Ten-Word Tiny Tales to Inspire and Unsettle is curiously amazing

Start with a hook. If it’s a great hook then I won’t change the channel. If it’s a lame hook then you’re quickly going somewhere else. When I teach creative writing I use that analogy and the students completely understand it. Ten-Word Tiny Tales to Inspire and Unsettle is exactly what the title says it is. It’s a handful of stories, more accurately opening lines from stories that haven’t been told, that open up unlimited potential as to what they could become. Being that they are only ten words they have the capacity to be understood by children, yet some of the words and concepts are very dreamy, abstract, or nonsensical. It’s a very curious book indeed.

But think about it, some of the best children’s books are very curious. They open up a world of wonder, get children to think about something outside of their box, and to maybe even see the world just a bit differently. Thanks to the illustrations that each tiny tale in the book is paired with, Ten-Word Tiny Tales does just that.

Author Joseph Coelho partnered with 21 illustrators who helped add context, clarity, and enjoyment to the ten-word statements. This allows children to be able to use context clues to understand what the words are saying, even if it’s an odd word that they don’t know. Moreover, it’s the more mature statements that we adults could read and understand, but those school-age kids wouldn’t get the full meaning behind them.

For example, “’Invite me in’, she says outside of my tenth-story window” is easy enough to understand without any visuals. There’s some sort of spectral anomaly outside the window of a condominium asking to be let in. Kids can read that and understand it, but when it’s paired with a night-time illustration of a white dog levitating while a little girl looks on from inside the apartment, it’s spooky.

This one is a bit more ethereal, “The diver swims into the carnival; radio contact is lost.” Young readers will be able to consume the sentence, but understanding it might take more life experience. Is it a metaphor? Is a diver really swimming to a carnival, but then their radio cuts out? The illustration in Ten-Word Tiny Tales takes the latter route and shows us a distressed-looking SCUBA diver looking on at the big tops in the distance.

Each one of them ends in a statement, yet asks a question. They end with a period, but demand that readers think about what happens next. This is integral to crafting a great story. I’m teaching a class now on creative writing to AP seniors in high school. Specifically, they’re creating their college essays and I was explaining to them how the first two sentences has the power to make or break the reader’s interest.

Ten-Word Tiny Tales crackles with fire to readers who have the life experiences needed to fully understand them. The illustrations in the book do the other part of the heavy lifting by showing younger readers what the abstract words could possibly mean. Those younger readers won’t be able to conceptualize those sentences yet, much less the deeper thoughts that they might infer from them. It’s the combination of the two that makes the book so curious to elementary school readers.

They might not know what they mean, but they won’t be able to stop thinking about them. Some of the sentences would even qualify as the absurd, chaotic things that those who are intent on wasting time would say. These are the beginnings of potentially brilliant stories. However, in these instances, they’re just a snapshot of a story, complete with illustrations that’ll intoxicate young readers in their possibilities and silliness. It’s a children’s book, but it operates at a higher level, without making the younger readers feel insignificant, which makes for a great book at any age.

Ten-Word Tiny Tales: To Inspire and Unsettle is by Joseph Coehlo with illustrations by Nahid Kazemi, Reggie Brown, Chuck Groenink, Raissa Figueroa, Yas Imamura, Alex T. Smith, Camilla Sucre, Karl James Mountford, Ferya Hartas, Flavia Z. Drago, Dap Adeola, Yoko Tanaka, Daishu Ma, Katie May Green, Shaun Tan, Julia Sarda, Mariachiarar Di Giorgio, Thea Lu, Dena Seiferling, Maja Kastelic, and Helen Stephens,   and is available on Candlewick Press and distributed by Penguin Random House.

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