Tuesday Voice: Everyone poops

School projects

By Bindi Danchenko

[Editor's Note: Last year, when she was seven and in the first grade, the author's art teacher assigned a project. The pupils were to create a display featuring a character from one of the books they had read. The following account was constructed by combining answers from the author to questions from her mother ("she laughed quite a bit while writing her answers") and to follow-up questions from the editor.]

I chose to do a character from Everyone Poops [by Taro Gomi, School & Library Binding, 2001] because the book is funny – it shows their butts – and because everyone really does poop. Even the animals poop.
    And I chose the pig, because it's fat, it's pink, and it stinks.
    I came up with the idea to make the pumpkin look like a pooping pig when I saw three little pumpkins. They were round, little, and the big pumpkin had a stem, so I turned it around and it was the tail.

    I didn't make the display all by myself. Mom helped me, but I did the painting. I painted the little poops and the pig. It was a fun assignment, because I love to paint!!!
    Even though the pig's nose looks sort of like a wooden spool for thread, I didn't make it from a spool. I used a toilet paper roll. My art teacher, Mr. Kaplin, uses toilet paper rolls for everything, so I used one for my pig's nose.
    I like my teachers, especially Mrs. Wendy. She is nice because she always says hi when I walk by.
    Pigs are very smart and highly social animals, but people eat bacon and sausage and pork chops, and so do I. I eat them even though they are smart and social, because they are already dead. I'm a human, and I eat meat. I'm an omnivore, and so are pigs. And we all poop.

This year, in second grade, we have had another fun project, to learn about habitats. Here is the teacher's instruction guide:

    I made a display of the black-tailed jackrabbit's habitat:

    Here is a picture of a black-tailed jackrabbit:

    Mom helped me with the owl and jackrabbit and painting the cactus. I did most of it by myself. I made the snake [brown & white, lower right] all by myself and painted most of the background. Mom helped me roll the clay for the owl and rabbit. I used a fake rock and shrubs from an old aquarium we used to have. Dad bought a real cactus for me [in the back left corner].

    Black-tailed jackrabbits are subject to parasites and people usually don't eat them. They are herbivores. But they poop, just like everyone else.

Copyright © 2015 by Bindi Danchenko Bindi's mother is the older sister of Moristotle & Co. columnist André Duvall. She and her older siblings are André's two nieces and two nephews.