Maureen Bush

The Magic of Christmas

We had a lovely Christmas, alternating between chaotic, quiet and exhausted. Now we’re settling in to a clean house and a quiet week.

When the kids were too tired to get excited about building snowmen, I built my own, a wee family standing on a bench by the back door. I used dried grapes from the grapevine for eyes – they were gone within a day. I’m not sure why grapes on snow are more appealing than grapes on the vine – a gourmet touch for the birds and squirrels, perhaps.

The gift that’s given us the most fun is a magic wand/TV remote we bought for the kids. It’s hysterical watching them sitting on the sofa waving a wand at the TV, cursing when it turns off instead of turning on. Errant magic, hard at work.

Maureen

Magic

Given the choice, isn’t it always better to believe in magic?

That, I think, gets right to the heart of being a kids’ fantasy writer.

Maureen

Contest Time

It’s time to wrap up the spring contest on howweirdcanyouget.com. Kids were asked to submit magical ideas for Griffith the wizard to develop for his shop. We received wonderful entries from kids and even a few adults. It was difficult to choose, but here’s the list:

The Winner: Matthew, age 10

Shoes to Glue – the soles of your runners are sticky so you can walk on walls and ceilings.

(Simple magic with great usefulness is ideal, and rare, in magical design.  This is perfect.  ­– Griffith)

In development:

Griffith will also be experimenting with

Jessica’s spell that makes you transport to the other side of the world and back (tricky, but enormously useful);

Kelsi’s spell to duplicate yourself and be at however many places you want to be at, but you must be careful. You can get in trouble from using this spell. You just say “make me be at all places with a few suitcases” (very tricky, but remarkably useful);

Daniel’s spell to make a video game come to life (this could be tricky, but it’s appealing because of how much trouble it could cause.)

I was intrigued by the story potential in many of the ideas, including:

from Kailee: a mythical monster in the office because he got in trouble. (Wouldn’t that be a great scene in a school?)

Abigayle suggested a story in which a brother and sister move into a new house, find a door and fall into a magical world. And their mother thought they were just in their rooms unpacking. (I love inattentive parents!)

from Will: You say “hulaboo” and it turns cardboard into cows. (Imagine the chaos!)

and for pure creepiness, from Masooma:

Once there was an evil witch who wanted to cast a spell on the fairies so she could drain their magic and make them work for her. Here is the spell:

make it do

make it new

cast a spell on these fairies

and make them into evil witch’s stew!!!!!!!

HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!

Thanks to everyone who entered. It was wonderful reading all your ideas.

Maureen

PS: Evil hackers are attacking the host for my website, so they’ve taken precautions, like not allowing any access from outside the US. Therefore, we’ll be delayed in posting this at maureenbush.com.