Wren — Storybook

In a soft watercolor picture-book style, make a storybook for my cousin Dashiell, who just left our grandmother's house for a first apartment three states away.

Storybook Preview

I've put together a storybook for a young-adult reader that follows Dashiell as he packs the last of his childhood room and learns to make a home out of an unfamiliar city. I hope it holds onto both the nerves and the quiet thrill of a first move.

Wren can make mistakes — double-check anything that matters.

Dashiell

The cardboard boxes were stacked like a fortress around Dashiell's childhood bed. For nineteen years these walls had held his posters, his secrets, and his half-finished plans. Now they held only the echo of his footsteps. He tucked a warped sketchbook into the last box, feeling the odd weight of a chapter closing. Outside, the sun was climbing, laying long shadows across the floor he had crawled on as a toddler and paced on as a nervous seventeen-year-old. His grandmother waited in the doorway with a shortbread tin that had not held shortbread since April. Take it anyway, she said. You'll want something of ours in a kitchen that isn't.