 Hi, my name is Peggy and I'm here with Little Bear at the ACMI studio in Arlington and we have a wonderful story to tell you about a train that dumped over and spilled chocolate all over the ground. You're kidding. No, Little Bear. That's really what happened. Did you ever ride on a train before? No, never, never did. Well you know what? I had her because you're just going to love this story. And you know what? I've got a hat for you. But... Well, it's storytelling time and it's just kind of fun to dress up and, you know, be a character. Oh. I see. Well, I'm going to put this little train hat on you so it kind of sets the stage for you. You can pretend that you're the conductor, all right? Oh, it's a conductor. Well, he helps people on the train. Now, I want to ask you a couple questions. If I showed you a box of chocolates, would you know what they were? Yes, show me. Well, here's some chocolates. And these are what's spilled all over the ground once when a train dumped over and the story's going to tell just how that happened. Oh, that sounds delicious. Can I smell them? You can't smell through the box. Yes, let me try. Okay. Can you smell? No. No. Okay. I think we should get on with the story. You're going to see in the story a train that looks like this and it absolutely gets knocked over and a little boy wants to figure out why. Well, let's find out. Okay. Would you sit in the chair over here and I'm going to hold up a book that I wrote and I did the pictures so the kids watching can see just what happened. Okay. Let's go. Okay, little bear. Just a minute. I'm going to put the train down here. I'm going to put you over here and I'm going to pick up the book and we're going to get going with the story of the great chocolate trainwreck in Hamilton, New York. Chocolate trainwreck mystery. Cody Jackson was a young boy who loved to solve mysteries and he was good at it. Ever since he was born into a family that lived out on Lebanon Street in the village of Hamilton, there was this mystery having to do with a chocolate trainwreck. Just a waiting for a long, long time to be solved by someone, someone who was a very good detective. Now, when Cody was eight years old and found out about this great trainwreck mystery, he was certain he could crack the case wide open. Even if it happened over 50 years ago, why? Because Cody was very smart, very curious, and he lived in his grandmother's house right smack across the road from where that trainwreck happened years ago in the night. And Cody was sure there must be clues somewhere in his grandmother's house about that old chocolate trainwreck. Now when September 27th rolled around, Cody couldn't wait to go to the trainwreck celebration held right on the green in Hamilton. He and his mother got up early that morning and arrived on the green filled with excitement. They watched younger children taking turns riding on this cute little train going round and round on the green and then all around them they could hear happy music played by spunky musicians and people were handing out free chocolates everywhere and talking about the good old days. Cody and his mom were loving every minute of it, but at a certain time Cody remembered he was really on a mission to get some clues to start building his case about this trainwreck mystery. He needed to talk to people. As Cody walked away from his mom, he spotted a policeman and he walked right up to him and said, excuse me sir, could I talk to you? And the policeman said, sure son. And Cody said, do you or any of the other policemen in this town know what really caused the chocolate trainwreck years ago because nobody seems to know? I'm sorry, I don't have any clues. You might think this is funny, but I wasn't born then. I don't have a clue and none of the other officers in our town do either. I'm sorry son, we're still scratching our heads about it. Well, okay, thank you officer. Then Cody continued walking along the path in the park, inspired an old lady sitting on a bench with her dog. Cody imagined she might have been alive when his grandma was alive, so he went right over to her and said, excuse me ma'am, did you live in the days of the old trainwreck and do you know what caused it? Did you live way back then? Well yes son, I'm Mary Pickett and I did. Aren't you the Jackson boy? Yes ma'am, I am Cody Jackson. Goodness sake, I used to come over to your house years ago. During the years when I knew your grandmother, we used to have tea together. Now I do remember something, something that might be important. She wrote down everything in little books called Diaries. Do you still have them? I hope your mother never threw them out. I don't know anything about them, said Cody. So then he said, I'm going to run right over and ask my mom about those little books. Maybe they have clues about the trainwreck in them. Well it's been so nice to meet you Cody. I'm sorry I couldn't have been helped because you know dear, I live on the other side of town and I didn't even hear the bump