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Children's / T-rex learns to Share (Analysis)
Tiberius Rex was a leopard gecko. He was named after his grandfather, who was named after his grandfather and so on down the line, his mom said, for as long as anyone could remember. Tiberius was an old dignified name, but only his mother called him that, his friends called him ‘T’.
T lived under a rock in dry, warm tunnels not far from a bubbling brook with his mother and four noisy sisters: Kylee, Grace, Lynne and baby Agnes.
On warm summer days, T loved to lie on his favorite rock and soak up warmth from the sun. On hot summer days, he played hide-and-seek or tag with his friends in tunnels under the rocks where the earth was cool.
If his room was clean and he hadn’t pushed his toys under the bed, every Friday his mother gave him an allowance of one dollar. T could do whatever he wanted with his money. Usually he put it in his bank to save up for a large human he saw in the toy store window. The man walked around on two legs and made funny noises. His friend, Darien, already had one.
One Friday, he went shopping with his mom after school. She bent over the worms picking which she liked best. T couldn’t figure out why she was taking so long to choose. They all looked delicious to him.
He wandered to a large display of candy. There were rows and rows of brightly-wrapped treats: chocolate with nuts, chocolate with raspberry, crunch bars, licorice and chocolate dipped crickets.
The coins from his allowance jingled in his pocket. T hadn’t put them in his bank yet. His mouth watered. Chocolate bars were one of his favorite things.
“Mom, I think I’ll spend my allowance on candy.” He said as his mom walked up.
“Are you sure?” She asked. “I thought you were saving for a human.”
T’s mouth watered some more. “I am. I’ll save next week’s allowance.”
“Okay, Sweetheart, just don’t eat any before dinner. Hurry up.”
T looked at all the candy. He had enough money for four but there were so many choices! He finally decided on three plain chocolate and one crunch bar but at the cashier, T had to borrow a few pennies from his mom. Who ever thought up tax anyway?
When they finished putting away the groceries at home, T took the bars into his room, closed his bedroom door and took out the special box he hid under his bed. Even though it had a lock, T hid it from his sisters. You never knew with sisters. He put his candy bars inside, slid it back under his bed and put the key in super secret spot behind his dresser.
The next day after lunch, he pulled out his box and selected a plain chocolate bar.
“What’s that?”
It was T’s younger sister, Grace, standing by the door to his room.
“It’s a chocolate bar. I bought it with my own money.” T said un-wrapping the gold foil from the bar.
“Can I have a bite?” asked Grace.
T scowled. “No, I bought this with my own money, if you want a candy bar, go use your money.”
Grace sighed and wandered down the hallway.
T knew Grace didn’t have money to buy candy; she spent all her allowances on ballerina lizards and silly things like that.
He took a big bite of his chocolate bar, it melted in his mouth. T grabbed the crunch bar and another chocolate bar, stored them in his backpack with the new kickball his grandma had sent him in the mail and ran out to play.
All his friends were in the field playing ball.
“Hey, T.” Connor called.
“Hi, Connor.” T replied. Connor was one of T’s best friends. They’d lived next door to each other since they were eggs.
“You want to play?” Connor asked running up to T.
“In a minute, T said, peeling the wrapper from his crunch bar.
“Oh, that looks good; can I have a piece, please?” Connor asked.
T looked from the candy bar to his friend. “No, I bought them with my own money. They’re mine.”
“Gosh T, you have two. Can’t I have a little of one?”
“No. I only have one chocolate and one crunch bar. If you want a candy bar, go buy one with your own money.”
Connor shook his head then ran back to the game.
T finished both candy bars then sat in the shade, throwing his ball up in the air and catching it with both paws. It was new; he didn’t want to get it dirty.
Suddenly, one of the boys yelled. They all raced toward the river. T ran over to see what the fuss was about.
“Hey Connor, what happened?”
“Ian kicked the ball into the river and we can’t get it out.” Connor said.
The boys watched the ball slowly drift downstream.
“Yeah but it’s a home run!” Ian exclaimed.
“No. It doesn’t count if we have to stop playing.” Darien said.
T thought Darien’s team must be losing.
“Yes it does!” Ian swished his tail.
“T, you have a ball, come on. Let’s play!” Connor said.
T looked down at his shiny, clean ball. “No, I don’t want it to get dirty.”
“Come on, T; it has to get dirty sometime. Let’s play, you can be pitcher.” Ian offered.
