Hello there Today is an especially beautiful day at Newville Elementary What makes it so beautiful Well it's partly the smiling faces of the children but it's mostly Goat's new hat It's a true work of art covered in feathers and glitter and only the shiniest tin cans He even included a pudding dispenser on one side which is a huge improvement on our school's previous pudding distribution method But Goat isn't the only one with a
creative streak Students staff and and have all found clever ways to express themselves For example Les 1 writes starchbased starchbased haiku Declan constantly explores new and musical ways to row his boat and I Gertie create exciting unexpected waxy spots on Newville's floors which leads to lots of creative shouting and falling If i'm interpreting the screaming correctly and i'm pretty sure I am people are inspired by my custodial selfexpression selfexpression and enjoy adding their own contributions to it Today's story is about Tiana Daniels a talented artist who accidentally slid over the line between inspiration and appropriation and turned herself and her friends into people she hardly recognized Tiana woke with a feeling of dread that followed her all the way to school During
breakfast she sat in the Cafetorium with her sketchbook open in front of her as usual but the pages were blank And she hadn't even touched her oatmeal bar Les 1's oatmeal bars were chewy and gooey and full of oats chocolate chips and some secret ingredient that they had promised was not the leftover tofurkey jerky that nobody likes and I can never get rid of Reassured that tofurkey jerky was absolutely not the secret ingredient no one minded that it took a lot of energetic chewing to get one of the bars down normally Tiana enjoyed the challenge of gnawing away at her breakfast bar before the bell rang for class But today she was entirely focused on the blank wall between the basketball hoop and the bleachers That very afternoon the plain white brick was due to be transformed into a beautiful colorful mural And Tiana was in charge of making it happen which was super exciting And also kind of terrifying