or the squeak or the crash. I was sleeping in the dead of night. Oh that's okay, that's okay Mrs. Pickett. Thanks for the clues. Now I just got to go find mom and ask her where she hid those little books of grandmas. In no time, Cody found his mother on the green and told her about the clues. And then five minutes later Cody and his mom were back at the house. They'd climbed the stairs to the attic and there they were wrestling around in boxes filled with jewelry and treasures collected by grandma. And all of a sudden they found it. They found the little book that said 1955 on it. It had to have clues in it. So they started opening the book and reading the pages, reading the pages. And then they found what they were looking for. At the top of the page grandma had written the day of the great chocolate trainwreck. There it was. Cody was so excited and so was his mother. Had they solved the mystery? Well not yet because they had to read down through the page. What had grandma written? Well here's what they read. Dear diary, September 26, 1955. It was a lovely day. The children were outside playing and raking leaves. I made baked beans tonight. I went to bed early. I listened to the radio and then went to bed. I pulled the shade and looked out the window across at the railroad as I do each night. There I saw someone, a shadowy figure. He was doing something with the train track switch and I could see his bicycle was lying on the ground next to him. This seemed strange to me because the train master does not own a bike. But I went to bed hoping the next day would be a good day. Cody and his mom turned the page and kept reading. September 27, 1955. Dear diary, what a day. What a night. I heard a terrible crash about three o'clock in the morning. I woke up. There had been a train crash in the middle of the night with the O&W railroad. Sirens started screeching, fire trucks roared by our house, kids came running, people came from all over to see what had happened very early in the morning. As one of the train cars had rolled over and there was chocolate, bits, bars, chocolate cocoa all over the ground, news got around fast and children and people were scooping up chocolate, putting them in buckets and wagons. And later in the afternoon, policemen came more than I'd ever seen before. They stood there guarding that train all day. I will forever wonder, did someone switch the tracks? Was it an accident or was that shadow of a person that I saw last night who put his bike on the ground? Was that the person who switched the tracks? It will always remain a mystery, or maybe someone else will find out who did it. And after reading the page, Cody and his mom looked at each other in disbelief. Cody's grandmother had really witnessed something perhaps no one else had ever seen the night before the train wreck. Cody looked at his mom and said, Mom, so have we solved the mystery? I don't think we solved the whole mystery, Cody, but we do have information right here that maybe no one else has. And isn't it amazing that your grandma saw and wrote down some clues? The ones that no one in the whole town has known about all these years. To solve the great chocolate train wreck mystery. But Cody, my son, I want you to know that you have been an awesome detective in digging up clues and following your hunches. Great work. Thanks, Mom. This has really been fun, and I think I am going to be a detective when I grow up. I am. Our story has ended, and I have a poem for you called Chocolate Dreams. Do you ever have chocolate dreams? A lot of kids do about chocolate drops, chocolate bars and cones, just to name a few. Well, a long time ago, there was a train that came chugging through our town. It flew off the tracks, rolled over, and dumped Nestle's chocolates all over the ground. That day, there were buckets of free candy for every child, just like you. Now just imagine the fun of stuffing your pockets and wagons with sweet treats, and making your chocolate dreams come true. Be sure to come back next year for the Great Chocolate Train Wreck Festival. Little Bear. Oh, that was a big mystery. Yes, it was. I wish the story wasn't over. Well, you know what? There's a way to keep stories going in your head and in your hands. How do you do that? Well, you draw. Well, I'm going to show the kids who are watching how to draw some of the things in the story. Would you like to just sit and watch? Sure. Could you teach me another time? Yeah, I'll teach you another time. But let's teach the kids out there, okay? It's just so simple. It's just fun. I want kids to draw because it's just the best thing ever, okay, to make a story last. Okay, I'll sit here. You go over there. Okay, here we are at the drawing board, and I'm just going to give you a very short lesson in how to make little illustrations, pictures that we saw in the story. And I like to break things down easily into curvy lines, squares, and rectangles, and that's what I'm going to be showing you. And I'm going to be demonstrating right