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 11, 2022

It Snowed!

"There's white stuff on the ground and everywhere," Pauly told Pippa as soon as he was in the door.

"It snowed last night," Pippa explained patiently, as only an experienced, older doll can.

"It's really cold stuff," Pauly added, looking out at the clear blue sky and the rooftops covered with white snow. "Jeffy said it was made of snowflakes."

"That's because it's made of frozen water," Pippa said. "Mandy explained it to me. We can have a lot of fun in the snow, but let's wait until later, when it's a bit warmer outside." Pippa has good eyes. She could see the thermometer outside the window next to the door.

"Come to the kitchen," Pippa suggested. "Jolena is making some hot chocolate for us to pretend to drink. It should be almost ready."

"It snowed last week," Pippa said, as she led Pauly down the hall to the kitchen, "but not as much as last night."

"I guess that was when we went to see Jeffy's grandparents," Pauly said thoughtfully.

"You were gone almost all week," Pippa pointed out. "By the time you came back, the snow was gone.

The two dolls climbed up to where Jolena was working, so they could watch. When the hot chocolate was ready, Jolena poured them each a cup.

"This is good chocolate," Pauly told Jolena.

"Thank you," Jolena replied. Then she asked, "What have you been doing?"

"I came to tell Pippa that I saw when the snow started," Pauly said.

"It was late yesterday afternoon," Pauly told them, "and I looked out the window. Little white specks were coming down from the sky. Jeffy told me they were snowflakes. He says they are like human children; no two are exactly alike."

Pippa nodded. She was glad Jeffy had explained it to Pauly.

"Yes," Jolena said. There are lots of dolls just like me. We're all made exactly the same. I think we're probably different on the inside, though, and we're different from dolls like you, Pauly."

Pauly stopped pretending to drink his hot chocolate while he considered all the other Paul dolls in the world, and wondered what they were like on the inside.

"What do you do in the snow?" Pauly asked then, putting down his cup. "Pippa says it's fun to play in."

"I'll show you some photos," Pippa suggested, putting her cup down, too. "Come upstairs, and we can look at them!"

When the dolls reached the workroom, Pippa got the phone and turned it on. Then she and Pauly sat on the daybed and looked at the photos. "These photos are from last year," she said. "The snow last week was too wet to be much fun and then it melted."

"This," Pippa said, pointing to the first photo, "is where Mandy and I were getting ready to go outside."

"We had to put on some warm clothes," Pippa explained. "I had to wear boots that were too big for me, and we put socks on our hands, because we didn't have mittens."

"We needed to protect our hands," she said, "because we were going to be putting our hands in the snow."

Pauly looked at the photo and then nodded at Pippa. He would need socks for his hands, too, when they went out to play in the snow.

"We made something called snowballs," Pippa explained. "You pick up some snow, push it together and then make it round, like a ball."

"Then we threw the snowballs at each other. Not hard, you know. We didn't want to knock someone's head off."

"We made bigger balls of snow," Pippa continued. "We put them together to make a snowman, but it was really small, so maybe it was really a snow baby."

"Mandy showed me how to lie down in the snow," Pippa went on. "We moved our arms and legs through the snow, up and down."

"Then when we got up, Pippa said, "we could see where we had been. Mandy said those were snow angels. Where we had moved our hands up and down looked like wings."

Pauly thought he would like to do that, too.

"Then the boys brought their sled out," Pippa told him, showing him the next photo The Writer had taken of her sitting on the sled with Freckles. "They pulled the sled around with me on it, and I got to pretend they were horses pulling my sleigh. A sleigh is sort of a very big sled," she explained.

"That looks like fun," Pauly said.

"What's even more fun," Pippa told him, "is when we take the sled to where there's a hill covered with snow. The sled goes down it very fast without anyone pulling it." Then she thought for a moment. "Just wait," she said, "until you see Jolena on skis! She does some amazing tricks, but she practices on the slide in the backyard." Pippa looked until she found a photo of Jolena on her skis in the backyard.

"So you did all this stuff last year," Pauly said. "There was no snow when I came. How often does the snow come?"

Pippa thought for a moment. "Well," she said, " The snow comes in the winter, and winter was over when you got here. It melts whenever the weather warms up, but we will have today to play in it, and it will snow again!"

"Let's see if it's warm enough now!" Pippa exclaimed, jumping up.

Pauly thought about how great it was to have a friend like Pippa! Maybe the snow would be great, too!

Cast--

Pippa: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

Pauly: Götz Little Kidz Paul

Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen

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

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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.

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Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart

Friday, November 4, 2022

Mischief

"Veronika," Pippa said, "Billy said someone was naughty and damaged something at the house next door."

"I wasn’t the one who did it," she said, "but it made me worry."

"What were you worried about, Pippa?" Veronika asked.

"I was wondering," the smaller doll replied, "how you can tell when you’re doing something wrong. I don’t want to be naughty by accident."

