Somebody Put My Book On A Walking Trail

Somebody took my book apart and bolted it to a walking trail.

That is not a complaint. It is one of my favorite things that has ever happened to one of these books.

This is the whole idea, right here. Photo courtesy of Seneca Parents as Teachers.

What a StoryWalk actually is

You take a picture book, blow the pages up to 18 inches by 24 inches, mount them on posts, and space them out along a path. Kids walk from sign to sign and read the whole book on their feet, outside, without a screen anywhere near them.

Page one is by the parking lot. The ending is a quarter mile away. To find out what happens, you have to keep walking.

Whoever thought of that is smarter than I am.

Petey is in a park in Joplin, Missouri

In March, Petey Perfectpants and the Silly Sock Puppet Problem went up along the walking trail at Leonard Park in Joplin. It was put there by One Joplin, working with Freeman Health System, Ozark Center, and Joplin Parks and Recreation.

The Joplin Globe covered it on March 13. Their reporter, Kimberly Barker, wrote that pages of the book "are displayed in 18-inch-by-24-inch signs along the walking trail at Leonard Park."

Nicole Brown, who runs One Joplin, told the paper: "This is such a special project that hits every age group."

They threw a Story Unveiling Celebration for it on March 12, with free books and crafts.

She's right, and here's the part I didn't expect. A StoryWalk isn't only for the kid. It's for the grandmother walking the loop who reads page six because it's there. It's for the dad who came to walk the dog. The book stops being something you buy and becomes something that's just around.

And there are three more

Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book is installed at the Texas County Library in Missouri and at the YWCA in Lubbock, Texas.

And Petey went up a second time, at Coloma Park in Coloma, Wisconsin, announced on the noticeboard at the Coloma Public Library.

The noticeboard at Coloma Public Library. "Walk the new StoryWalk at the Coloma Park."

I have not been to any of the four. I found out about Joplin because somebody sent me the newspaper story, and about Coloma because somebody took a picture of a corkboard.

That is a strange feeling to describe. I wrote that book at a desk in Orlando. It is now standing up outdoors in Missouri and Texas, being read by kids whose names I will never know, while I am here doing something else entirely.

How the big ones get made

The large-format editions are produced by The Storybook Company, run by Kelley Donner at storybookwalk.com. She makes laminated StoryWalk editions of picture books and sells them to the people who install them, which is usually a library, a parks department, a school or a community group.

Three of mine are available as StoryWalk editions right now: Petey Perfectpants and the Silly Sock Puppet Problem, Professor Nincompoop, and Look! There Are No Dinos Inside Of This Book.

If you want one on your trail

This part is for the librarians, the parks and rec people, the PTO parent who has been asked to come up with something, and the teacher who wants the walking path behind the school to do more than sit there.

You don't need my permission and you don't need to email me. Go to storybookwalk.com, pick the book you want, and order the StoryWalk edition. Kelley handles the rest. She ships it laminated and ready to mount.

If you'd rather have the regular hardcover for the classroom too, my books are here and I'll sign them. And if you want me to actually show up, I do school visits, where I read from these and bring the puppets.

If you do install one of mine, send me a photo. I would genuinely love to see it.

Magically,
Jimmy