I made this somewhat off the cuff (for context, it’s hastily formatted in Google Slides), but I figured posting it sooner and then possibly modifying it would be better than holding on to it in the futile hope that I would have time to edit it later.
As a result, I would be very grateful for feedback, and would be more than happy to modify this in response to any specific suggestions. I can also imagine adding some more “episodes” (pairs of pages, really). And the illustrations can also be easily modified.
I can send anyone who wants it a pdf version of this.
This is obviously in “picture book” style, but my hope is that it’s not exclusively interesting to children.
For convenience, the text of the story below:
“Black bird,” said the blue bird. “Why are you flying so far with that piece of bread? I understand if you’re full, but there are birds in our tree who are hungry. Don’t you love them?”
“Blue bird,” answered the black bird. “I do love them. But there are more birds in the maple tree, and they are hungrier. And they’re smaller birds, too, so a small piece of bread will mean more to them than to a bird in our tree.”
***
“Black bird!” squawked the blue bird. “What are you doing over there pecking at this oak sprout! Don’t you see the man with an axe coming for our tree?”
“Blue bird,” answered the black bird. “I see that man with an axe, and he seems terrible… …But I also see all our friends swarming and pecking at him. I don’t know if he’ll get to our tree, but I’m not sure that I would help much by flying over there and pecking at him, too. I do know that this sprout here could grow into a giant oak, displace our home tree, and block our sun. Soon it will be too difficult to stop it from growing too large, so I need to peck at it now.”
***
“Black bird,” cooed the blue bird. “You’re not so bad.”
“Thank you, blue bird,” said the black bird, smiling.
“Although I still can’t understand why you won’t eat beetles. You can’t think they’re as important as birds.”
“Well,” said the black bird. “I can’t be certain they’re important, but they seem to have interesting lives, and I can eat bread, so it’s not that hard to not eat beetles, and...”
“Shush,” said the blue bird. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”
[Creative writing contest] Blue bird and black bird
This is a submission to the creative writing contest. See notes at the bottom.
Notes
I made this somewhat off the cuff (for context, it’s hastily formatted in Google Slides), but I figured posting it sooner and then possibly modifying it would be better than holding on to it in the futile hope that I would have time to edit it later.
As a result, I would be very grateful for feedback, and would be more than happy to modify this in response to any specific suggestions. I can also imagine adding some more “episodes” (pairs of pages, really). And the illustrations can also be easily modified.
I can send anyone who wants it a pdf version of this.
This is obviously in “picture book” style, but my hope is that it’s not exclusively interesting to children.
For convenience, the text of the story below:
Thanks for reading, and for encouraging fiction!