Ada Makes (A Story for Early Readers)

The first book I read to G was Dr. Seuss’s THE CAT IN THE HAT. He was three days old.

Fast forward three years and we’re reading fun chapter books like WILEY AND GRAMPA’S CREATURE FEATURES, FRANNY K. STEIN: MAD SCIENTIST, and DINKIN DINGS. At four, we started reading books by Neil Gaiman (CORALINE & THE GRAVEYARD BOOK), JK Rowling (the complete HARRY POTTER series), and even Charles Dickens (OLIVER TWIST, abridged for children). These days we are working our way through JRR Tolkien (THE HOBBIT, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy).

He absolutely loves hearing these stories, but he showed very little interest in reading books himself.

Until one day in April when he just picked up the Biscuit books from his mini-library and started reading them. Since then, he’s been reading at least one book a day.

There is only one problem. We are running out of interesting books to read. The more he read, the pickier he got. I blame it on the wonderful ELEPHANT AND PIGGIE books by Mo Willems and Tedd Arnold’s FLY GUY series. These books showed him that interesting stories can be told, not just in the books Mommy reads to him, but in books he can read himself!

So I started writing and doodling stories for him, stories that I know interest him. Our main character is named Ada Makes, an incredibly imaginative young maker. The character is inspired by G, who (at this point in his life, at least) wants to be a maker. Ada has an imaginary friend named Max, who is her assistant maker.

G has been reading these stories directly from my doodles, but I’ve been meaning to clean them up and bind them for him. Tonight, I finally finished the first one (although I still need to print and bind). It is called ADA MAKES A FANTASTIC NEW FRIEND.