When I asked Gabrielle Fuller to tell me about some of the stories she has written, she and her imagination took me on a wild ride.
We popped in on a story in which a woman gets another wart every time she's bad.
I met a character named French Fry. He's a policeman. Sharing French Fry's story is a cowpuncher named Texas Toast and Mr. Pibb, who lives on Mountain Dew.
Before filling me in on the plot of "The Lonely Lunchbox," Gabrielle moved on to another story. Fine with me. The title alone was enough to make me smile.
"Pretty much my whole life, I like to tell stories, and I like to make them up," said Gabrielle.
Even though Gabrielle, a home-schooled third-grader, won't turn 9 until next month, her fondness for making up stories is already paying tangible dividends. Her story "Pretty Princess and Funky Frog" is the winner in the 4-to-8 category in the "Be a Famous Writer" contest sponsored by MrsP.com.
Visitors to the interactive site can poke around Mrs. P's library before picking out a book from the shelves and settling in to listen to Mrs. P read it. Mrs. P is played by Kathy Kinney, who fans of The Drew Carey Show will remember as the character Mimi. Here, she is much softer -- more like an Irish aunt. After telling a made-up anecdote related to, say, Alice in Wonderland, Mrs. P reads the story.
"We wanted to present Mrs. P as a very adventurous character," Kinney said. "If you read, you, too, can lead an exciting life."
Kinney grew up reading one book after another. "I would go through them like tissue," she said.
She and the other two co-founders -- Clay Graham, the head writer and executive producer of The Drew Carey Show, and Dana Plautz, whose jobs have included being a marketing executive for Hanna-Barbera Studios -- thought MrsP.com would be a good way to encourage a love of reading in today's young people.
About 1,000 young people from 23 states participated in the contest. The folks at Mrs. P have the connections to get such people as humorist Dave Barry to serve as judges. Judges also chose a winner in the 9-to-13 age category. Both winners were announced on Friday.
Kinney said she liked Gabrielle's story a lot.
"It was funny and charming," Kinney said, "and it made you giggle and think, ‘I would like to meet this little girl.'"
Gabrielle is the youngest of John and Karen Fuller's six children. She is growing up in a household in which everyone reads. The house is filled with bookcases filled with books.
"She's been telling stories for a long time," said John Fuller. "She's been pretty articulate since pretty young."
Early on, Gabrielle imagined becoming a baker when she grows up.
"When I was little, I liked to invent with food," Gabrielle said.
One of her inventions was bread with a marshmallow baked inside. Now she's thinking more along the lines of becoming a scientist or a writer. If she does become a writer, she has no desire to illustrate her own books.
"I want somebody else to illustrate them," she said. "I don't want to take the time to illustrate them as well."
The people at Mrs. P plan to have someone illustrate Gabrielle's story.
"We're excited to see how they interpret what she wrote," Karen Fuller said.
After the illustrations are done, Mrs. P will read the story on the Web site and Gabrielle will receive a book made out of her story and the illustrations. "Pretty Princess" grew out of a "Once upon a time…" writing assignment that Gabrielle was given as a second-grader at Vienna Elementary School.
"She has written lots of stuff since then," John Fuller said. "She keeps writing."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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