Animated The Bookbag Copter Cover
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The Bookbag-Copter Rhyme & Audiobook

A girl invents a device to help out her schoolmates. But things don’t go exactly as she had planned.

Read myself

The Bookbag-Copter

It all began ‘cause I was poor.

And then I found that weird brochure.

While walking, wandering around

I saw the pamphlet on the ground

And instantly it caught my eye

For this is what it said:  “Oh, Hi!

A girl with yellow pigtails wearing a white shirt and green dress walks down a street past a postbox

Do YOU need to make money fast?

Try inventing – it’s a blast!

The secret for you to succeed

Is working out what people need!

It’s true! You’ll live a life of ease!

A ketchup bottle you can squeeze?

That inventor got so rich!

And think about how you don’t itch

Because back-scratchers got created!

That invention’s highly-rated.

Yes, fame and fortune await you.

Just think of things that frustrate you

Then go get cracking on the cure!”

I finished reading the brochure

And thought and thought about how I

Should give inventing things a try.

 I looked around the neighbourhood.

My schoolmates didn’t look so good:

Groaning, glum, with stooping backs

And all because of their backpacks

Stuffed with books and reams of papers

Pencils, lunches, snacks and staplers.

“Hmm,” thought I. “They’d be less glum

If I could ease their burden some!”

school children dressed in green uniforms pull their backpacks past a lollipop woman

I got to work, and then – with hype –

I soon unveiled my prototype!

The Bookbag-copter it was named.

“Attach it to your bag,” I claimed.

“Then set the blades to ‘hover mode’

And this device will ease your load!

A helicopter for your bag!

It bears the weight, so you don’t sag. 

Though it’s lifted just a hair,

Your bookbag feels as light as air!”

a happy boy in green uniform and wearing a backpack floats in the air with a blades spinning above his head from his backpack

A friend of mine bought one, and soon

My sales grew bigger than the moon!

A dozen copters; fifty more!

I couldn’t keep them in the store!

the girl with yellow pigtails sits on a pile of gold looking happy

But then they gave me massive grief.

My gizmos, made to bring relief,

Brought trouble. I designed them wrong.

They powered up and got too strong!

The copter blades – I don’t know why –

Took off, with bookbags, to the sky!

a pink backpack sits on a deck chair on a tropical beach

Customers watched, by the score,

Their homework flutter, lift and soar

Above the town, across the land –

Which wasn’t AT ALL what I’d planned.

Thousands of reports abounding

About how bookbags needed grounding

“All ‘cause some inventor’s greedy,

Now my bookbag’s in Tahiti!”

multiple backpacks with blades float above a city skyline with paper and pencils dropping down

Pencils dropping from the clouds

And lunches falling onto crowds

And bookbags bumping into birds

And pilots having angry words

Bookbags flying on the loose

Gave every nation an excuse

To say the money that I made 

Just simply had to be repaid

the yellow pigtailed girl sits between two stack of envelopes one letter sits in front of her reading thank you

 So was it worth it? I’d say yes.

Although it wasn’t a success

I still get letters thanking me

For sending homework out to sea.

It may take decades, I have learned,

‘Til all the bookbags are returned.

The End

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