The Big Booger Bubble
Today at school, I was in the art room with a bunch of the older girls, one of whom—Charlotte, irrepressible scamp that she is—was making the whole table laugh hysterically by telling them about the big booger bubble she had blown out of her nose.
“The big booger bubble!” I said. “That sounds like it ought to be a story.”
“YES!” Charlotte commanded. “Make it. Right now. Make the story.”
So I did.
THE BIG BOOGER BUBBLE
A Story for Charlotte
One time there was a girl who had SUCH a stuffed up nose…
…such a stuffy, snuffly, horky, honky, stopped-up snorker of a grotty snotty sniffer…
That when she took a deep breath in, and blew a deep breath out—
AH CHOO!
She sneezed!
And from out her left nostril came a big booger bubble!
She blew! Whew! and she blew! Phew! And that big booger bubble blew up too. It blew up just like a balloon, and SOON, the big booger bubble was the biggest thing for miles.
It was bigger than her nose. It was bigger than her face. It was big enough that astronauts could see it down from space.
The girl puffed and snuffed, sniffed and whiffed, and in no time at all she was flying through the air. She was pulled up in the clouds by the big booger bubble.
The wind blew her south, it blew her north, it blew her east-northwest by south-southeast until it blew her straight into a flock of geese flying down for the winter.
HONK!
SPLAT!
Those beaky geese popped the big booger bubble!
There was a LOT of SNOT and it fell down like rain. Snot in the fields, snot in the plains. Later in the spring snot-weeds grew in all the farms, bearing gloopy gloppy nose-fruit that sold poorly in the markets.
But as for the girl, she windskated down on the wings of the geese and landed soft and safe in her own backyard where she went off, searching for a hankie.
December 2nd, 2011 at 10:56 am
THAT is a great children’s story. It’s a coincidence that Mark and I actually witnessed Davy make a huge bubble out of his left nostril last week when he sneezed, but it wasn’t quite as big as his head. I don’t recall ever having witnessed anything quite that funny, and I laughed until tears flowed. Robin was concerned that I was actually crying-sad. So, do you know a good artist to illustrate your story for the book?
December 2nd, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Thanks, mom. The kids were in stitches, so I was pleased with it.
And the other parents were all saying “you should publish that!” so I actually looked into it a little bit. It turns out that all the major publishing houses keep their own in-house artists, so they don’t want you to submit art with the story. Unfortunately, the picture book market is even more dire than the rest of the publishing industry (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/08picture.html), and according to all the industry chatter I can find, it’s now basically impossible to get published as a children’s book author without prior connections. E-publishing isn’t really a good option for picture books, yet, either, although Amazon is trying to change that with the Kindle Fire.
December 2nd, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Loved the story!! It has brightened a very tiresome Friday afternoon. Love to you, Sam and the boys.
December 2nd, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Thank you! That reminds me — we need to figure out when we can come down and see you next. I’ll ask Sam when he gets home!
December 12th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Hi Shannon – I came back to your blog to search for Potty Training experiences as Calvin is stubbon and he insistes NO to potty. I found similiar experiences with Robin so we will just wait, I guess?
You wrote a very cute story ! I remember I read a story from a new author from Cheerios and it was a some kind of new author contest. So I found the link of the program in case you are interested.Maybe you can try next year? 🙂
http://pages.simonandschuster.com/spoonfulsofstories/author-contest
December 14th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Aw, thank you!
With Robin the potty training happened very quickly once he was finally ready. It really just was a matter of waiting (…and waiting!) for the right time.
July 18th, 2012 at 6:12 am
[…] This one’s going out to Shannon Phillips, with a flourishing wave of my hat to The Big Booger Bubble. […]