Quil's Postcards: Lava Park Adventure

How Friends Can Make You Brave:

QUIL IS BACK! This time we get to see what an amusement park looks like in outer space. Now here is my confession: I am TOTALLY vicariously living through Quil in these stories. This is pure fun and fantasy for my inner child. I ALWAYS wanted to go to a theme park as a kid. So now I get to go to one on another planet! I also really enjoy getting to spend some time and getting to know a character across multiple stories. In this installment, Quil has a birthday party at a Lava Park.  Our space friend is at a very special age, (7 Earth years), where friendship is MAGICAL!  

     I love that time in a child’s life when they are too young to care about romance or even the concept of popularity. They just love their friends. I had a few really special friends in my childhood. I remember spending several nights in a row at each other's houses. We wanted to do everything together, like tee-ball, summer camp, and birthday parties! I miss those kinds of relationships now. Adults don’t really do the slumber party thing anymore. At least not on a regular basis. So it has been really fun as a writer to revisit those kinds of childhood friendships in the Quil stories.

     Quil has some really special friends named Bula and Nova. They are inspired by two of my friends from childhood who were: A.) Really daring, B.) Really good at sports and C.) really supportive and patient with me even though I was neither A or B, but instead, was D.) a TOTAL WHIMP!!! Bula and Nova have that same kind of friendship with Quil.  I especially like that they motivate Quil to try new things, like going down a LAVA SLIDE!!! I can't wait to see what adventure little space buddies will have next!!! Friends are outta this world!

Thank YOU for being a friend!

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Fun Links:

Some Advice about Friendship

Another Cool Space Podcast

Quil's Postcards

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How A First Grade Assignment "Launched" Me:

IN THE FIRST GRADE. . .  our class read the book "Flat Stanley" by Jeff Brown. It's the story of a little boy named Stanley who flattened himself, so he could fit in envelope, and travel all around the world via the mail. We constructed our own flat people "avatars" out of colorful paper. My "Flat Angela" had big curly hair and even BIGGER glasses. I sent her to my aunt in California who promised to take Flat Angela all around the Bay Area. I couldn't wait to hear about Flat Angela's trip! I would get off the school bus and race over to the mailbox every afternoon. Days went by with no reply. But then... one by one... the postcards came in the mail. Flat Angela went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium! Flat Angela took a stroll down Fisherman's Wharf! Flat Angela EVEN got to peer over the steep rocky cliffs at Big Sur and see the Pacific ocean! 

      I cherished these postcards. They were MAGICAL to me. I wanted to send and receive even more mail! I had a few other pen pals over the years and have continued to collect postcards. Checking the mailbox each day after school was like opening a porthole of possibilities. I wanted to write a story of my own that could get children REALLY excited about... mail.

      Perhaps if the mail came from another planet? A message in a bottle rocket! Who is this letter coming from? A cool space friend named Quil!!! I began to imagine a whole 'nother planet called Quark, where the little space friend would live. Quil may be from another planet but by becoming pen pals and exchanging postcards, Earth Kids just may find they have a lot in common!

I still collect postcards. Some even date back to the early 1900's

 

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Fun Links:

Space Facts

Science Kids