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, November 25, 2022

A Dolls' Thanksgiving

"It smells yummy," said Billy. "Can we go down and get closer?"

"Sure we can!" Veronika told him. "Let's all go down! They just put it on the table. That's why it smells so good. They will be sitting down to eat in just a few minutes."

All the dolls who lived in the house with The Writer made their way down the stairs. Mandy helped Pippa, so they would get there faster.

They tiptoed down the hall. Well, they can't bend their little feet, so they just walked as quietly down the hall as they could.

The smells got stronger as they got closer to the kitchen. Finally, they reached the door to the dining room. They looked up at the table. "It's ready to eat," Jolena told them. "They still have to fill the water glasses, and the dessert is waiting on the stove, but everything else is on the table."

"I can't see the food!" Pippa complained. "All I can see is the tablecloth!"

"Actually," Mandy told her, "none of us can see. We're all too short, but we can enjoy the lovely smells."

"Why don't we climb up onto the table?" Pippa asked. "Then we could see all the food!"

"That isn't very polite," Veronika explained. "You don't ever climb onto the table when the family is having a nice dinner. Besides, they will be sitting down to eat in a minute. We would be in the way."

"We don't have to get up there to see the food, anyway," Jolena told them.

"I helped with the cooking," she said. "I used our phone and took photos of everything they're having. I can show you all the photos."

"We can use our imaginations and pretend we're eating," Mariah suggested.

"We only pretend to eat anyway," Charlotte agreed, "so we can look at each photo and pretend to eat what's in the photo."

It was time for the family to sit down for dinner, so the dolls went back down the hall and up the stairs.

When they reached the top of the stairs, they went to the big bedroom. The Writer's son and his family were using the guest room and the work room to sleep in, so the dolls decided to sit on The Writer's bed. As soon as they were all settled on the bed, Jolena found the photos she had taken with the dolls' phone.

She passed the phone around so each doll could look at the photo and pretend they were eating what was in it.

"This is the salad," Jolena said. Each doll looked. "We made it with cucumbers," she said, as they passed the phone around."

"We fixed some turkey, too," she explained.

"That looks tasty," Emil said, when the phone reached him.

"This next photo is the stuffing," Jolena told them. "It's made out of bread. You know, those ends of the loaf no one likes to use for a sandwich? We save them and use them for things like stuffing. They call it stuffing because they can put it inside the turkey," she explained.

"We made gravy to pour over the turkey and stuffing," Jolena continued.

"Then we made some roasted sweet potatoes," Jolena told them. "That was a new recipe for me."

"This looks like some kind of mashed vegetable," Mandy said about the next photo, as she handed the phone to Charlotte.

"Yes," Jolena agreed. "It's rutabaga (ROOT-uh-beh-gah).

Billy would have licked his lips, but his mouth doesn't open. He doesn't have a tongue, either, but he has a really good imagination, and he likes how rutabaga smells. It looks like a turnip, but I read it doesn’t taste the same."

"We made some cranberry sauce, too," Jolena told them. "Cranberries are a fruit. They grow in water. They're very sour, so we put maple syrup in it."

All the dolls admired the picture of the cranberry sauce.

"Finally," Jolena told them with a flourish, "we made dessert. Here it is."

The dolls all looked at the dessert and tried to imagine what it tasted like. It was fun to do that.

"What is it?" Mariah asked.

"It's pumpkin pie," Jolena told her. "Pumpkin is a vegetable. You can use it for a lot of different things. Pumpkin pie is only one."

"Why do they have Thanksgiving every year," Pippa asked when they were done looking at the photos. She remembered Thanksgiving last year, and Pauly had told her that his family was having a big dinner today, too.

"They didn't talk about it in school?" Mariah asked. She was in a different class from Pippa. In her class they had talked about how people long ago left the part of the world we call Europe (YER-op) and England and had come to this continent. She explained this to Pippa.

