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, December 11, 2020

Photo Day

Billy plugged his phone into the charger using the outlet at the top of the stairs. Then he checked to make sure it was really charging.

"What are you doing, Billy?" Pippa asked as she reached the top step.

"I'm charging my phone," Billy replied. "We need to take a new group photo, now that you're here. I'm using the phone's camera app to take the photos."

"I get to be in the photo?" Pippa asked when she reached where Billy was working.

"Of course," Billy agreed. "You're one of us now. We're going to take a group photo with everyone, so we can have it framed and give it to The Writer for a present."

"What do I have to do?" Pippa asked.

"All you have to do, Pippa," Billy said, "is just put on your nicest clothes and brush your hair."

"Goodie!" Pippa exclaimed. "I've been wanting to wear my one-and-only dress and my fancy shoes!"

Pippa skipped from the room to change.

"It will be a while," Billy called after her. "The phone still has to charge."

While the phone was charging, the dolls changed into their nice clothes.

The girls helped each other with their hair, because it's easier to fix someone else's hair than to do your own, especially if you're a doll. They checked to see how they looked in the mirror in the big bathroom.

The boys were in the other bathroom, getting ready. They helped each other, too.

It took a long time for all the dolls to get ready to have their photo taken together. When they were all ready, they sat down on the stairs. They decided that the dolls in the back row should stand. They left a place for Billy in the front row.

Billy set the timer on the phone's camera app. He would have to run and get in the photo before the timer ran down and the camera went off.

Then Pippa decided to sit in Charlotte's lap.

It's harder to get a good photo with so many dolls. Billy didn't have to worry that someone would blink, because none of them have eyes that close, but sometimes one would do something, like have to scratch an itchy nose or turn to see what the dogs were doing. Billy got this one.

"Pippa, you moved!" Billy exclaimed.

"I just noticed the big light over the front door," Pippa said.

Then Billy got ready to take another one. "Be still this time, Pippa," he said. Then he took this one.

Then the dolls decided they needed their pets in the photo. When the dolls were getting their pets, Pippa ran and got her bear, even though he's just a teddy bear and not a pet. In her imagination, he's real.

Veronika held Cleo's aquarium in her lap. Mandy held Marmalade, but he doesn't need an aquarium because he is a cat. Charlotte and Billy held Pierre and Freckles, and Brownie stood in front, because she didn't fit on the stairs with the dolls. The camera went off and took this photo.

Then they all tried to be silly, just for fun. Mandy tried to look queenly. Mariah pointed and said, "Look! A bird!" Jolena held up two fingers up behind Emil's head. Emil pretended to try to pull Billy's wig off. Charlotte said, "Ta-da!" as if she had just done something great. Pippa chewed on her hair. Veronika waved her fingers in front of her face.

Billy didn't have time to do anything silly before the camera took the photo.

Billy was excited to view the photos on the laptop computer right away. Veronika came in while he was working. She was quiet for a while, just looking at the screen as Billy cropped a photo by moving the edges of the photo so the dolls were more centered in the picture. Sometimes he cropped a photo to remove something he didn't want to show, but he had set this up very carefully, and the people and real dogs were not around to get in the photo by accident.

"You know," Veronika said after watching for a while, "That one would be great as a present for The Writer."

Billy looked at the computer screen. He tipped his head to one side as if he were thinking about it. "It does look pretty good," he said. He remembered the last photo he had taken for The Writer to use for a social media banner photo.

Emil and Pippa weren't in that photo, and some of their head s were cut off. "If I crop this photo like this...," he said.

He took a little off the top and the bottom of the photo so it was wide from side to side but not very tall. Then he checked to see what the dimensions (dih-MEN-shuns) of the banner photo were, so he would know how wide it was and how tall. It looked like this. He made the new photo the same as those dimensions.

"We aren't doing anything," Billy said finally. "It's just our faces. I have a better idea, but we will need to change our clothes again."

What do you think Billy's idea was? Can you think of something that would make a good banner photo for The Doll's Storybook on social media?

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
Marmalade: Purrrfect Cats from KTL

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, December 4, 2020

What's Behind the Door?

"What are you doing up there, Pippa?" Mariah called up from where she was standing by the bathroom door.

