# Alfie and the Dinosaur go to the Beach



## wildie1990 (Sep 17, 2013)

Alfie and the Dinosaur go to the Beach

By Richard Thorpe


It was a warm, sunny day and Alfie and his pet dinosaur Jason, were playing in the garden. Mum calls them into the kitchen as she has a surprise for them both.

"Boys, go and get your swimming trunks and buckets and spades, we're going to the beach"

"YYYYAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!" the boys cry as they rush to get their things.

With their bags packed, Alfie, Jason and Mum get into the car and set off on their journey to the beach. After a few hours they arrive and see the yellow sand and the bluest sea. Alfie and Jason quickly rush to the sand with their buckets and spades to play.

"Lets make the biggest sandcastle ever!!" said Alfie.

"Ok" said Jason, "this will be so much fun"

So they start digging and building, until they have the biggest sandcastle on the beach.

"Wow" said Mum, "you two have made a very big castle, well done boys."

"Thanks Mum, can we have an ice cream please?" asks Alfie.

"Of course you can sweetie." Mum says smiling.

They walk to the ice cream van and ask the man for 3 99's with flakes in. As they get back to where their things were, Jason sees some boys playing football and asks them if he and Alfie can play with them.

"Yeah you can play, it'll be fun" said one of the boys.

They played football with their new friends for hours, everybody was enjoying themselves.

"Come on boys its time to go" shouts Mum.

Alfie and Jason said goodbye to their new friends and ran towards Mum and the car.

"Have you boys had fun today?" Mum asked them.

"Oh yes Mum, it has been the best day ever" Alfie replied as he and Jason got into the car.

As they drove back home, Mum looked at the back seats and see's Alfie and Jason fast asleep.
"Sleep tight my little angels", Mum whispers, " who knows what adventures you'll get up to tomorrow."


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## shinyford (Sep 17, 2013)

Hi Richard!

There's something very charming about this. A nice, gentle story for pre-schoolers. I'd make the following observations which I hope are helpful:
1. Your first sentence is past tense; after that it's largely present but sometimes slips back into past ("They played football", "Alfie and Jason said goodbye to their new friends" and so on). Ideally tense would be consistent throughout, only changing where appropriate.
2. There are a number of instances where commas should be periods. "Boys, go and get your swimming trunks and buckets and spades, we're going to the beach" should be "...and buckets and spades. We're going to the beach!". As a rule of thumb, if one part of a sentence doesn't syntactically need another (rather than semantically) but they're only separated by a comma, then you should probably use a period instead. (Is that right? Someone shoot me down in flames if I've got that wrong.)
3. There was nothing in the story that made Jason being a dinosaur necessary. He could have been an ocelot, or a kettle, or a boy - because once you'd stated he was a dinosaur you never made reference to it again. That'll work if this is a picture book, and the pictures make use of the device; if they don't, I'd consider dropping it, or changing the story so that it has relevance.

But these are constructive comments (I hope) rather than whinges or sneers. Nice work!


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## wildie1990 (Sep 17, 2013)

Thank you for the feed back, I do indeed intend the story to be a picture book, I only posted this on here as I was looking for feedback on content and general grammar mistakes. I really appreciate your honesty and will do my best to improve in the future


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## Trilby (Sep 17, 2013)

If you intend sending a story for picture book in to a publisher, I read somewhere that you should number the pages to show where illustrations should go to match the text. Not that you are expected to do the illustrations yourself, the publisher usually has someone for that.

Edit - I forgot to mention that a picture book has 24 pages.


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## escorial (Sep 17, 2013)

I don't normally read stuff from this section but after this delightful piece maybe I should..stellify 5 x


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## wildie1990 (Sep 18, 2013)

Thank you all for your feedback I am hoping to create a book of short stories based on these characters with illustrations, judging by responses on here and from other sources I think it could go well, admittedly there are things that I can improve on but I am glad what I have written so far has generated positive feedback


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## summergenevieve (Nov 23, 2013)

It's a very cute story that I'm sure many children would like...after all, dinosaurs are thrilling animals to young children, let alone the idea of having one as a pet.  As a picture book, I imagine it will be very successful. Well done.


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## siliconpoetry (Dec 16, 2013)

hi Richard. I am reading Spectacular Now right now and clicked on your story first. The book is a teenage novel. I like simple and short prose like this. Mostly because there is not much pretense of a complicated plot. I will continue to check out story's from this section today. Thanks.


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## tinacrabapple (Feb 1, 2014)

What is the point of this story? It has no conflict.  Why the dinosaur?  There is no further conceptual development of the child's imagination and the conflict it creates for a young child in the world.  What about the mother's overly indulgent role?   You have a nice scaffold that you could deepen, if you were willing to rework some of this.

- - - Updated - - -

What is the point of this story? It has no conflict.  Why the dinosaur?  There is no further conceptual development of the child's imagination and the conflict it creates for a young child in the world.  What about the mother's overly indulgent role?   You have a nice scaffold that you could deepen, if you were willing to rework some of this.


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