Grade 4 in Canada) teacher.
And so Liz has been in the kitchen quite a bit these days, with her apron and smile and mango smoothies and other big rockin’ plans for dinner.
Mr. Carrot is a reporter and the story is about Carrot’s first day on the job. His editor is Boss Squash. He, Boss Squash, is as large as an elephant and his office is as large as a football field.
(This is how it was before newspaper cutbacks. Now, we know, there are no more editors and offices have been merged with washrooms.)
This all may have come about because Daily Dad was in Liz’s class recently, talking about the media and my own first day on the job. See https://thomasfroese.com/a-message-for-liz-just-be-it/
Faithful reader will recall that first day with notepad and pen and camera when I was to report, of all things, how a local chemist had discovered how to make water burn. See https://thomasfroese.com/2004/beautiful-dreamers/
Mr. Carrot has a different sort of first day. It’s one of simply getting over his nervousness and finding news that is not boring.
At the point of meeting Boss Squash, he is very nervous that he feels like he will faint. ‘But he doesn’t faint because this is not something that a grown carrot would do.’
This, of course, is very fine writing. It’s so good that I gave the entire story to my Creative Writing students.
‘This is an award-winning story,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a close look at it.’ I asked them to find the most brilliant line in the piece. They did. And then found another.
(For the record, outside of very small punctuation help from Mom, Liz conceived and wrote ‘Mr. Carrot’s Exciting Day’ completely on her own.)
Check it out in tomorrow’s Daily Dad, when it’s posted in full.
Congratulations again, Liz.