The quest

Caleb noticed yesterday that the novel we were reading, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, had the perfect plot for a computer game (adventure game, like King's Quest, which Caleb tells me are called "RPGs") because it has a clear quest with multiple steps required to collect the final treasure. So we had a nice long discussion with Caleb and Anda about the fact that most novels have some kind of quest in them, and we identified the quest in a whole bunch of novels we've read together. It was thoroughly delightful. Then today, Caleb took the book and used it as a script and began making the game. He uses RPG Maker 2003, which lets him make the maps, put the characters in, and actually produce a full, functioning game. He learned somewhere else that he can open the "sprite sheets"--pages you choose your characters from--in MS Paint and modify them any way you want, so he's making characters that look like the descriptions in the book.

It's all very cool, and not the first RPG he's developed.

All of this wouldn't be possible if he were wasting his time in public schools just between 1st and 2nd grade. Where you don't read novels at all, and making a computer game is something nobody even dreams of except as a job when you grow up.