Tag Archives: children

We’ll Come Back To Wake You Up

graveyard

PHOTO PROMPT – © J Hardy Carroll

“Where are we, Sarah?” Five-year-old Emily sat in the grass with her best friend from kindergarten.

“The old graveyard,” said Sarah. “It’s where you find dead people.”

Emily’s mouth gaped. “You mean like my pet turtle that Mommy buried in the backyard?”

“I mean like Great-Grandma who was so old she didn’t know her own name anymore.”

“She’s under here?” Emily touched the flat stone.

“They’ve been dead lots longer,” said Sarah.

“Are we supposed to be here?” Emily looked to see if Mommy was watching.

“No, but it’s okay. We’ll sneak back tonight and wake one of them up.”

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Film Review of “Sketch” (2024)

sketch

Promotional poster for the film “Sketch” (2024)

My ten-year-old granddaughter and I just got back from watching the 2024 movie Sketch, which just had its general release to U.S. theaters yesterday.

Spoiler Alert! This is a brand new film, so if you don’t want to know more, stop here. Well, actually, you should know up front that the PG rating pushes right up against PG-13 for violence and horror. It is actually a children’s horror movie but without the blood, guts, and killing. However, it’s pretty intense.

The story surrounds a Dad Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) and his two kids Amber (Dianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence). The mother has died (no details) and the Dad’s response is to pretty much bypass the anguish and grief and try to push the family beyond it.

That doesn’t work out so well for Amber. She’s always liked to draw, but now, her creations take on a much darker tone including depicting a monster attack on a bullying schoolmate (Kalon Cox as Bowman Lynch). This comes to the attention of a school counselor who actually encourages Amber to draw her darker feelings rather than acting on them (such has having her monsters suck out Bowman’s eyeballs).

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In the Future, Bulls Have Goofy Colored Horns

classroom

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

“We can only stay a few minutes. Give me your impressions about this room,” said Professor Clark.

Twelve-year-old Jimmy was disappointed. He thought going fifty-four years into the future would be about flying cars and Moon bases.

“Well, Sir, I guess this is some kind of school. The games and paints look familiar.”

He kept scanning the classroom. “I have no idea about WiFi or PW. The Labels poster is probably not talking about soup. What the heck is a Terf and why does the bull have goofy colored horns?”

“I forgot,” said Clark. “In 2020, everyone wears masks. Here.”

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Changing Reality

lost shoe

PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

“I’m not going to lose her again. I can’t. She’s not even four years old.”

Every time Ron remembered losing her in the parking lot because she ran away, every time he found one solitary shoe behind his car, he died inside.

“Not this time.” He hadn’t used his gift to manipulate reality since he was a teenager. It was too dangerous. But for her, he would.

“Ha, ha. Fooled you, Grandpa.” She peeked around the corner of his car. Thirty minutes ago, a panel van with the four human traffickers had a fatal collision with a semi on I-84.

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The Tree Where The Elves Live

tree

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

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“It’s just a fake door, Jillian. Elves don’t really live in the tree.” Ten-year-old Sam strode towards the trunk.

“Don’t,” the eight-year-old girl cried. “If they get mad, they’ll cast a spell on us.” She ran to her brother and grabbed his arm.

He shook her off. “Watch this.” Sam gripped the knob and pulled away the little door exposing only bark. “See?”

“You’re no fun,” Jill pouted.

“Let’s go get an ice cream,” Sam offered.

After the kids marched off, the knothole popped open. Two elves poked their heads out of the window. Pip asked, “Are they gone yet?”

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Frank and the Plot of the Hypnotizing Slime, Chapter 1

Frank

© James Pyles

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This is a story my seven-year-old granddaughter and I started last Halloween. Like most children her age, her interests move from one topic to the next, and it was ignored for a long time. When she showed an interest in it again, we worked to finish it. I added the ending page last night.

Now she wants to publish it. I’m not aware of any publisher who would be immediately interested, so the story now appears here on my blog. It’s all in fun and I hope you enjoy it. If you think your children and grandchildren would like it, by all means please share.

Oh, and my granddaughter wants to write a sequel.

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was a spider named Frank. He was evil but there was a good spider named Lilly. And a team that was evil too teamed up with Frank. Frank and the team of evils had an idea. They will hypnotize Lilly with hypnotizing slime. But Lilly had a team of spiders too. They were good like Lilly. But Frank and the team didn’t know. Frank and the team also didn’t know that Lilly had a force field but the force field could only be up for 10 minutes. Frank is working on an evil weapon but it’s really hard to make. But he is distracted because he is falling in love with Lilly.

But wait. How could he be falling in love with Lilly? To answer that question, we have to visit their first encounter, a random meeting a little while ago when Frank ran out of flies and went to Lilly’s web to ask for some spares.

“Um, excuse me,” Frank said. “I see your web is full of flies and mine just ran out. Could I bother you to spare me a few?”

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When My Daddy Found Me

J Hardy Carroll

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

She dreamed of this all her life and now, she’d found it. A burned out brick building next to a concrete bridge. Emily had searched photographic archives from all over the world before discovering the object of her nightmares in rural Ohio. She had to push the overgrown foliage aside just to get a look at it. She didn’t know how she remembered, but she put her foot on the edge of one of the lower windows. Then she heard a newborn baby cry. Her mother had abandoned her there. Her “Daddy” was the firefighter who found and adopted her.

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Ken in a Barbie World

load

PHOTO PROMPT © Na’ama Yehuda

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Okay, fine. I’m a “Ken” in a Barbie world. How did that happen? Darn Rochelle and her writing prompts, anyway.

“It’s not Rochelle, Grandpa. It’s me.”

“Dani, have you flipped? You can’t leave me like this.”

“I turn Grandpa into a Ken doll.”

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Where Are the Families in Science Fiction?

lost in spaceNot long ago, I read a blog post by Caroline Furlong called Why Science Fiction Lacks Mothers and Fathers – and Why This Trend Needs to Change. At the time, I didn’t notice it was first published in July of 2018, but that doesn’t really matter.

Caroline lamented the abysmal lack of supportive parental characters, Moms in particular, in modern works of science fiction. She narrowed down the reason for this from her perspective here:

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My Grandchildren Are Storytellers

baby

© James Pyles

It was a hard day, in a hard week, in a hard nine months or more.

After dinner, while heating water for tea, I walked into my granddaughter’s bedroom. We’ve reserved one of our two spare bedrooms for her, mainly because when she was smaller and stayed with us, she’d take afternoon naps. It still has her bed, a lot of her toys, plus the walls are decorated with her drawings and paintings.

She’s four-and-a-half, and as I was wandering around, I remembered something about her I’ll tell you about in a bit.

My grandson is almost eleven. Ever since he was about five or six, we have played “the game.” It started out in a really primitive form. He made up some situation and what his character was going to do to my character, but being an adult, I’d always find a way to top him.

As he got older, the stories became more sophisticated. For about two-and-a-half years, I turned some of those role playing games into an ongoing story for him published on this blog. I adapted the very first story I wrote for him, and it became one of my early published short stories in the Magical Reality fantasy anthology from Pixie Forest Publishing.

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