The Doll's Storybook

Stories about dolls who live in our world. Although these stories are suitable for children, they should check with their parents before reading and always be careful online. Readers are invited to donate to a charity supporting pediatric cancer treatment and research. Images shown are taken by the author or from a free image website with attribution and appreciation. The author has no connection with Götz Puppenmanufaktur, but gives them credit for the amazing dolls they produce.

Friday, June 12, 2026

Holly and Sam Get New Wheels

"I’m glad you’re here, Pauly," Pippa told her friend as she closed the front door. "I heard Charlotte tell Emil he has a new letter from his friend Holly. Maybe he will tell us what she says."

"Isn’t Holly the friend he was in the doll hospital with?" Pauly asked. "I think you said she uses a wheelchair to get around."

"Yes," Pippa agreed, "and her letters are always interesting."

"I wonder how she makes it up the stairs," Pauly muttered, as they finally reached the top of the stairs.

"We should have Emil ask her," Pippa suggested.

The two little dolls walked into the workroom to find Emil had already opened his letter.

"Why don’t you read Holly's letter out loud," Charlotte told him. "Otherwise everyone will want to read it, and this way it will be faster."

"Yes, please!" Pippa begged him. "I don’t want to wait!"

"Sure," Emil agreed. "We can enjoy it together."

He looked at the letter again and began to read from the beginning.

Dear Emil,

I enjoyed reading about your adventures over the holidays. I decided it was a good time to bring you up to date on what Sam and I have been up to.

(Pauly remembered that Sam was the human girl Holly lives with, and that she uses a wheelchair, too.)

Wheelchair basketball started up again when school began, and Sam and I are both playing it, Sam in the one in the county that is just for real children who use wheelchairs, and I'm in the special program for dolls. It’s a lot of fun.

Sam started singing in the school choir this year. She really enjoys it, and she has made some new friends.

I would sing, too, if I could open my mouth. When she practices her part at home, though, I can hum along. She lets me look at the music with her, so I’m starting to learn how to read the notes. I think Sam has a lovely voice, but I’m sort of a fan, I guess.

Just before school let out for the holidays, the school choir had a concert. Sam's mother brought me to the school auditorium, so I could watch. The next week, the choir went to something called a district-wide concert. All the kids in the choir got to travel in a big school bus.

I should tell you that Sam only lives two blocks from the school, so she can get there on her own using her wheelchair when the weather is nice. They have a special little bus they use to pick up all the children who use wheelchairs, but Sam likes to do it on her own as much as she can, so she only takes the bus when the weather is bad.

For this concert, though, the whole choir rode to the big theater where they were supposed to perform, and Sam got to ride with her friends in the bus! Usually, if she has to go in a regular bus, someone has to lift her out of the wheelchair and carry her into the bus.

Then they have to find a place to store her wheelchair. It’s a really big deal. Sam doesn’t like making other kids wait. The school district just got new a bus with a special door that has a kind of elevator in it, so Sam and other kids who use wheelchairs can ride the bus with their friends. There is another little girl at the school, Sara, who also plays wheelchair basketball. The school needs the bus for her, too, so she can go on field trips with her classmates.

Sam was so excited to get to ride in the big bus with her friends. She took me along, and I was able to watch from backstage. (That’s what they call the area behind curtains at the back of the stage.) From the edges of the curtain, what they call the wings, I could see and hear. I watched them get the stage ready for all the choirs to come on to sing. It was interesting.

When the choir came out on stage, they gave Sam a place in front, so she could see the choir teacher, who was directing them, and so the audience could see her. The other kids who were in front with Sam stood on the floor. The rest of the choir stood on something called risers, sort of like bleachers at the ball field, but without seats, so people just stand on them.

After all the groups sang, we rode home again on the bus. It was so exciting to ride on the bus and watch from backstage. I have to admit that I was so happy and excited, I hummed along, but very quietly. (Many people don’t hear dolls, but some do.)

Well, that’s all the news I have for now. Tell everyone hi from me, and happy New Year, too.

Your friend, Holly

"Wow! Pippa said. "Holly sure gets to do a lot of interesting things."

The dolls all thought about all the things Holly and Sam had done together. They thought about basketball and summer camp and how Holly helped Sam teach other children how to use a wheelchair, so they could see what it was like and got to go to the library and a real restaurant. Holly is a busy doll!

"It’s great when you find something you enjoy," Charlotte told Pauly, because for Charlotte, that was the best part. "Music is wonderful, especially when you can make it yourself. I love to play the violin, but your voice is an instrument you always have with you!"

