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.

Showing posts with label spelling. Show all posts

Friday, June 21, 2024

How Emil Came to The Doll's Storybook, Part One

The dolls were studying and doing their homework when Veronika came into the room.

"Everyone, you need to listen to this," Veronika said, waving a piece of paper so they would see what she had.

The dolls gathered around Veronika. "It's a letter," she said. Then she began to read.

Here is what the letter said:

Dear Veronika and Cast of The Doll's Storybook,
I heard you were looking for another boy doll, and I am hoping you will choose me.

Before you accept me, you should know something about me. I'm not perfect. It isn't the fault of the factory where we were made. Sometimes these things just happen. Anyway, I wanted to be sure you knew about this before you decide.
First of all, I'm very nearsighted. That means I can't see very far from my nose. This isn't too bad, though, because my special glasses correct my sight to almost normal. I just need to wear my glasses all the time, except when I'm asleep.
My other problem is more serious. I'm almost deaf without my hearing aids. Fortunately, they were able to build my hearing aids into my glasses. I can talk with other dolls with no problem without my hearing aids, because, like other dolls, I talk by sharing my thoughts and listening to yours, but I need the hearing aids so I don't get hurt by things like cars and bicycles, and so I know when water is running and when an alarm goes off. I can't hear those things in my head without the hearing aids in my special glasses.
If you accept me as a new cast member, I promise to try very hard not to let these things make problems for you. I will also try to be the best doll I can be.

Sincerely,
Emil

"It's a good letter," Mandy said when Veronika had finished reading the letter.

Mariah, who had been looking over Veronika's shoulder, pointed at the letter. "There are no words misspelled," she said. "The ideas are easy to understand. He must be smart. He must have worked hard on the letter."

"He could have used Autocorrect," Billy said. "Autocorrect will fix the spelling."

"Yes," agreed Mariah, "but Autocorrect just changes something that isn't a word to something that is. It may not be the right word."
"Sometimes," put in Jolena, "Autocorrect gives you something silly, and it makes you laugh, and the letter looks as if he might have written it out instead of using a computer, and Autocorrect only works if you're using a computer or a phone."

"That's right," Mariah agreed. "You have to know if the word is the right one, and you still have to write what you want to say so it's easy to understand."
The dolls all smiled and nodded. They could remember times when they had seen this happen, and they agreed the letter looked as if it might have been written by hand. "Emil must have had to use a dictionary to check the spelling of all the words he wasn't sure of," Mariah concluded.

Charlotte had been very quiet. Now she had something to say. "I like that he sounds honest," she said.
The other dolls looked up at Charlotte.

"How do you see that in his letter, Charlotte?" Veronika asked.
"Well," Charlotte began, "he wants to be chosen, doesn't he? He could have just told us how wonderful he is, and how he's the best one for the job. He could have left out the part about his problems."

"You're right," Mandy said. "Then we wouldn't have known until he arrived, when it was too late."

Veronika turned to Billy. "What do you think, Billy?" she asked. "If we choose him, he will be your pal. You need to be satisfied with the choice."

"I like the letter," Billy said. "He sounds interesting. He says he isn't perfect, but none of us is perfect. He's different, but we're all different, even though we are alike in lots of ways."

"Like that our eyes don't close," Jolena said, "and we each have one hand with two fingers stuck together."

"It sounds to me," Billy said, "like he can do everything I like to do. I think we will have fun together."

"Let's vote on it," Veronika said, "unless anyone has something else to say."
The dolls shook their heads. They were ready to vote.
"All right," Veronika said, "who wants to choose Emil to be our new brother? Raise your hand if you do."
All the dolls raised their hands.

"Good," said Veronika. "It's unanimous (you-NAN-ih-mus)! That means we all voted the same. Then I don't have to ask who doesn't want Emil to be our new brother. I will write back and let him know."
"Veronika," Billy said, "there is something I would like you to ask him. You said his name like 'eh-MEEL.' How do we know it isn't 'EE-mul' or something else? It's an unusual name. Would you ask him how he says it so we can say it correctly when he comes?"

Veronika said she would ask. It was an important part of helping him feel at home when he arrived.

"When you write, please ask him what kind of food he likes to pretend to eat best," Jolena said. "I want to fix him his favorite food when he gets here."

"I want to find out," Mariah added, "what kinds of books he likes. We can go to the library right before he arrives and check out some things."
"Ask him if he can hear music," Charlotte said. "If he can, please find out what his favorite song is, so I can learn to play it for him on my violin."

"I have something for you to ask him," Mandy said. "Ask him if he needs to plug in his hearing aids at night or if his hearing aids use batteries, and please ask him if he needs anything else we might not think of."

That night, Veronika wrote a letter to Emil and told him that he had been chosen to be their new brother. She wrote that they liked his letter and thought he sounded nice. She asked him how to say his name. She used Autocorrect to make sure she had spelled the words correctly, and when Autocorrect changed something, she looked to see if Autocorrect was just being silly.

Veronika asked Emil what kind of food and books he liked best. She asked him if he could hear music with his special glasses, and if so, what was his favorite song. She asked him if he needed batteries or a charger for his glasses, or if there was anything else he might need. Then she added that they could tell he was special from his letter, and that was good. Then she printed off the letter and signed it. She put it into an envelope. She put a stamp on the letter.
Then all the dolls went to the mailbox together to mail the letter to Emil.

They could hardly wait. They knew Emil would be special.

We are all special, and so are you.

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

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, Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Author's page on Amazon.

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 charity (specific information available upon request). Autographed copies of all three books are available from the author. (Multiple books to the same address have a discount on shipping.) To inquire, email thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

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Friday, May 10, 2024

The Spelling Test

It was a sunny afternoon, but the dolls were indoors, doing their homework.

