- Today
is March 20,
it is the end of our first week of Lunch Doodles.
Thank you for being with me all week.
It's been really fun.
We've got great responses and drawings
and letters and comments from friends old and new.
I really appreciate that.
All right, let's see what I can make out of this drawing.
Okay.
I'm gonna do this.
It's a 20 saying thank you.
And there are a lot of people to thank for this week.
A lot of people at The Kennedy Center
are working really hard to make sure
that these videos go out smoothly.
And,
thank you, 20.
So since it's the end of the first week,
we're gonna start a new tradition.
We're gonna play, we're gonna play a game.
And it's a very special game, it's called Super Bounce.
I invented this game, and I've never played it with anyone
except for my family ever.
You're going to be the first people ever
to play Super Bounce, and we're gonna play it together.
So, before we do that, let's get to some of our questions.
'Cause I love getting all these questions.
They're so fun.
A lot of questions have come in,
and the people at The Kennedy Center were really nice.
They put them together for me.
I have not read these questions, they're always new.
"How long do you spend drawing each day?",
says Jenna in Wyoming.
Well,
now I spend about half an hour
drawing with you every day.
And a normal day, it depends.
I break up my days.
So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm on the phone,
and I'm doing business, and I'm talking to people
and my editors and agents and all that stuff.
And Monday, Wednesday and Friday, when it's normal,
I draw all day.
It's really exciting, it is fun, because I'm not alone,
I'm with my drawings, and my drawings are my friends.
All right.
"How much experience do you use in your drawings?"
says Amilia, five.
I use all my experience in my drawings.
That's a really deep question, thank you, Amilia.
"What ways do you think doodling
"helps you express yourself?", asks Hazel,
who's 11, in California.
Hazel, you know, doodling is different than drawing.
Drawing is with intention.
And you can make a good drawing or a bad drawing maybe.
You know, like I can draw the pigeon and say,
"That didn't look like the pigeon I wanted to."
Or "Let me redo that."
But a doodle is just you going loose and letting your brain
and your mind figure out what the drawing is.
So there's no such thing as a wrong doodle.
It is a chance to just relax and find out something
about what's going on inside you.
And I often like to do long, long, long doodle sessions,
while listening to music, to jazz music
or to classical music.
And maybe, as time goes on, we'll do some of that,
because I think that's really important.
That was a good question.
All right.
"How did you first think of Gerald and Piggie?"
asks Elena in Santiago de Chile.
Well, that's a very good question.
I first thought of Gerald
by doodling him,
by my dining room dinner doodles.
And I was drawing this elephant, and drawing and drawing,
probably for a year.
And finally I realized, like, Gerald would make
a great star for a book series.
And I knew that Gerald needed a partner.
So I held auditions.
And I tried a muskrat,
and all kinds of different animals came in,
and none of them really worked.
And then one day Piggie walked in the room,
and Piggie was just so great and so Piggie,
and Gerald and Piggie worked so well together
that I decided to cast them.
All right, that's a good question from Santiago de Chile.
"Do you know", Brooklyn asks,
"Do you know Piggie personally?"
No, it's a professional relationship, thank you.
How do you come up with the stories?
Do you just imagine them, or are they real?
Yes, they're both.
I grow my stories, and they have to feel real to me.
Any story that I write is a question
that I don't yet know the answer to.
Do you own a pig?
No, pretty much,
no, I don't.
I have a studio assistant, a dog named Vincent,
who we might meet later on.
He's messy, so he's kind of a pig.
Okay, here we go.
"My name is Amy, and I'm seven and a half.
"Do you have anyone in your family who helps you decide
"what to write about?"
Yes, everyone in my family helps me decide
what to write about.
I show my kid Trix
and my wife Cher all my ideas.
And we share them, which is one of the reasons
that my wife is named Cher, because we share ideas.
Is that right?
Yeah, okay.
Was there a real pigeon that inspired
"Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus"?
No, I made up that pigeon.
He showed up in the corner of one of my notebooks one day,
and said, and I quote, "Don't write about that other stuff,
"write about me."
And I did.
All right, Margaret, age four, this is our final question
and probably the most important.
"Have you ever drawn a unicorn?"
Yes.
All right.
Those are our questions.
Now, we are going to play
Super Bounce.
Let's see if I can do this upside down, here we go.
Super Bounce TM, and TM stands for That's Mo's,
because I came up with it.
All right, I need you guys to go get
the biggest piece of paper that you can find,
or at least something bigger than a normal piece of paper.
So I'm gonna press pause, okay?
Go get a big piece of paper.
And you're gonna want also to have,
once you get this paper, you want a pen and maybe,
oh, let me see, a smaller pen, I like that.
And you want a die, all right?
And if you don't have a die,
you can just get a coin, all right?
So, pause. (mumbles)
Paper and pen.
Well, okay?
You got it?
Okay.
Play.
And that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna play.
So Super Bounce is kinda like a normal game.
And the fun thing is that every time you make a new board.
All right, so this is gonna be where we start.
Move this beautiful piece of pottery away.
