320 Book: 'Winnie's Whoosh Went Walkabout'

Meet our read-aloud story for June

Heya! Here are the first ten pages of our new story, “Winnie’s Whoosh Went Walkabout.”

(You can download the entire PDF below.)

Happy reading,

Jeff and Bob …

… who believe that reading with kids can change the world for the better.

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Imagine you've just lost a backpack or ball,
or a library book and the book's overdue. 
You'll think of the places you've been and you'll call.
Someone will have it. They'll hold it for you. 

Okay, now imagine that you've lost your Whoosh.
Where do you ... What? You don't know what that means?
A Whoosh is what gets you up off of your toosh,
and do-ing and you-ing away from your screens.

Say you paint with your feet or you dance on both hands,
construct a cool castle from corks you collected,
or like to do things no one else understands,
and do them when doing them's NOT what's expected.

Say you go off alone for long walks in the woods,
or sneak out at night to watch far stars parading.
If you tend to ignore all the oughts and the shoulds,
your Whoosh is what pushes away the afraiding.

Your Whoosh gives you poems, new colors in art,
suggestions you find inconveniently true,
Your Whoosh is the part that says, "Follow your heart.
Follow the way meant for Y-O-U you."

The thing about Whooshes though — they're pretty shy.
If they feel forgotten or smothered or swirled,
they may leave you one night without saying goodbye.
And then you'll be Whooshless, adrift in the world.

That's what had happened in a town called Yagott,
where people liked thing-ing. It's what they called "fun."
If they weren't thing-ing they watched screens a lot. 
That's why they were Whooshless. (Well, all except one.)

Their Whooshlessness caused them to live life out-loudly.
On weekends they trooped to the Thing-a-Lot store,
Yagotters were groupers. They went places crowdly.
Their motto was "Nothing's enough when there's more!"

They craved shiny treasures and treasured distraction, 
like fireworks shows that could make them applaud
or shoot-em-up movies that jangled with action.
Only one had a Whoosh, and she was a bit odd. 

While other Yagotters spent lots of time counting,
this girl, Winnie Wisp, really didn't like math.
While others used counting to rank their amounting,
this girl and her Whoosh walked a different path.

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Download the PDF below to read the whole book.

Winnie's Whoosh Went Walkabout Substack

14.4MB ∙ PDF file

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