In the Jones house we are spending a portion of this winter authoring and illustrating books.  Well, mostly Ashton is.  I have helped by stapling paper together into several simple books and typing/printing the dictated stories.  Below is a sampling of several pages of our author/illustrator’s most recent work.  The best part about making these books is seeing how excited Ashton gets when it is all finished and she sees a real book, with art and words, that she made herself.  Her eyes literally light up, her mind soaks it the words as if hearing them for the first time, and she laughs at all the jokes she wrote.  This book continues to be one of our daily reading requests.

This particular story was turned into a family play, which was so fun for all of us.   Cedar was excited about being the bad guy, kidnapping people, and killing the witch, as it meant he could spend the majority of his time stabbing with a sword (no, I’m pretty sure we didn’t teach him that), and Ashton was happy not only to be the princess and to do “dramatic” to its full extent, but also to see her story in action.  I enjoyed watching it all happen, getting stabbed by Cedar (I was the witch being conquered) and kissed by Ashton (I was the queen reuniting with my kidnapped daughter), and especially watching Matt being so willing and so silly.