Quick! What's a Llama look like?

At 826 Valencia in San Francisco this morning, I had a great time making the world's fastest illustrations for a book entitled "The Crazy Llama Sisters and the Creepy Dragon," created by the first-graders at Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School.

At 826 Valencia books get written, illustrated, and published in a matter of a couple of hours. No kidding! Plus, they've got a Pirate supply store. So you can be prepared for anything.

How do you get twenty first-graders to write a story in such a short time, you ask? Well, the main tool for this is the Story Skeleton, which means you have a small set of building blocks that you use to construct your story. These are: Characters, Descriptions, Setting, Problem, Solution, and a few other such items. Once you fill in what these things are, you can get the basics of a story going. I plan to use Story Skeletons in my cartooning classes this summer as well - for example, to create a superhero you need a Superpower, Weakness, Mortal Enemy, Sidekick, and Problem (usually the Evil Plot of the Mortal Enemy). See?

I'm looking forward to the next book already! There's something really special about helping a group of kids make something that didn't exist before and that is all theirs.