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The Teacher

I admire her with affection
She loves children very much
With her smile she awaits us
In fall or spring

White neat robe
Impeccably ironed
Also starchy
She takes very good care of her

She is happy and funny
We learn a lot with her
With didactic outings
New places we know

Pay attention to the blackboard
Quiet and focused
We enjoyed a lot
Of everything taught

At recess
In the patio we get together
After playing for a while
We all have a snack together

We endlessly ask
The same or another concern
Helps us think
Patience is your virtue

With sweet and crystalline voice
She has never been angry
With the teacher Betina
We feel very pampered

The bell has rung
It’s time to leave
We’ve gone home
Waiting for a new day

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The haunted castle

Every morning after breakfast toast with honey or jam, an orange juice, cereal or fruit, mum prepares another one for grandma Lola and I cross before going to school. She lives very close to us, halfway down the block. When I go in I try to make as little noise as possible because she is often lying down sleeping, sometimes she is already up and listening to classical music, opera or some news on the radio.

Her house has a special charm, it is cosy and full of different aromas and sensations. I love to sit on the patio under the pergola and enjoy the Santa Rita, its shade and its intense colours, also to feel the soft and penetrating aroma of the jasmine, it’s wonderful!

Every morning we share a magical moment. She tells me about her experiences and funny anecdotes and I prepare and bait her mate, but above all I read to her because she lost her sight a couple of years ago.
For my grandmother I am the window to the real world and above all to the world of fantasy stories, of explorers and their adventures and of incredible mysteries to be solved.

Many times I tell her stories that I create myself, sometimes I make them up on the spot, and grandma’s face lights up when she realises it.

There is not a single time when the cuckoo clock warns us that it is time to finish, we are so comfortable enjoying the story that it is difficult for me to cut it short.

When the keys sit in the door and mum picks me up to take me to school, it’s a downer. I would like to stay with grandma and the book.
At school they see me as “the weirdo”, because they don’t understand why I like to read. For them it’s boring, a bore and even more so if the stories don’t have many illustrations. They don’t know what they are missing. Nothing excites me more than imagining the story a book has to tell me. Or creating my own. Books give me wings to fly.
-Grandma, shall I read to you?
-Yes, of course, I’m interested to know how it goes on.
At that moment I felt noise in the corridor, I stood up and went there, but nothing. Two or three times I hear footsteps on the upper floor, the doors close and open, I have seen crows on the top prowling around and that scares me a lot. One afternoon while I was having lunch with my grandmother we felt loud knocking coming from the attic, she asked me to go upstairs but I wouldn’t even go up to the tower.
– Why did you leave?
– Nothing, Grandma, nothing. I’m coming… Shall I go on with the story? I said to her while she was drinking mate.
-What’s the matter with you? You’re restless today!
I looked for where I had left off and continued reading: “His wife, who did live in the house, said years later that she saw her husband walking around the upper floors, especially in the tower.
After the death of the owner, the castle was unoccupied for many years. Eventually an event organiser took over the place, which was ideal for parties.

In the early 2000s the company organised one of its weddings where the service staff started to feel strange things. But the bride got the worst of it. At some point during the party she went to the bathroom to touch up her make-up and seconds later, a scream was heard that made the whole wedding party’s blood run cold. It brought everything to a standstill, the bride came out crying in despair and screaming that there was a man completely covered in blood.
When she went in to check what had happened she found that there was no one there. That was the last wedding that the castle hosted”.

– Grandma… How long have you lived in this castle?

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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Roberto, Kuko, Beto and Frango

-Robert, where are you?

– Here in my room.

-The cloak! Please Roberto! Where is the cloak?
-Wow mom! I was about to catch my archenemy Wolfman.
-I see you’re on another of your superlamb adventures but I need it to go out and I want to wear it. I give you five minutes to catch it, yes!

-Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Thanks mom- he answered as he returned to action in his great battle.

Roberto is a very imaginative boy. He likes to play create adventures all the time. He is fanciful, to the point, that many times, he is traveling through his stories while he is in class at school. Last week, the teacher was explaining a math exercise when she noticed that Roberto wasn’t paying attention.

-Roberto, I would like to know if you understood what I explained?

Roberto continued to fight against the fierce and evil Captain Narigudo, a fearsome corsair.

“Roberto!” said the teacher with an energetic voice.

“Kumikazu!” She yelled, as she got up from the bench with her hand raised, as if giving an order to attack.

The companions did not stop laughing. The teacher’s anger cost her a while to reflect on the direction and a challenge from her parents.

After five minutes, his mother returned to the room for him.

-Let’s run some errands Roberto.

– Errands not that I get bored.

– Give him that later we are going to play a little in the square.

-I can take Beto, Frango and Kuko.

– Yes, of course, but I don’t want trouble.

Kuko, Beto and Frango are a tyrannosaurus rex, a brontosaurus and a velociraptor that accompany him everywhere. With them he feels safe, they take care of him and protect him, they are his friends.

On the street, running errands and on the way to the square, he imagined fun and different stories. He saw a lady with a cane who walked bent over, he immediately thought that she was an evil sorceress who wanted to defeat Merlin and King Arthur. Also, when he saw a man with a long beard and paunch, he imagined that it was Santa Claus and that he was in trouble because there was lost their reindeer

Time passed quickly and the road became more fun.
In the square the children laughed, played and shared, there was no lack of a fight with shoving and crying, falling with a bump included. Roberto felt safe he was with Kuko, Beto and Frango.

In the sandbox while he was playing with his friends, some children came up wanting to share and play. Roberto squeezed his dinosaurs when someone tried to get close to him, he also proudly showed them as if to say: they are mine and I won’t lend them.

After enjoying the square, Roberto left Frango forgotten in the sandbox as he retired, since he had buried him.

On the way home they went to buy sugared donuts, when Roberto put them in his bag he discovered that Frango was not there.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Frango is lost!” he yelled anxiously as he moved his hands nervously.

“Calm down, calm down, let’s go to the square,” his mother replied after looking for him.

The three blocks to the square seemed long, the intrigue of knowing if he would get it back made him very anxious.

In the sandbox he found a boy playing with a dinosaur. Without speaking to him or exchanging any words, Roberto wanted to get it out of his hands. Tremendous trouble and problem arose. There was hair pulling, shoving, and tears.
After separating them and trying to make them both understand that although the dinosaur belonged to Roberto, they could share and enjoy playing together. They did not want to understand any reason.
“Bruno lend him Nuco” his mother told him while she gave him a corythosaur that she had brought to play.
Bruno held him close, he was very angry and he didn’t want to share it.
After playing alone for a while and looking at each other suspiciously, once the anger passed, and they understood that they could share and have fun, they did. As he said goodbye, Roberto told him:
-I’ll lend it to you just for today, tomorrow you’ll give it back to me, remember, I’ll lend it to you just for today.

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Children’s Literature – Uruguayan Writer