One little green speckled blog


The Great American Novel

In Russell's first grade class, the kids have been spending some time writing their own stories for "publication". They write out sentences or (sometimes) chapters, then the teacher goes over it with them (talking about content and spelling and so on). Now she is writing up the text of what they've written (that is, with the spelling and punctuation fixed up as they discussed) and passing it to a few of us parent volunteers to type up (about one sentence per page). Our typed pages get bound into little books which the kids then illustrate, and then they can check each other's books out of their own self-created library. I hope it is as great as it sounds.

I think Russell's books will be very popular with some of the boys in the class, thanks to his obsession with Star Wars. This interest is an offshoot of his Lego obsession; his main exposure to Star Wars is through Lego kits and the Lego website, which has some comics and commercials and things. He also saw a Star Wars show at OMSI several months ago and saw part of one of the movies at a neighbor's about two years ago. Other than conversations with his friends, who are generally operating from the same level of "knowledge," that's what he bases stories on, but when he's short on details he just makes them up (e.g. Darth Vader can decide midway through a Lego story that he wants to be good).

Anyway, since I'm one of the parent volunteers who's typing these things, I'm going to cheat and type up my own kid's story here. How much of this is made up and how much is memorized from someone else I can't tell, but I don't see these words or stories on the Lego site or in Google.

Chapter 1: TIE Interceptor Attack!

A B-wing glides through space toward the hidden rebel base. The fighter carries vital information about the new Imperial attack, but TIE Interceptor is waiting to ambush.

Chapter 2: X-Wing Attack

The Death Star is destroying rebels.

X-Wing launches its missile. It goes into a hatch. The Death Star explodes.

Chapter 3: The Race

Anakin sets his speeder. The race begins.

Anakin's losing!

He gets ahead. He won! The crowd goes wild!

Chapter 4: Droids Attack

The droids fight against the clones. Laser beams fly. The super battle droids battle against the clones.

The clones won!

—julie Wed Apr 4 23:21:01 2007

Comments


I took your challenge and put one of his phrases into Google (a favorite way to find college plagiarizers). Sure enough, the phrase “B-wing glides through space” immediately popped up a web site complete with “toward the hidden rebel base.” Then I realized it was the One Little Green Speckled Blog site! I knew Russell was an original but this tops it. Great story!

a grandMom Sun Apr 8 11:32:28 2007

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