"Can you help me, Mariah?" Jolena asked. "You're so good with words and writing."

Mariah closed her book. "I will if I can," she said. "What do you need help with?"

"Well," Jolena began, "I have to know these words for spelling."
Mariah looked at the list.

Here's the list.

bough
bought
brought
cough
dough
enough
rough
though
thought
through
tough

"They are all spelled almost the same," Mariah pointed out.

"Yes, but they don't sound the same," Jolena sighed. "It makes them hard to spell. I can read them when I see them, but when I need to write them, I can't remember. It's hard enough to figure out what goes with the o-u-g-h for each word during the test, but I want to be able to remember them when I need them for real!"

"I understand," Mariah said. "It's because the English language has changed since the words came about. We don't say them the same as dolls did hundreds of years ago, but the spelling often has stayed almost the same."

"Why do we have to keep the old spelling, then?" Jolena wanted to know.

"Well," Mariah began, "if we kept changing the spelling, then someday dolls wouldn't be able to read books and stories that were written today, like the book Mandy is reading," she pointed out, gesturing to where Mandy was sitting, across from them, "and that would be too bad."

Mariah looked at the list again. "You know the words when you read them, so maybe it would help if you put them in groups and then used each one in a sentence," she suggested. "That way you're working back from what you already know––reading––to what's hard––writing them. Let's group them the way they sound, so it makes more sense. Thought, brought and bought all rhyme, but cough ends differently. Without the 't' on the end of that word, the 'gh' sounds like 'f'. It sounds like the others except for that."

Jolena wrote each of those words down on her paper. She and Mariah checked the list to be sure that Jolena had spelled them correctly.

"Now for a sentence," Jolena said. "I thought I could do a triple flip," she said and then wrote it down next to the word 'thought'.
"Charlotte brought me a glass of water," she said and then wrote it out, too.

"I bought some flour to make some bread," she said as she wrote it out.
"Billy has a cough," she wrote. Then she laughed. It was hard to imagine Billy trying to cough, when he couldn't even open his mouth and only had pretend lungs, anyway.
"That's great," Mariah told her. "Now let's see if there's another set we can put together.

"How about though and dough?" Jolena asked.
Mariah looked at the list. "Those go together, but I don't see any others that sound the same," she agreed.

Jolena wrote out, "Billy doesn't have a fever, though." (Billy with a fever was funny, too.) Then she wrote out, "I need the flour to make bread dough."
"That's good," Mariah told her. "Do you see any other words that we can put together?" she asked.
"What about rough and enough?" Jolena asked.
"Yes," Mariah agreed, looking to see if she could find any others that sounded the same. "I see one more," she said.
Jolena looked at the list of spelling words. "I see it! Tough!"
she exclaimed. "These words have that funny 'f' sound at the end again, even though the letter 'f' isn't in the word! It's like cough, except that the rest of the word doesn't sound the same."

Then she wrote out each word in her notebook. "This spelling lesson is tough!" she wrote.

Then she though for a moment. "I will do well if I study enough," she wrote. After another moment she wrote, "The boats came back home because the sea was rough."
Mariah nodded her approval. "Those are good sentences," she said. "Now let's see if we can group any more."
"It's easier now that we have used some of the words," Jolena said.
Both dolls looked at the list. There were three words left, but none of them sounded like any of the others.

"Well," said Mariah, "let's just do each of them separately."
Jolena thought about bough. "There was a bird's nest on a bough in the tree," she wrote. Then she looked up.

"Good!" Mariah said.
Jolena thought about thought. "I thought this spelling test was hard," she wrote.
The two dolls looked at each other and smiled. "See?" Mariah said. "It isn't that difficult. We just needed to take it in small bites."

"It will be easier when I am through studying," Jolena wrote.
"There are a lot of words in English that are spelled funny," Jolena said. "I guess writing them, saying them and using them a lot makes it easier to remember them. I thought learning these words would be difficult, but you have made it easy. Thank you for helping me!"

"It's always easier to learn something," Mariah said, "if you can figure out how to use what you are learning. That's why you wrote the sentences."

"Like the word, flour," Jolena agreed. It sounds like flower but it's spelled differently. I don't have any trouble remembering, because it's in my recipes when I bake, and sometimes when I cook other things."

Mandy looked up from her book. "Flower and flour. Those are homophones (HO-muh-fohnz)," she said. "That's what we call two words you say the same but that have different spellings and different meanings, like bough from your spelling list and bow like when you take a bow after you are done performing."

"I do this," Jolena said, "when I'm done performing a dance." She got down to the floor and bent over to show them.

"When I am done performing a triple flip, though, I do this."
Jolena said as she threw her arms in the air. "Only I'm holding my ski poles," she added.

"That isn't a bow," Mariah said. "That's saying, 'Hooray! I made it!" They all agreed.
Jolena climbed back up into the big chair. "How do you know about...homophones?" she asked Mandy.

Mandy picked up a book she had on the box she was using to sit on. "One of our readers sent me this book," she said. "It tells all about it, and it's fun to read."

"Let's read it together," Mariah suggested.

The three dolls settled on the couch to read.

"I just thought of something," Jolena said. "I thought my spelling list was tough, but at least I don't have to spell 'homophone'!"

Cast--
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend

The book How Much Can a Bare Bear Bear? by Brian P. Cleary can be found in libraries, online here, on Amazon and elsewhere. Mandy wishes to thank reader and fellow knitter Cheryl B. Waters for her generous gift of the book.

Note to children: Dolls sometimes forget to take off their shoes when they get onto a bed, couch or chair, but children play outdoors in their shoes and should always take their shoes off before putting their feet on the furniture.