The Story Factory by Jam Dong
Once upon a time, all the books in the world were manufactured at one place - the Story Factory!
The workers at the story factory know exactly what it takes to make a book: characters, a plot, vocabulary, and punctuation. All the same elements are used over and over again, and everything has a precise order. Nothing new or original is ever added to the stories. But one day the factory suddenly stops producing books, as the machinery seizes up. The workers must locate and remove the blockage, but no matter what they try - sorting the characters back into categories, resequencing the plots, adjusting emotions, vocabulary and punctuation - the machine refuses to work. And then they investigated the mixer where the ingredients were combined into new books and something amazing happens....
This is a wonderful story about the notion that while the best stories may all have the same key elements - setting, plot, character, emotions, problem, solution, conclusion - it is that magical ingredient of an individual's imagination that turns them from a book to a story. So while we might teach students about the mechanics of constructing a tale, it is that special ability to change the scaffold into a unique building by being free to create rather than constrained to conform that makes the difference.
Young readers will enjoy this story for what it is and delight in its message of allowing themselves to be taken on a journey by their imagination to who knows what destination, but older readers might also see it as an allegory for the impact of imposition whether that be everyone having to read the same books, having to learn the same things at school, having to hold the same beliefs and values as directed by the government or any other form of censorship that stifles individuality and imagination. What are the intentions and implications of such restrictions? Opportunities to investigate things like Prohibition in the US, conflict and revolutions in countries, perhaps even the tactics of the Make America Great Again movement... Just as the Story Factory becomes decentralised so it meets the needs of the people, should other things become so, too? Is there a place or a need for out-of-the-box thinking and activity? Or is there a place for centralisation and conformity? Is there a happy medium?
The one common element of stories not attended to by the factory workers is the opportunity to provide food for thought - and this one certainly does that!
Themes: Books and reading, Factories.
Barbara Braxton