If you’re making a book about your dogs hiding in vehicles

You’ll want to consider the scale of the vehicles.

If you’re making a book about your dogs hiding in vehicles, you’ll want to consider the scale of the vehicles. If the car is too small, you won’t really have any hiding spots. If the truck is too big, the dogs will be too small and possibly too hard to find. But if you decide to include the tiniest vehicle and the biggest truck anyway, you’ll find a way to make it work.

Boo has some Dalmation in him. Just saying.

Let’s say you choose a firetruck. That’s really big. And let’s say you go to the fire station where your friend Kyla volunteers. You might be lucky enough to meet Chief Ryan, who will show you his truck collection. And the choice will be obvious: you want to use the biggest truck with the yellow flames painted on the front. Chief Ryan might also talk about having kids later in life. He might suggest that the first part of his life was for him, and now he gets to take everything he’s learned and give it to someone else. This little story might stay with you.

Halfmoon Bay is maybe the best town name.

Now, you didn’t expect to take the photo on this sunny morning in March, but you did bring Scout the teddy bear just in case you did. If you’re lucky, Chief Ryan will graciously pull the big truck up to the side of the building and let you and your dogs goof around for an hour or so. If you’re extra lucky, a fire won’t break out while you’re there.

I hope this page is sufficiently fun.

In a different scene, you might also want to choose the tiniest car you can think of. Like that Little Tikes car that every kid has in their yard. But then you wonder how you’ll find a hiding spot for two big dogs in a car that they’d barely fit in? And then you remember your mastery of the fine art of building things out of cardboard. A skill that converts your living room into a tiny town for about a month in preparation. A skill that is not practical in any way except to entertain yourself and anyone else that might share an obsession with LEGO.

Making tiny people for a tiny town is fun.

You might build this town, and take your photo, and wonder what to do with this tiny little town made of cardboard. But, if fate is on your side, you might get a message from a teacher at a nearby elementary school that suggests her class would be entertained by this tiny town.

Those are tiny little shoes, if you’re wondering.

You might end up bringing this tiny town to this elementary school. And learn that it’s actually really fun to make things with a room full of kids, and you’ll fill the little town with funny little people of all sizes that you spend all morning making together.

The last time I saw tiny town, it looked like this.

And you might want to return again some time later, and see what a book making workshop might look like with these same kids. And if you’re really, really lucky, you might get a gift one morning on your doorstep: a big book of thank you notes that all the kids you met made for you. And on one of those notes, a little girl might write “PS. Your books don’t show the dog bodys”. And you’ll have a little laugh, and ponder that for a moment.

All because you wanted to include a tiny car in your book.

Thank you for the book of thank yous, Langdale Elementary kids.

Ember, owner of the Little Tikes car I borrowed for the book, showing the book to her Little Tikes car.

Are the dogs hard to find? Maybe not. But is this book make for brand new brains? Absolutely.