"It’s really nice to listen to, as well," Emil pointed out. He remembered when he couldn’t hear music at all. That was back when he first met Holly at the doll hospital, when he got his special glasses that let him see and hear almost as well as other dolls.

Holly would probably never be able to get around as well as other dolls, but Emil was really glad she was getting to go places and do so many interesting things.

The dolls noticed Veronika standing in the doorway. She had been listening to Emil read the letter. "You know what I like best?" she asked the others. They waited for her to tell them.

"What I really like best," she said, when she had climbed up onto the daybed with the others, "is that Sam got to be in the front, not just so she could see the teacher, although that’s important, but because everyone can see her, and watch her sing. Some human people think other people don’t want to see a child in a wheelchair. They think it will make them sad that she has to be in a wheelchair. I think it's helps people to see a child in a wheelchair doing normal kid things."

"Maybe," Emil said, "that’s like how I was afraid you wouldn’t want me if you knew I needed special glasses to see and hear, and I need help if something happens at night while my special glasses are charging, but it’s great living here!"

"Having you in our family doesn’t make me sad," Pippa told him.

"When you know a doll who needs to do some things differently," Veronika pointed out, "and you see them all the time, you start to see the person inside, and it doesn’t make you sad."

"We’re all different in some way," Charlotte pointed out. "If someone uses a wheelchair, it’s just another way to be different."

"Wouldn’t it be boring," Veronika said, "if we were all the same kind of doll."

"What I like best," Pippa told them, "is that Sam has a friend who uses a wheelchair, too. It’s great that we’re all different, but it’s nice when you have a friend who is different the same way you are, the way Pauly is little, like me."

"That reminds me," Pauly said. "I have a question for Holly. When you write back, ask her how she gets up the stairs at home."

That’s a good question, Pauly!

Cast--

Pippa: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

Pauly: Götz Little Kidz Paul

Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia

Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris

Holly: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni

Regular school bus photo: https://blog.ptvgroup.com/en/city-and-mobility/optimize-school-bus-routes/

School bus: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/fifth-grader-lives-her-dream-of-riding-the-bus-to-school

Backstage photo: Orange County Register

Photo of choir: Peace Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, SD. (Note: Child using wheelchair is only using it temporarily.) Link to page with photo.

You can follow The Doll's Storybook here.

Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.

Do you like our stories? Some of them are available in print:

The stories in Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Being Little, Besties and Distraction.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Our book of poems, Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook includes Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

Available now from BookBaby and other booksellers: Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook. The Stories in Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Talking About Boys, Changes, Shhhhh!, Staying After and Money in a Jar.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, because the vendor gets a cut. The Writer's author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find our books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your library to get them for you.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Friday, June 5, 2026

Too Tiny To See

“What are you looking at, Billy?” Emil asked when he found his brother and best friend in the living room, looking through a magnifying (MAG-nih-fy-ing) glass at what appeared to be a blank piece of paper. Emil didn’t see any writing on it. What was Billy looking at?

“Mandy told me that everything is made up of atoms (AH-tums),” Billy replied. “She said they were very small. I thought maybe I could use the magnifying glass to see the atoms that make up this paper, because they are supposed to be very tiny. A magnifying glass makes tiny things easier to see.”

As Emil climbed up on the stool next to Billy, Billy moved aside so the other doll could have a look. “It does look different,” Emil said, “but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see. It’s still all one thing.”

“Let’s go ask Mandy,” Billy suggested. They both knew it was a Mandy question. “Maybe we aren’t using the magnifying glass right.”

The boys took the magnifying glass and paper, and climbed up the stairs to look for Mandy in the workroom, where they thought she would be, playing with her yarn.

Mandy looked up when the boys came in. She was knitting, which was not a surprise. She was wearing her earbuds plugged into a tablet, apparently listening to a music or a podcast about knitting or science. “Hi!” she said when they appeared in the doorway.

“Hi!” both boys replied in unison.

“We have a Mandy question,” Billy said, after the boys had climbed up to the table. “We’ve been looking at this piece of paper with this magnifying glass to see if we can see the atoms, but we’re not sure what we’re looking at. The paper does look different with the magnifying glass, but it’s sort of still all one thing, not a lot of little tiny things. We’re not sure if we’re seeing the atoms or not.”

“Well,” Mandy began, “that’s because you can’t really see atoms with a magnifying glass, or even with a regular microscope (MY-kro-skope), which lets you see things that are much tinier than you can see with a magnifying glass. A regular microscope can sit on a table when you use it.”