And,
this is where it ends,
and there's gonna be a little spot, that's like a shortcut
to go to the end, all right.
So,
now we're gonna make the
different spaces.
All right.
And,
we're gonna come up with some pluses and some minuses.
Oh, we need to move that, okay.
So,
here we go, this is plus one.
This is plus three.
And this is plus one.
And now we need a couple of minuses.
So this is
minus one.
And this is
minus one.
And this is minus two.
And this is minus two,
my two is terrible, here we go, two.
All right.
And then, some special rules, where you land.
So this one is
silly
sound.
The D is gonna, there's a D?
Is that, the D is gonna go that way?
How's the D gonna go?
Why don't we just make it a capital D.
Silly sound, and this one,
sorry, teachers, I can't help myself.
Fart.
All right, so.
We're going to start here and end up there.
And we've got two players.
One is this pigeon made out of Lego.
Lego made a pigeon, they never sold them, but they made one.
And the other one is this Snoopy,
which I got for going to the Charles Schulz Museum.
My hero, Charles Schulz.
So what happens with Super Bounce is,
if I am the pigeon, and I get to the same place as you,
then I bounce one forward, and you bounce one backward.
But now, that may mean that you bounce forward again,
it may actually not be great.
And you wanna go all the way here.
You can take this shortcut, but you have to be exactly,
oh, let's make it, see, I'm learning.
You have to be exactly on this one
to get all the way to the end.
And now we've got a die,
which will be our numbers.
And if you don't have a die, you can use a quarter,
and heads will be two points,
tails will be three moves forward, right?
Okay.
Do you wanna play with me?
All right, I'll be the pigeon.
No, no, you'll be the pigeon, I'll be Snoopy.
We're gonna start there.
All right, you go first.
Oh, I didn't get one, so I'm gonna roll for you,
and then you roll for me, okay?
So let's see, we're playing Super Bounce, we're the pigeon.
Let's go.
Four.
Ready?
One,
two,
three,
four.
Phew, you're safe.
In-between plus one and fart.
My turn.
Come on, lucky, lucky.
Five.
One,
two,
three,
four.
I landed on fart.
(blows a raspberry)
All right, now it's your turn.
Ready?
Here we go, it's fun.
Ooh, five, that's pretty good.
One,
two,
three,
four, that was close,
five.
We haven't had any bounces yet, hmm.
Oh, four.
One,
two,
three,
four, super bounce!
That means I bounce one forward to the minus one,
and now I go back there, and you bounce one back
to plus three.
One, two, three.
And you land, you're on silly sound!
Let's hear you make a silly sound.
Wait, wait, I'm gonna watch you.
Make it.
(Mo laughing)
Oh, that's excellent.
That is a really silly sound.
Okay, you are ahead.
Ooh, this is gonna be tricky.
Let's go.
Now, it's your turn, right?
It's your turn, okay.
'Cause I've super bounced you.
One.
Plus one.
Minus two!
Who made this game?
That's ridiculous.
One, two.
Another silly sound.
Okay, let's hear the silly sound.
Oh, you could be sillier.
(chuckles) Okay, okay, that was great.
All right, my turn.
My turn, that was a good silly sound.
Oh, it's gonna be hard to get to the end here.
Two.
One,
two,
super bounce,
super bounce plus one.
Plus one, super bounce minus two,
super bounce backwards minus one,
and then another minus one.
You're back here, and I landed on silly sound.
Are you ready?
All right, here we go.
(makes a silly sound)
How was that, was that pretty silly?
Okay, all right.
This game could take forever.
I don't know how much, okay, here we go.
Five!
One,
two,
three, four,
five.
(Mo applauding)
Congratulations, you won Super Bounce.
And listen, when you make your own Super Bounce games,
you can make them go as long as you want.
We once did one that was all the way
across the dining room table.
It was 95 squares, or maybe even more.
And like hundreds and hundreds, and the very last one said,
"Go back 95 squares."
And,
yeah.
Whoever wrote that, actually, ended up having to do it.
But anyway, this is Super Bounce.
Please make your own Super Bounce games
and play with your family.
I think it will be really, really fun to play Super Bounce.
Thank you for coming and visiting me in my studio all week.
I really wanna say thank you to you,
to all the people at The Kennedy Center,
who have worked really, really hard to make this happen.
And I wanna thank the teachers who are really working hard
to figure things out how to best educate you guys,
while you guys are stuck at home.
I wanna thank the grown-ups, I wanna thank the siblings.
And, you know, if you wanna do me a favor,
this is the favor that you can do for me.
You can go out, call in your local independent book shop
and get a picture book.
Buy a picture book by an author you've never heard of
or an illustrator you've never heard of.
Because the people who write picture books,
a lot of guys and girls, they make their livings
by going to schools and visiting with you guys in person.
And they're not gonna be able to do that for a little while.
So, if you can find a way to get an author or illustrator
that you never heard of, and buy their book,
that would be really special,
and I would really appreciate it.
Have a great weekend.
I hope that you guys will play
some Super Bounce this weekend.
This is Mo Willems saying
thanks for coming for Lunch Doodles.