Pippa peeked over the edge of the counter. "I'm checking out what's in the cabinets here," she said.

"How did you get up there?" Mariah called up to her.

"Right here," Pippa said, pointing to the drawers in the lower cabinet. "I used the drawers and their handles to climb up. It was easy."

Mariah looked at how Pippa had climbed up. "You little monkey!" she exclaimed. "I don't know if I can get up there from here."

Mariah is not very big, but she's bigger than Pippa. She had to pull out each drawer a bit to climb on.

"It turns out," Pippa said, when Mariah had reached the top of the counter, "I'm pretty good at climbing."

"I thought you must have sprouted wings," Mariah said. "Now, tell me, what are you doing in the cabinets?"

"Well," Pippa began, "I remembered how Emil said that sometimes you look in the drawers and cabinets when the old people are away. I thought this cabinet on the wall looked interesting."

Mariah looked up where Pippa was pointing. "That's the medicine cabinet," she said.

"Well," Pippa said again, "I decided to check out what's in it. I found lots of interesting bottles and things."

Pippa pointed to an assortment of bottles on the countertop. "I found all this!" she explained.

Mariah looked at all the things Pippa had pulled out of the cabinet. "You know," she said, "these things are mostly medicines."

"Yes!" Pippa agreed. "They're interesting! Smell this!" Pippa took the cap off of a bottle of blue liquid. "This stuff smells yummy!"

Mariah took a sniff of what was in the bottle. "Yes," she said. "It does smell yummy, but we have to be very careful with these things."

"I know!" Pippa said. "They don't belong to us! I'm going to put them all back." She put the cap back on the bottle.

"It isn't just that," Mariah said. "We shouldn't mess with things that don't belong to us, but some of these things could make a child very sick. Children should not take things from the medicine cabinet, and especially they shouldn't eat or drink any of it. Not only that, but this stuff is mouthwash. People rinse their mouths with it after they brush their teeth, and then they spit it out. They're not supposed to drink it!"

"I didn't think about eating or drinking any of it," Pippa said. "Not even to pretend to!"

"Well," agreed Mariah, as the two dolls sat down on the edge of the counter, "we're dolls, so pretending to eat medicines wouldn't hurt us, except just make us pretend to be sick, but we have to set a good example for the children who read our stories."

"Why do they have these things," Pippa wanted to know, "if they can make them sick?"

"It all depends on what it's for," Mariah said, as Pippa picked up one of the bottles,"but grownup humans know to read the labels. If it says to take two every four hours, for a headache or a tummy ache, that's what they do. If it says not to take it if you're taking some other kind of medicine, they don't."

"Many children know how to read directions," Pippa said, holding out the bottle. "They would know how many pills to take," she added, as Mariah took the bottle from her.

"That's true," agreed Mariah, "but human children have smaller bodies than human grownups. What is safe for a grownup to take might not be safe for a child. Besides, small children might have trouble reading this. The print is very tiny!"

"Children have smaller bodies, like mine?" Pippa asked.

"Not that small," Mariah said. "Even human babies are bigger than you are, Pippa."

Just then, both dolls heard something.

"It's the garage door!" Mariah exclaimed. "The Writer and her husband are back."

"What do we do?" whispered Pippa.

"Let's just hurry and put everything back where it was," Mariah said.

The dolls worked quickly. Pippa climbed up to where she could reach the medicine cabinet. Mariah handed the bottles up to her, and she put each one away.

Then they climbed down and closed the drawers, just as they heard the door to the house open.

They ran to The Writer's workroom and got back to their places on the windowsill, where they had been when the old people left to go out.

After she put away her hat and coat, The Writer went upstairs and into the bathroom to comb her hair. "Sweetie?" she called to her husband. "Did you take my mouthwash out and leave it on the counter?"

She was sure she had put it away before they left. Hmmmm....sometimes it seemed as if they weren't alone in the house, she thought, as she put the mouthwash away where it belonged. They often found things out of place when they had been out or when they got up in the morning.

The Writer went to the workroom to check on the dolls. Everyone was right where she had left them, but Mariah and Pippa seemed to be looking at the ceiling.

"I wonder what they think about all day," she said to herself as she slowly closed the door to the workroom.

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
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