Pop! Sparks leap off the log. A blue flame winds and flickers. Searching, twisting, whistling into the night. Rhythmic voices echo as shadows dance past lines and symbols. Painted hands, big and small, tell of generations.

It all started with a word.

Stories have been told since the beginning of time. Passed down they form a collective memory of truth, folklore and legend. Oral traditions gave way to shapes and pictures, and eventually to written words.

From then, till now, the custom of storytelling has prevailed. We speak them around camp fires, in academic circles, in daily interactions, and we read them to ourselves and our children. They shape us, teach lessons, add entertainment, and spread our religious beliefs.

The Greats.

There were the great storytellers who have remained through the ages.

Homer, a Greek who lived sometime around the 8th century BC, was an author and epic poet. He wrote “The Iliad”, and “The Odyssey.” Little, if anything, is known about Homer, other than his name was attached by the ancient Greeks to these culture-shaping epic stories.

Aesop, born in 620 BC, told the famous fables like, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” and “The Tortoise and the Hare.” He was said to have been a slave who won his freedom through cleverness. It is unclear if Aesop wrote the stories down, or if they were written down by others centuries later.

More recently were the Brothers Grimm. Born in the late 1700’s, the two brothers were linguistic scholars, and are most famously known for searching cultures far and wide and compiling folklore and fairytales. Sharing such works as “Snow White,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” Many of these tales they gathered through oral origins, with a few having come from written sources.

What’s in a story?

We treasure these and other famous works, collect them, display them on bookshelves, and coffee tables.

But have we ever taken notice of the stories our kids tell? Not only the ones they tell us, but the ones they tell themselves? Children are constantly making up stories while they play. Giving us a glimpse into who they are and what they think. A front row seat into their world.

Reimagining bedtime stories for generations.

My daughter started making her own little books when she was four. They started with sparsely spaced stickers on paper. She would point to these stickers and tell us all about what was happening with them. Eventually, she progressed to stapled paper with long strings of letters and no spaces. Those letters did phonetically spell out words that were all smushed together. At age seven, she began doing intricate drawings for her fun stories. Each year her stories and writing grew more elaborate. Some were just for fun, while others were beyond her years in creativity. She had a knack for showing, not just telling her story.

One day I noticed the bookshelves in our home. As much as we adore these old and new writings, how much more do we cherish the writings of our ancestors and loved ones?

Old letters, notes, signatures, even words on documents offer a window into their personality, life, and world. The days of hand written words are disappearing from our culture. And so, we value these things all the more.

I realized I wanted to give my daughter, and my family, a place on the bookshelf. A place with all the greats. Because they are the greatest of them all to me. So, it has become a heart mission to help my loved ones, and other people’s loved ones, tell their story. To preserve a piece of them for future generations.

This is why I have been busy creating journals and professionally bound blank books to aid in this endeavor. Because someone so special deserved to have something more than staples.

There’s only one rule for anyone who uses these books. And that is that there are no rules. I simply want people to write and draw and tell their stories out of inspiration and joy, not out of making them grammatically perfect. I want it to be authentically them.

What a treasure these books will be. 

Written by Michelle Tweed