DOOMED to make a book jacket.

Sarah is a very independant child.  Except when she wants me to play with her but other than that, she prefers to do things by herself.

Like homework projects.

She has a book project due in the middle of November.  The choices for the project include diorama, book cover, Who Am I?, dress up like the main character and tell about the book, etc.  There were 8 projects to choose from and the kids had to get the book and the project choice approved by the teacher at the beginning of October.  Which left 6 weeks to read the book and complete the project.

Sarah has chosen Ivy and Bean: Doomed to Dance as her book and a book cover as her project.

It was no surprise to me that she choose to do a book cover because my sweet little girl has a book cover collection.  Yes, I know that sounds odd but she has taken every book jacket off every book she has that came with one and keeps them together in her collection. 

This is fine, that she calls this a collection, because technically it is a collection.  However, it was a little embarrassing when Sarah was "Star Student of the Week" a few weeks ago and chose to take a book cover to school and tell about her "collection". I can only imagine what her teacher thought about Dan and I as parents and Sarah's homelife when this is what type of collection she has.  She might as well have a grocery bag collection or a toilet paper tube collection. 

Sarah's best friend at school apprently turned in her project yesterday -  4 weeks early. (Parents that have it together really annoy me.) According to Sarah it was a diorama of Charlotte's web that included Charlotte, the fence post and a really cool spider web. (Creative parents that have it together really, really annoy me.)

This spurred Sarah to action and yesterday when she completed her homework she informed me she was going into her room to work on her book cover.  I was folding laundry at the time and said, "That's nice honey," not really thinking about what she had just said and not really remembering that even the book cover project had 9 different requirements that had to be fulfilled - author blurb including very specific info about the author, paragraph on back to entice someone to want to read the book, summary of the book inside the front flap, made from the large construction paper, etc.

30 minutes later, Sarah emerged from her room with two pieces of typing paper stapled together and a drawing of one of the main characters as a skeleton dressed in a tutu.

"How does this look, Mom?" she excitedly asked expecting my answer to be full of high praise.

"Um...not too good honey," I began cautiously knowing that this was going to end with Sarah screaming, crying and locked in her room.  And how to I know this?  I haven't mothered this child for 8 years without knowing a little bit about how things are going to go down.

"What's wrong with it?"  she questioned. "Look, I even made a spine on it."  She had cut a strip of manilla folder and stapled/glued/some how made it stay onto the cover right where the book spine would be.  (I really didn't have the heart at this point to tell her that a book jacket doesn't have a spine because I knew it was going to get really ugly pretty fast without having to point that out.)

"Well for starters, it's not very neat.  And why is there a skeleton wearing a tutu on here?"  I knew there was no skeleton in the story.

"Because they are DOOMED to dance," she said in her you-don't-know-anything voice. 

I told her this would be a good start, a rough (very rough draft) perhaps, but she would not be able to turn that in.

Then the crying and door slamming began.  I let the hystrionics go on for a few minutes before I fished out the instruction sheet from a giant pile of school papers I keep piled up organized on the top of the refrigerator and began reading the requirements of the project to her.

She finally calmed down, especially when I started tickling her, and she said, "But I made a spine for the cover.  Can I least keep the spine?"

"Yes, honey, you can keep the spine," I told her.  Because seriously, if she wants her book jacket to have a spine, who am I to stop her?

After all, she is a book jacket collector. 


As I was tucking her in bed last night, I looked around on her bed.  Piled on top of her comforter were several old Halloween books she pulled off her book shelf.  The books were laid open to pages with pictures of skeletons.  Y'all my heart just melted. She had done a little skeleton research to make sure she got the skeleton drawn correctly.