Thirteen Chapters (Stories for Children in Which Simple Things Happen)

Each chapter in Thirteen Chapters tells a simple story of something simple that happens. In Chapter One, for example, a fish is invented, craves water, finds a river - as abbreviated as that. In Chapter Two grass is invented, then a bird, then a worm, then rain. Sometimes things happen in sequence, sometimes all at once: "There is a cat. There is a dog. The dog barks." An action can result in a chain reaction: a monkey smiles, a second monkey smiles, a third monkey smiles. Altogether, we delight in finding our intuitions confirmed, that wishing, thinking, doing are all connected. It's delightful that a fish exists, that it wishes for water, that it finds a river. Where is that fish? Where is the river the fish finds? How did he get there? These are questions for the reader to ask and answer. It's up to the reader to fill in the blanks. Connections, interjections, delight. Perhaps instead of the sparest of stories we might call these chapters the sparest of poems with illustrations to match the sparseness of the text.