Meadow Springs Tinies

Some new tinies have come to us from Meadow Springs, near Mandurah. With many thanks to Connor (8), Erin (11) and Dad (42) for these gems. It was great to meet you guys at Perth Writers Festival, and we hope you're having extra fun these days on your walks to school.

A very surprised letterbox (Connor)

A tree that looks like someone was planted upside down and grew branches from their legs (Connor)

Two holes in the path where a very small space rocket must have landed (Dad)

A kangaroo letterbox (Erin)

The imprint of a leaf in the concrete path (Erin)

These are fantastic! We particularly love the upside-down tree-person. It would be ticklish having birds nesting in your toes, wouldn't it?

And here's something we love that we didn't expect - some of our tinies appear to be 'talking' to each other. For example, we're seeing a real letterbox theme develop. There are two here of course, but we also have some pretty cool letterboxes in other posts. Which makes us wonder if something is going on among the letterboxes of the world. Why are some trying to fly away and others acting surprised? Maybe the one that flies away will go and visit the others? Perhaps they'll end up banding together to form a really weird letterbox army and one morning we'll wake up to find them marching the streets in rusty formation?

And as for those 'space rocket holes' above, remember the meteorites that hit the wall in the city? This is making us suspect that the aliens are among us, that they've already begun paying little visits to us here on earth. And it's only those of us who really have our eyes open who will notice, and perhaps get to travel with them to distant stars ...

We hope so, anyway.

Thanks so much for the tinies, guys. We understand you are now on the lookout for ten tiny triangles. Kyle will be absolutely delighted!

Close-to-Home Tinies

So we've been to Singapore and Paris and Mississippi ... and today we return to our own backyard. These tinies come from a suburb near Fremantle.

These shoes have lost their tightrope walker

Anyone for juice?

A quiet watering hole for the birds

Footpath art

Stories on stories. If you look closely you can see the words "Long live verse" etched into the concrete underneath 

A closer view...

A secret grotto. What would live here?

The funkiest letterbox ever

And the second funkiest ...

A eucalyptus curtain

  

The opposite of tiny, but still a secret. A giant spider hiding in someone's yard.

I wonder where our next tinies will come from. And where they will take us...

Tiny Mississippi Things

From Madison, Mississippi, Mary Grace (16)  writes:

... the attached images are photos my brother and i took in our neighborhood.  We both had a lot of fun doing this and i really like what it encouraged. It has inspired me to go outside more. ever since that first walk taking pics. we have walked almost every night. Thanks for the inspiration! :)

These are the images that she and her brother Jake, aged 5, found, when they went for a stroll (captions are ours):

Someone left their tiny mark here.

Blue frogs worshipping at the tree (the cult of Stanley?)

Angels abound ...

But someone is watching!

What's tiny here? Tiny creeping plants, taking over the path? We found ourselves searching for something, and isn't that the point, too?

Gather ye rose-petals while ye may

Kissing geese-cousins

Alice on the rabbit-bench?

Can't help imagining someone chasing this little guy. Quick - this way!

A quiet blessing in the garden.

Thanks so much, Mary Grace and Jake. How exciting to have some tiny things from the other side of the world! We hope you keep enjoying your walks and discovering the secrets hiding outside.

Tiny Bookwormy Things

Some intrepid Bookworms went hunting for ten tiny things in and around the Koorliny Arts Centre in Kwinana.

Look what they found!

Ella: I found a little leaf on the carpet.

Why are these buttons outside?

Mia: A flower in the vegetable garden.

Ella: My baby brother is fast asleep.

Dean: I found a hole.

Dean: I found these blankets too.

I like this leaf.

Ethan: I can see a silver thing.

Look! A sticker!

Ava: I can see a tiny plant.

Thank you, Book Worms! What an interesting collection of tiny things you found. How lucky to find an actual baby! We also particularly love the hole, which is never just a hole but always a doorway to another fantastical world. This particular hole looks like a very interesting one - black, and with all sorts of tiny planets orbiting around it. And of course, a blanket would be a very useful thing to take when you set of on an adventure in such a place ...

Bunnies and Magpies and Snakes! Oh, My!

After a brief interlude to celebrate the book launch of Ten Tiny Things, we return to our regularly scheduled celebration of the many tiny things around us.

Today's pictures come from a recent school holiday adventure. Matilda (6), Joseph (8), Pippa (10) and Nadya (10) visited a park south of Perth for a last play before Term 3 began. Here's what they found ...

Matilda: Look! A funny tiny note left behind by another kid.

Joseph: It's an annoying magpie which always went around the food.

Matilda: It looks like a bunny with an ear and an eye. It's really the gate lock though.

Matilda: Stripy sand. It looks like a tractor drove through here ...

Matilda: The fence looks like a snake's skin when you look closely.

Pippa and Nadya: This slimy worm in the sandpit looks like a little U. 
Joseph: or a mini banana.
Matilda: or a little smile.

Pippa: Nadya's little sand sculpture and a tiny stone we found when we were digging. We're leaving them for the next park visitors to find. 

Matilda: It's a brown tiny nut with a cross on it like X marks the spot.

Joseph: The end of a trunk of a tree that has been completely chopped down. It looks like there's an eye there. It's a good shoe size for stepping onto.

Matilda: This is a bit like a picture-book picture. It's a tree that grew out of a nest.

We love the way the gate lock turned into a bunny. It's amazing how things can change when you look at them in a different way. We're going to see that bunny every time we go through a gate now!

It's interesting that you saw so many different things in the slimy worm. I bet he had no idea he was so fascinating!

And the picture-book tree is brilliant - we love how you've begun imagining a story around it. That's very similar to the way Meg writes her stories - taking something around her and spinning it in an unexpected way. Maybe this tree will find itself in the middle of someone's story one day?

Thanks so much for sending in your photos. Even though school's back now, we hope you can still find chances to go out walking sometimes.

Singapore Things, By Thomas

Thomas is 4 years old and lives in an island country called Singapore. He usually goes to school by car, but lately he has been doing a bit of walking.

Here are the Singapore things he's been spotting while he's been out in the world ...

Thomas is 4. And he's a boy. So what did he find first? A stick, of course!

A tiny pink clover, like in Horton Hears a Who. Can you see the speck?

A little gooey seed thingy

Boots? What are they doing here?

A dinosaur footprint!

Gnome with mushroom (perhaps he's reading Ten Tiny Things?)

Bananas!

  

Tiny Chinese men looking for their own tiny things

We found Batman!

A fairy garden on the kerb. The sign says "Stop and smell the flowers." We did.

Nice work, Thomas. We can't believe you found Batman! And a dinosaur footprint! I wonder what kind of dinosaur made a mark like that? Maybe it was so big and toothy that it scared someone right out of their boots ...? Maybe he didn't realise that Batman would protect him?

Or maybe we're just making up stories (we do like to do that a bit). But we do love your tiny things. Thanks for sending them all the way from Singapore!