"Real human people have to eat for real," Mariah told Pippa. "They grow most of their food during the summer, because the plants they use for food need warm weather to grow. The people who came here long ago did that, and when it was starting to get cold in the fall, they harvested their crops. That means they brought all the food in from the fields. They picked the apples, cut the wheat, removed the pumpkins and squash from the vines, dug up the potatoes and put everything away where it would stay safe and wouldn't spoil during the winter."

Charlotte picked up the story. "Then," she said, "when they saw that they had enough food to get through the winter, they were grateful, so they had a big party to celebrate and to give thanks."

"Now they do it every year, so they remember to be grateful for what they have," Emil said.

"Besides," Billy added, "it's a party, and parties are fun!"

"We're really grateful, too," Veronika said. "The Writer and her family need to eat to live. What would we do without them? We're grateful for the food that keeps them healthy."

"The house would be very, very quiet without them," Pippa said.

"With no one to cook for for real," Jolena added.

Billy looked at the others. "There would be no yummy smells!" he told them sadly.

They all tried to think of a house with no sounds, no one to cook for and no yummy smells.

All alone in a big, quiet house, just like standing in a box in a closed toy store. How sad that would be! "We're very lucky dolls, indeed!" Veronika exclaimed. "We have a lot to be thankful for!"

Just then, each of the dolls suddenly could taste turkey and cranberry sauce and rutabaga and stuffing, and all of it was yummy! It was a Thanksgiving miracle!

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia

Pippa: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

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.

Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook, Emil: Stories from the Doll's Storybook and soon Classic Tales Retold: Stories from the Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Royalties (net proceeds) go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. If you don't get free shipping elsewhere, buy from Book Baby. Half of the price goes to St. Jude. Autographed copies of all three books are available from the author for $20 including shipping. (Multiple books to the same address have a discount on shipping.) To inquire, email thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Image on Mariah's yellow T-shirt used with permission, from Free To Be Kids, where human-size shirts with this image are available.

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Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart

Friday, November 18, 2022

Too Tiny To See

"What are you looking at, Billy?" Emil asked when he found his best friend in the living room, looking through a magnifying 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," Billy replied. "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."

"Let's go ask Mandy," Billy suggested. They both knew it was a Mandy question.

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 the iPad, apparently listening to a story or music. "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 I can see the atoms, but I'm not sure what I'm looking at. The paper does look different with the magnifying glass, but it's sort of 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 see atoms with a magnifying glass, or even with a regular microscope, which lets you see things that are much tinier than with a magnifying glass." She pulled the ear buds away from her ears and moved her glasses to the top of her head.

"You can only see them with a special microscope," Mandy explained, "and then, you aren't really seeing the atoms the way you would see things like this yarn, for instance."

"Those microscopes are really very special, too," Mandy pointed out, "so 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."

Both boys seemed disappointed.

"We may not be able to see an atom with out eyes," Mandy told them, "but we can see it with our minds. We know enough about atoms to be able to imagine them."

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 have something to say. "It's a sun, like our sun, with planets going around it, like our Earth!"

"Like Mars!" Billy added, excited now, "or Jupiter."

"Right," Mandy agreed, "only instead of a sun in the center, an atom has a nucleus (NOO-klee-us). A nucleus is just 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 iPad and opened it up.

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 blue ones are called protons. The Red ones are called neutrons. They aren't really red and blue. They just have those colors in this drawing so we can tell them apart in this picture."

"The protons have what's called a positive charge," she told them. "That's just a name given to a type of electricity. They use a plus sign (+) as a symbol to show that."

"The other little balls," Mandy went on, "the red ones, those have no charge. We say they're neutral, because they are neither positive nor negative. We don't need a symbol for that, because it isn't either."

"What's negative?" Emil asked. "It doesn't sound happy."

"You're right," Mandy said. "We say our feelings are positive if they're happy and negative if they are 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. They have a negative charge, but 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 around the nucleus!" Billy exclaimed. "Now I see why you said the atom is like a little solar system!"

Mandy nodded. "Not all atoms have the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons," she said. "Atoms form substances 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 jut said something, that meant they were waiting for you to say more. "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 look and find out if we can see some cookies," he suggested.

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

Drawing of atom from Ducksters Science for Kids.