Flannery and Herman

Flannery likes unicorns.  Her Aunt Bessy, who is very encouraging, signed her up for horse-back riding lessons.  Flannery was grateful, but confused because horses are not unicorns.  They can not fly and they don't have horns.  Flannery made some cone shapes out of papier mache and glued glitter all over them.  Then, she tried to attach the horn to her horse, Buttercup, but it fell to the ground, and Buttercup took this as an opportunity to have a snack.  Flannery felt horribly about this.  She worried that Buttercup would develop a stomach ache due to all the glitter.  From then on, Flannery didn't wish Buttercup to be anything but a regular horse.  She would bring two apples to her lessons each day, and she would always give the shinier apple to Buttercup.

Herman loves shadows.  In his room, his mom helped him hang a sheet from the ceiling, and then she got a very bright light to shine on it so that Herman would be able to put on shows for the rest of the neighborhood children.  The shows are quite elaborate.  He does the musical numbers with a kazoo he hangs around his neck.  Sometimes his shows require big monsters, so he gets to be the shadow.  Other times they require little tiny creatures, so he borrows his sister's dolls.  He has a pet hermit crab named Peter.  Sometimes he tapes a GI Joe to Peter's shell and puts him in the show.  That creates an interesting effect.

Herman was my experiment for Joel Priddy's request for a pillow monster that is baby friendly (no buttons, removable parts or other choking hazards) for his brand new, yet-to-be-out-of-the-oven, son.  Also, if you go to Joel's blog (he is an illustrator, comic artist and professor at my old school Memphis College of Art) he has all these high-contrast black and white drawings that he and others did posted.  The reason for that is because he found out that is what infants can mostly see.  Anyway, you should go there, because if you are a parent you can print them out for your babies, and yes, there is even a picture of a cat playing a tuba!!!!!!