Tea and Kate

Reid and his friend Jack have been writing a series of comic books about a dynamic duo–Bob and Bob. They got the idea to advertise the series by putting up notices around school (picture little kid scrawl announcing “CominG sOon” and hard-to-decipher drawings of stick figures in capes fighting off a monster who looks like a four-armed ball of cotton candy). The school’s prize-winning custodian, Mr. Joe, took the time to make sense of one of these announcement and said he wanted to buy a copy.

Before we knew it, Reid and Jack were meeting with the principal, agreeing to donate proceeds to a local bird sanctuary their wonderful teacher Ms. O had introduced them to in an owl unit, and (with some help from Tim) reproducing their books. They have now released two issues with copies going to all classrooms at their school and many teachers generously donating money to their cause. One saintly teacher (I tell you, the generosity of the people who work at the kids’ school really is astounding) said she’d only buy a copy of the book if the “authors” promised to join her for lunch one day. She then donated something like $15 for the first issue (Reid’s not real sharp on that detail–I think mention of lunch with Ms. Nielsen had him distracted–but he insists the financial contributioin was “a TON”).

The cover for the third issue just recently left our coffee table and made it into Reid’s backpack to pass off to Jack. Sustaining interest in writing a whole book, let alone co-authoring, can be a tenuous process at age 8, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed for issue three. In the meantime, here’s book two. I dare you to try the maze.