here some things we saw from the great chocolate train wreck. Okay, let's start with Cody. He's got some curvy lines. I'm just going to make his little hat. Remember that hat he wore? Here's the curvy line. And here's another one, another curvy line. And then here, two others, actually three others. He's got his little beanie on. And then his head and face are going to be another curved line. He had nice, wide cheeks. And then remember his little ears here? So easy. And then there's another curvy line right here on his cap. Here's Cody's eyes. Very easy. Just little dots, another little curvy line. He was always pretty happy in the story, wasn't he? So let's make a nice curvy line for his mouth. And my gosh, here we have Cody right here. And didn't he have some hair? Yep. You can just fool around with that. Just stick it out the side of his hat. There's Cody. Kind of looks like him. That was so easy just using curvy lines. Let's go over to the train. Let's try to do some shapes and make this look like this little train over here. You can do it so easily. Just start. Now we're going to do rectangles. Here's a rectangle at the back of the little choo-choo. Here's another one. It's not a perfect rectangle, but there's one. Here's another rectangle at the top. And then here are those windows, rectangles, two more. Now here is kind of a curve, a curvy line. It's going to go right over here like this. And then often in pictures there are circles. I bet you know how to do them easily. Here's one for the wheel. Here's for the back wheel. Another circle, little spokes on that train. Now this is just an illustration of the train, not the real one. And then there are kind of curvy lines here. We can just see that's creating the front end. Here's that stack. Remember there was smoke and all kinds of stuff coming out of that little train. Just put that in. And then there's the cow catcher. Here comes a curvy line and a straight line. Easy to make that cow catcher, little rectangles, little teeny skinny ones. Then it's fun to go around. And when I used to teach kindergarten I would say to the kids, because they would always put in these little extra things, and I'd think, that is so good. Everybody loves details that really make something come to life. So let's put in some details here, little details here. The little lights are details like this, like this. Maybe we can make a little smile here. Kind of looks like a train. Maybe another detail line here and here. Maybe some just little tiny, tiny circles here. Putting on details. Let's make it a little stripe here. And then let's make something on the ground, going along. And I think that's about enough to do the train. So up here, really easy. Remember, Cody had a mega flying glass. You can practice doing circles. There's one. Here's one around the edge of it. And here's the stick part that he went around pretending he was a detective. I want to spend all day putting on details here too, like stripes, all kinds of things. Now if you went to playtime, which is a wonderful place in Arlington, you could get yourself a little journal because we're going to have other stories and other art lessons in a couple weeks and on through the fall and maybe the winter. And if you could get yourself a blank book, that would be terrific. Just to do things in your house, copy your chairs or your little animals or anything. Just practice drawing. It is the most fun thing to do. And I bet you already do do it. I'm giving you some little hints maybe to just get you going even more. Now here's something fun too, to wind this up. How about making a rectangle? And let's turn this into a chocolate bar. You could have a whole page devoted to designing your own chocolate bars. Now you know what I'm going to call this? This is going to be a chocolate bar and it's not filled with chocolate chips, it's filled with chocolate chirps. Is that funny? Maybe. Chocolate chirp bar. Then here's another one. You can make big ones, small ones, all kinds of chocolate bars and then you put funny faces on it and then you name it. Different kind of chocolate bars. Wouldn't that be fun? Now here you could make little tiny candies like this, a whole row of them and a little boy in my kindergarten class years ago used to call pumpkins, and I thought that was so cute. I always remembered it. So you know what these are going to be? These are going to be little chocolate punkmin drops. So I'm going to keep making them look like chocolate punkmin drops. I think they would sell as real candy if people ever heard of that. I just think it's funny and I bet you have funny names to make up for things too. So there we go. So that's our art lesson for today and I hope you'll tune in in a couple of weeks because we're going to have another wonderful story and you won't believe what happens. There might be a video with it too. So thank you for watching and little bear says thank you too. I think he's almost gone to sleep. Have you? No. I'm not asleep. Not at all. Okay. Bye.