She pulled the ear buds away from her ears and moved her glasses to the top of her head. She knew this conversation was going to take some time, but it was interesting, and she likes to talk about things that interest her.

“You can only see atoms with a special microscope,” Mandy explained, “and then, you aren’t really seeing the atoms the way you would see things like that paper and this yarn, for instance.”

“Those microscopes are really very special, too,” Mandy pointed out, “so special that they’re much too expensive and much too big for someone to have in their house!”

“Gee,” sighed Billy. “I really wanted to see what an atom looks like.” Mandy thought both boys seemed disappointed.

“We may not be able to see an atom with our eyes,” Mandy told them, “but we can see it with our minds. We know enough about atoms to be able to imagine what they look like.”

The boys looked more hopeful.

“You see,” Mandy began, “We know there are parts to an atom. How many of each kind of part is what makes the difference between one thing and another, like my yarn and your piece of paper.”

Mandy thought for a moment.

Then she said, “Just imagine an atom is a tiny solar system.”

“I know what a solar system is,” Emil exclaimed, happy to find something he knew about. “We learned about it in my class at school. It’s a sun, like our sun, with planets going around it, like our Earth!”

“And like Mars!” Billy added, excited now, too, “or Jupiter (JOO-pih-ter).”

“Right,” Mandy agreed, “only instead of a sun in the center, an atom has a nucleus (NOO-klee-us). ‘Nucleus’ is a special word for the center of something. It’s used in science for atoms, as well as some other things.”

“Let me find a picture,” Mandy suggested, “to show you what we think an atom looks like, so you can imagine it in your head.”

She reached for the tablet and opened it up.

Mandy tapped on the tablet keyboard.

In just a few seconds, she had the picture she wanted.

“Here!” she said, turning the tablet so the boys could see. “This is what an atom should look like if we see it with our minds. Here’s the nucleus,” she said, pointing to the thing in the center. “In this picture, the nucleus looks like a clump of balls all stuck together.”

“Those little balls,” Mandy explained, “are parts of the atom. The red ones are calledprotons (PRO-tonz). The blue ones are called neutrons (NEW-tronz). They aren’t really red or blue. They just have those colors in this drawing, so we can tell them apart and know that they are different.”

“The protons have what’s called a positive (PAW-zih-tiv) charge,” she told them. “That’s the name given to a type of electricity. They use a plus sign (+) as a symbol (SIM-bul) to show that it’s positive, because we use a plus sign for adding numbers.”

“The other little balls,” Mandy went on, “the red ones, those have no charge. We say they’re neutral (NEW-trul), because they are neither positive nor negative. We don’t need a symbol for that, because it isn’t either one.”

“What’s negative?” Emil asked. “It doesn’t sound happy.”

“You’re right,” Mandy said. “We say our feelings are positive if we’re happy and negative if we’re sad. Those expressions come from how we talk about electricity, but there’s nothing sad about this kind of negative.”

Mandy pointed to the little green balls outside the nucleus in the drawing. “These green balls,” she said, “are electrons (ee-LEK-trons). They have a negative (NEHG-a-tiv)charge. Scientists use a minus sign (-) for negative, because that’s the symbol we use to subtract or take away numbers in arithmetic. It doesn’t mean they’re sad. In fact,” she added, “these lines are there to show where the electrons go flying around the nucleus. What fun that must be!”

“It’s like they’re in orbit (OR-bit) around the nucleus!” Billy exclaimed. “Now I see why you said the atom is like a little solar system! The planets in our solar system are in orbit around the sun.”

Mandy nodded. “Not all atoms have the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons,” she said. “Atoms make up something called elements (EL-a-mints). Each element has a different number of each of these parts. It’s what makes them different from each other.”

“I think we should stop now,” Mandy suggested. “If I tell you more than you can remember at one time, everything in your head will probably just drain down through your neck and out through your knee joints. Besides, this story is long enough.”

“I won’t forget what I learned just now,” Emil said, “but I learned something that isn’t just about atoms.” The other two dolls looked at him. They wanted to know what else he had learned.

Emil knew that when someone just looks at you after you just said something, that meant they were waiting for you to say more, so he went on. “Just because we can’t see something,” he said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

“That’s right!” Mandy exclaimed, happy that Emil had learned something unexpected from the little lesson.

Billy picked up the magnifying glass again. “Let’s go down to the kitchen. Let’s find out if we can see some cookies,” he suggested.

Billy would not need the magnifying glass to find cookies in the kitchen.

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia

Diagram of atom: Freepik

Photo of microscope: Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash