A Bunny Story By Crispina (as dictated -- absolutely verbatim, says the scribe -- to Hilaria)

So Crispina loves to make books. Grab a bunch of printer paper, run it through the three-hole punch, tie it together with pieces of yarn, and there you are:  a book crying out to be written in. For this one, she went so far as to draw lines, as on notebook paper, on all the pages that she didn't illustrate with smiley-face flowers. Anyway, 14-year-old Hilaria, who is spending the week with us, was so good as to write down the following as it spilled from the lips of the author:

Down beneath the sunny banks of a shore lived a rabbit and his family and they liked to play under an oak tree. The little rabbits liked to fish for fish and they liked to play with their friend Squirrel. They had fish dinner every night and they liked flowers.

One of the bunnies liked to think that the flowers were smiling at him. Momma bunny thought she liked to think that, too.

When the skies were gray all the bunnies liked to sit by the fire. When the skies were sunny they liked to run and play. Even Momma bunny and father bunny. Every night when the stars were out they liked to have Momma bunny's good fish stew.

Momma bunny called her siblings to come jump into bed at the end of the moving day. Momma bunny said, "In the morning, Father bunny will wake you up to explore with Red Squirrel." "Whee!"

In the morning father bunny woke them up like mother bunny said. She sent them out to play and explore with Red Squirrel. When they finished exploring with Red Squirrel, Mother bunny invited them all in to have some cool chocolate milk.

When they played hide and seek it was fun because they could run fast. Even Red Squirrel.

When the sunny bright day was new, they all woke up with a startle! It felt like yesterday was a hundred years ago.

First they washed the dishes, then they swept the parlor, then they looked at the clock, then Rosie said it was one. Second, Momma bunny woke with a startle, a clatter of dishes being put away and dust being swept into the wastebin.

Mother bunny said, "My, my! You children have been working all morning!"

Father bunny had been up all along of their cleaning. He heard voices like thunder. He thought that they had been up all night! They had breakfast as soon as Dad bunny said that. Then Jamie said that she wanted to cook a apple pie.

After breakfast they washed and bathed as Momma bunny said. After they cleaned theirselves, they played with Red Squirrel. Then the water turned into ice in the freezer. When it was finished freezing, they had a piece of ice and they wanted to play some more. So they did play some more. When they were tucked into bed, they slept.

After the morning's coming, Red Squirrel's daddy came to deliver the mail. Red Squirrel came along with him. Daddy bunny answered the door and got the mail.

The End.

And I have typed it out just as it appears in the book, minus the illustrations, which are very cheerful.

Speaking of the author, she fell on the front steps last night and cut her knee badly enough to require five stitches. The author's mother revealed herself to be a bit of a wuss when it comes to gaping bloody wounds;  the author's daddy, who is not a wuss about anything, scooped her up, carted her to the emergency room, read to her for roughly four hours straight from a collection of Little Golden Books, and then, when she was all sewn together again, took her out for a late-night burger and strawberry milkshake.

Today she's no worse for the wear, though a little stiff and sore in that knee. Helier, who had tried unsuccessfully to wait up for her last night, greeted her this morning with breakfast in bed -- my bed, thank you very much -- and welcomed her to "the scar family."

Dad has an old knee-surgery scar;  Mom has a scar from falling down and cutting her knee when she was nine and hiding it from everyone for two weeks afterwards (because she already had a broken arm in a cast and wasn't supposed to be playing in a sprinkler at her friend's house where it happened, that's why).  

Amicus has one scar, under his eye, from falling against a chest of drawers when he was two, and another on his scalp where his birthmark used to be. 

Helier, at three,  cut his head bouncing on a bed and had to be glued together -- I was in New York at the time and talking to Aelred on the telephone, when without warning he handed the phone to Amicus and I found myself involved in some Star Wars conversation.

When Aelred came back, he said, "Well, it's stopped bleeding, but we do have to go to the emergency room now."

Only Epiphany is scarless, though she did once, in Cambridge,  slice her thumb with a saw. She was seven, and I had given her the saw and some wood to saw. It was a very small saw, but quite functional.