Hello all,
The following story just sort of popped into my head while I was walking to work the other day, so I thought I would share it. I apologize for its length, but an entire story popped into its head. I suppose it should be written here.
DISCLAIMER #1 – I am not exactly suggesting this be our story, but their may be elements of it that are helpful to this effort.
DISCLAIMER #2 – The story I outline below is too long for a story that can be read completely to a child in just one night before bedtime. If we like the idea of a story as long as the one below, then dividing it into 3 or 4 chapters would make something that can be read in several nights.
DISCLAIMER #3 – There is quite a bit more text here than we would have in such a book I think. The illustrations should tell some of the story.
DISCLAIMER #4 - I just read Scarlett's post and liked those ideas as well.
DISCLAIMER #5 - I like the science flavor of the time machine idea as well. Like I said, the story below just popped into my head. It was influenced by Laura's daydream idea.
Introduction
Our heroine is playing with friend on a beautiful spring day.
The mother of the friend calls them in to have lunch where they eat a standard carby lunch: sandwich, potato chips, etc.
Later on, our heroine is back at home and not feeling well. At the dinner table, she is asking for the kinds of foods she ate at her friend's house despite feeling unwell; maybe pouting about why they can't have potato chips for supper. This can be presented as a departure from our heroine's normal behavior.
Her archaeologist father is introduced as he takes her up to his study, explains some elements of our paleo-ancestors and how archaeologists tell the difference between these ancestors and agriculturists by their state of health. This is when the father shows her the tooth putting it in her hand. The father tells our heroine that it is time for their nightly activity. They sit on the porch together each evening and watch the fireflies just before she goes to bed. Our heroine happily goes to the front porch with the tooth in her hand. Our heroine is watching the fireflies, thinking about what her father has said about their paleo-ancestors, and has the tooth in her hand.
This is the transition to the past. Suddenly, our heroine realizes that she is in a forest. The only thing that has not changed is the fireflies. She is terrified and is hearing sounds in the forest coming closer and closer.
The sounds turn out to be paleo-children who decide to bring our heroine to their home. Our heroine will seem upset and perhaps say she is lost and needs help. As they are walking to the paleo-village, the children are explaining that they snuck away from the fires to watch the fireflies. The coloring should be dark. Our heroine can not see much of how things are around her.
At the fires of the paleo-camp, the adults are discussing how to get our heroine back to her family (and perhaps remarking that they will need to talk later about their children sneaking off to go look at fireflies
). At this point we introduce an archetypal character. A grandmother enters the discussion. It should be somehow transmitted artistically that she is strong, wise, venerable, warm, and greatly respected though perhaps this is too nuanced for the type of art we will use. This grandmother will also be mysterious in the sense that she seems to understand where our heroine comes from. She tells the paleo-people that our heroine comes from a land too far away to be returned there at the moment and that she has come to them to learn some things. This can be done with a dramatic flourish by having the adults trying to decide what to do when the grandmother's rich voice announces from the darkness of night that no journey across the land can bring our heroine home. Then the grandmother steps into the light of the paleo-camp fires and explains that our heroine will have lessons to learn. This character will be used throughout the rest of the story to add context to our heroine's experiences and answer her questions.
Our heroine goes to sleep in the lodging of a particular paleo-family. The coloring should still be obscuring the amount of detail that our heroine can see around her. When she awakes, she leaves the lodging she is in and sees the village fully revealed in the bright and clear morning light.
Question on the village – What should their lodgings look like?
Time in Paleo-land
I am not at all sure what could happen here nor exactly what elements of paleo-diet and lifestyle that we want to highlight. I have something like this in mind:
Polly will become increasingly involved with her paleo-life throughout the spring into the summer and the fall. She is having various experiences still: description of their diet, playing with the paleo-children and doing their chores with them, talking to adults of various stations, etc. As a theme or at least introduction to paleo-life, our grandmother with her mysterious knowledge tells our heroine that she has something very special – the tooth. They make a pouch for it that our heroine wears around her neck. Then we have our heroine's time in this paleo-epoque; fully welcomed into the paleo-village life.
Transition back to the our heroine's normal life
Our heroine is becoming more and more homesick. She shares this with the grandmother who asks her what she was doing when she found herself in a new place. The grandmother takes our heroine to the place in the forest where our heroine arrived in paleo-land, has her take the tooth from the pouch and hold it in her hand, and watch the fireflies while she thinks about how much she loves her mom and dad.
Note on building up to our heroine's return to her home – Somewhere in the beginning of our heroine's stay, she is worried sick about the time that is passing and where her parents are. The grandmother takes her to a creek in the forest where there is a pool of water and tells our heroine to look into the pool. She sees herself and her father sitting on the porch frozen in time and knows thus that it is okay to stay a bit in these paleo-times.
Back in modern times
Our heroine is now back on the front porch with her father.
What is the context here so that we can present an appropriate lesson? This is a children's book for kids who have parents on a paleo-diet. It is not a kid's job to decide her own diet, so we are not teaching our heroine how to eat a paleo-diet exactly though that is part of it. We are teaching her why to avoid the numerous temptations to eat junk food when not eating at home.
So... We have our heroine speaking with her father on the front porch about how she does not want to eat that foods that she had at her friend's house, but she wants to keep her friend. This could even be a scene where something that our heroine says is a sort of clue to the father that something has clicked for our heroine, and it is curious for the father.
Then we can have some kind of conclusion about how it will be made possible for our heroine to have her friend and keep her diet.
For the adults who will read this book – We could have references for their research so that if the child asks questions about paleo-people then they can try to find some answers.
