Edwardsville Book Festival, One Year Later: When a Seven-Year-Old's Question About a Broken Fish Finally Got Its Answer (And 48 Families Picked the Page) 🐟🐾
Last October, at the Edwardsville Book Festival, a girl about seven years old stopped at our table and put her finger on the cover of Bionic Finns.
She traced the crack in the fish. Then she looked up and asked the only question that mattered.
"Why is it broken?"
Her mom and I gave her some answer. We don't remember what. Whatever it was, it wasn't good enough, because I've been working on a better one for a year.
To answer the question from Edwardsville Book Festival took two thousand miles
The 4Wins5 Mill left Edwardsville area, Alton, IL river front specifically, and kept going. Texas. The Gulf. Courtrooms where families had no lawyer and a screen-time log was being used as evidence against an unrepresented parent and grandparents. Frisco, where we found out that startup programs built for disabled entrepreneurs were quietly shutting out the people who don't type fast or talk easily.
Then Orlando. Then Moorpark, California, at the Teaching Zoo, with Nathaniel's Hope.
We brought three coloring pages to Moorpark and let people choose. No pitch, no explanation. Just three stacks and a cup of crayons.
48 pages went home. 12 picked STOP. 12 picked WAIT. 24 picked PET THE DOG.
Half of everything taken. Second event in a row where the dog won.
What a mother said while her son colored
She was there with a non-verbal young adult. We told her about the coloring book we're building for next year.
She said they'd probably rather have single pages.
Not a book. Pages. One at a time. Tear it out, hand it over, finish it in one sitting, done.
That's a year of planning redirected by one sentence from one person who actually knows.
Which is roughly how this is supposed to work.
Who keeps the score
Here's the part the girl's question was really about.
Your phone counts every minute you give it. Streaks, watch time, engagement — a complete ledger, and it never forgets a second.
Now name the thing that counted the walk you took instead. The twenty minutes on the floor with the dog. The nap. The call with your mother.
Nothing counted those. No board anywhere noticed.
That's why the fish is broken. Not because something bit it. Because only one side was ever keeping score, and the side that keeps score wins by default.
Three paw prints
So future new pages will have three small paw prints in the corner. See it. Choose. Bank it. You color in the one you reached.
We call them running lights. On a vehicle, running lights aren't for the driver — they're so everyone else can see you coming.
We didn't explain them at Moorpark. That was the test. People colored them anyway.
Back where it started
Friday, October 3, at the Edwardsville Public Library. Dataminiums and Coloring Scout Servy, both new, both on the table.
Free coloring pages and crayons, all day. Take one, color it, tell us one thing that belongs in next year's book, and we'll send you a copy when it's printed.
And if you're a pair — one who points, one who's with them — we hire pairs, and we pay both.
If that seven-year-old comes back, she's a year older and I finally have an answer for her.
It's shorter than I expected: the fish was broken because nobody was counting her side.
Now somebody is.
Rescue Reserve℠ by Life Winks, LLC. Disability-led. Faith-based. Working with families since 1992.
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