“No. My grandma just gave it to me. It’s new.”
Connor scratched at the ground with one paw. “T. there’s no other ball.”
T shook his head.
“Come on guys, Darien said, “let’s do something else.”
T watched as they all shuffled back over the field casting dirty looks over their shoulders.
He didn’t care. T tossed the ball a few more times up into the clear blue sky and swack, safe into his paws.
Across the field, the boys started growling and shouting at each other. T looked up to see his friends playing soldiers. Soldiers were one of his favorite games. T ran over. “Hey, guys, which team can I be on?”
Darien put down his stick. “We don’t want you to play with us.”
“Hey, Connor, can I be on your team?” T asked.
“T, why don’t you just go home?” Connor replied.
T trudged home, kicking a pine cone along the dusty road, feeling sorry for himself.
“And what’s wrong with you?” his mother asked as T trudged into the kitchen, his tail dragging along the floor.
“Nobody wants to play with me.” T replied
“What happened?”
T shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. They’re mad because I didn’t share my new ball.”
“I see.” T’s mom stopped washing dishes and put a glass of fresh carrot juice and two cricket cookies in front of T. “Why didn’t you share your ball?”
“Because it’s new and I didn’t want to.”
“Well Tiberius. It’s your choice to share your ball or not but you have to accept the consequences that go with your decision.”
“Consequences?”
“Consequences are the things that happen after you make a choice. In this case, the consequence of not sharing is your friends don’t want to play with you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe they think you’re not being fair either.”
T finished his cricket cookie and juice, “Thanks mom, I’m going back outside now.”
T walked along the brook throwing his ball high in the blue sky and catching it, whack, in his paws. He could hear his friends laughing in the field.
The ball went up, down, up, down, up, down…. T caught it then slouched against a tree trunk holding the ball between his knees. It wasn’t much fun playing alone. Maybe he wasn’t being fair. T thought about how much fun he’d had when he’d shared the super-worm bars his mom sent to school as a surprise for his birthday. Now, he felt lonely.
T stood up and ran home, grabbed his last candy bar from its hiding place and dashed back to the field. “Hey, guys, I’m sorry I didn’t share. You still want to play ball?”
“Yeah, T, thanks.” Connor said.
“Want a piece of chocolate?”
T broke off pieces, and gave them to his friends making sure to save one piece for his sister, Grace.
“Okay guys, let’s play.”
Playing with his friends was one of T’s favorite things.
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this was wonderful!!! i loved reading it, and he so totally learned his lesson!!! when i saw the title, i thought it was gonna be about the dinosaur t-rex, and imagine my surprise when it wasn’t!! i love the title!! great! i would definitely read it to the kindergarteners i work with. they would love this story!!!
i think you do a wonderful job of giving your characters life. while they’re talking, they’re doing things, like with ian swishing his tail and connor scratching the ground with one paw. that’s awesome!! i could totally picture them doing that. and the part about how they’d lived next to each other since they were eggs!!! i loved it!!
one thing: i don’t really see the point in mentioning all the names of his sisters, because you really only include one of them in the story. i think you could probably take that out, but that’s your choice. :-)
great story!! i wish i could read it to my K’s right now!!!
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I read this to my 8yr old nephew and 4 yr old niece and they loved it. They have difficulty sharing too so it was a great experience to read this and them like it so much and have them ask questions. I most definately think this should be published great job.
I have kids that are 3 and 8 and this is story I feel would actually fall between them. The story is too long for the attention span of the average 4 year old, and too simple for an 8 year old. The language is accessible to most children, and the story is engaging. One of the nitpicks my 8 year old would point out is that the lizard eats chocolate and bugs, and that the lizard lives in tunnels by a brook. Leopeard geckos eat bugs and live in the desert. She is a stickler for details, as are a lot of children that age. Could the lizard eat a chocolate cricket crunch bar? It doesn’t have to lose whimsy but be consistent in the details.
The story was clearly written, and had a great lesson in it about sharing and making friends. The only things that jumped out at me were the sentences that ran into the next sentence instead of having a period. Look for the sentences that read like a complete sentence and put a period there instead of a comma.
Also, the sentence length needs to be much shorter for the 4 – 8 year-old category. That, or make it for an older age group?
You had some really fun details about wanting to buy a human, the cricket cookies, etc. Good luck with this! I gave this a 6 for overall publishability, since it wouldn’t work, in my opinion, for the age group you mentioned. If the sentence length was shorter, yes.
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