Veronika wondered for a very quick moment if Pippa might want to be naughty on purpose, but then she figured out that what Pippa meant was that she might do something wrong because she didn’t know it was wrong.

"Why don’t you tell me," Veronika suggested, "what happened next door, so I know how to explain it."

"Maybe you can see it from the window," Pippa suggested. "You know the 'for sale' sign they put up a few days ago?"

Veronika remembered. The neighbors had just finished repairing their front porch, and when it was done, the sign appeared. She nodded to let Pippa know that she was aware of the sign.

"We’ll," Pippa said, "when we went out of the house this morning, it was standing there in the front yard, looking the way it always did."

"Then," Pippa explained, "when we came back, the sign had been painted all over. You couldn’t read what it said anymore."

Pippa climbed up onto the windowsill and pointed down to where the sign was. Veronika joined her at the window and looked. Sure enough, the "For Sale" sign in front of the house had been painted over so you couldn't read it anymore.

Veronika thought for a moment. It made no sense for the people next door to have done it. They needed to sell their home, because they were moving to another state. They wanted to buy a new home there. They needed people to be able to read the sign. Whoever did it must not have had permission to do it, so it was wrong to do, because it belonged to the the company that was trying to sell the house for the human people who lived there, and it was in the yard belonging to the people who needed to move.

"Billy was right," Veronika told Pippa. It's a bad thing to damage something on purpose that belongs to someone else."

"Sometimes," Veronika continued, as the two dolls sat down again, "we can cause damage to something by accident, and if that happens, we should try to fix it, or undo it, or pay for a new one, but this isn't the kind of thing that is damaged by accident. This was done on purpose. That's why Billy said it was naughty."

"Who did it?" Pippa wanted to know.

"Well," Veronika began thoughtfully, "it had to have been another human person. A doll would have had a hard time doing it. You see, that kind of painting is done with a spray can of paint. It's like the can of cooking spray Jolena uses, only with paint inside instead of cooking oil. She has to use two hands to make the spray work, and a doll couldn't climb up there and paint the whole thing without using their hands."

"A human person was naughty?" Pippa asked, astonished. All the human people she knew seemed to know what was right to do. Of course, she didn't know that many human people, just the ones she lived with, their family members who came to visit, people who came and did work for them, Pauly's family and the real children who came to the door for trick-or-treat with their parents.

"Almost all human people are naughty some time or other," Veronika replied. "You see, it's easier for dolls to want to be good because we're made to teach human children about caring for others. It's caring for others that makes human children want to do what's right."

"I guess," Pippa suggested, "that means it's very important for dolls to know how not to be naughty."

Veronika agreed. "So what do you already know about how not to be naughty?" she asked.

Pippa thought for a moment. "Well, you said it's wrong to damage something that belongs to someone else, unless it's an accident, and then you should try to undo the damage if you can, or buy them a new one, but there are other ways to be naughty, aren't there?"

Veronika agreed again. "There are lots of ways you can do something you shouldn't," she said.

"So how will I know?" Pippa asked.

"There are lots of other things that we just know are wrong to do," Veronika agreed, "like taking something that belongs to someone else, even to borrow without asking, or saying something that isn't true, but there's a rule I like to follow if it isn't one of those things."

Pippa listened closely, because she had a feeling this was very important.

"If I want to do something," Veronika explained, "but I don't know if it's OK, I ask myself who else is affected by what I do. Will anyone be hurt by it, and that includes hurt feelings."

"Then," Veronika went on, "I ask myself how I would feel if I were this doll and someone did this thing. Would I be upset or hurt or angry about it? I always try to treat other dolls the way I want other dolls to treat me."

Pippa thought about this for a bit. She sort of tried it on for size. She thought about how it would work. "You know," she said, "that makes sense. We have lots of rules at school, and when I think about each one of them, I can see that if you break that rule, someone can be hurt or upset or angry about it, even if it weren't a rule. Sometimes if you break the rule you could be the one hurt, but that would upset your friends and the teachers."

Then she had another thought. "Whoever damaged the sign," she said, "must be a very bad person!"

Veronika shook her head sadly. "No," she said. "Whoever damaged the sign must not ever have learned how to be kind and to respect what belongs to others. They must be very unhappy inside. It looks like an angry thing to me. It's very sad to be angry and not know what to do about those feelings."

Pippa thought about this. "Maybe they never had any dolls to teach them," she suggested with a sigh.

Veronika climbed back up to the windowsill to look out at the damaged sign, with Pippa right behind her. "I think," Veronika told the younger doll, "we should tell The Writer about the sign. Maybe the neighbors don't know. They will need to get a new sign, if they want to sell their house."

"Let's go do it now," Pippa exclaimed. She wanted to do something to help. She knew it would make her feel better.

When something bad happens, it always makes us feel better if we can do something about it.

Cast--
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni