Alice Bradley

Henry is many things: a seven-year-old, a great wit, a friend to man and beast, a fan of Legos. He is also an author.

He’s written all kind of books: long books, short books; books with pictures and words, or only words, or only pictures. His genre tends to run the gamut from aliens to Star Wars to monsters. (Often all three at once.) He’s awfully prolific, too: when he’s on a roll, he’ll write a book or two a day for weeks at a stretch. Frankly, he puts my writing habits to shame.

These are short masterpieces—a few staple-bound sketch-pad pages is enough to contain one of his tales—but still, they add up, and the cumulative bulk can take up a lot of real estate. As his parent, it’s hard to part with anything he’s committed to paper, but we only have so much room. We need some of the room we have for other things, like furniture, and air.

The problem is, if we identify one of his creations as a lesser work, fit for the recycling bin, he inevitably asks us where it is a few days later. And I’m forced to confess. Mommy threw away your story, Henry. Mommy is cold and unfeeling. Then his lower lip trembles and a single tear falls from his cheek and burns a hole in my heart.

Fortunately, PowerPoint was created to solve this problem. (I’m sure there are business types who think PowerPoint is for presentations or whatever. I don’t mind letting them think this. You and I know the truth.) If there’s a story that, say, we’re not necessarily going to want to keep in our Hatbox of Precious Memories, it gets scanned and then turned into a slideshow. Like so:

The slideshow format has many advantages. It’s a fun activity we can do together that doesn’t involve action figures, for one. I’m up for anything that doesn’t involve action figures. Henry loves putting these together. Our at-home version of this includes Henry's narration as well as animation and sound effects. (What kid doesn't want their book to have built-in special effects?) By narrating the story, he’s practicing his reading. (He likes to do several takes, so he can read it with great feeling.) It also gives us a record of his voice at seven, so I’ll be able to watch this years from now and weep at the sweetness of my little boy’s voice. Before he went through puberty and started sounding like Alec Baldwin.

Best of all, we can put the paper version of his story into the recycling bin together, knowing that it’s on the computer, should he need to reference it at a later date. Henry can write and create all he wants, and we don’t have to live with stacks of papers piled to the ceiling, like crazy people. Everybody wins.