Writing a children’s book must be easy. The story is short and simple. You don’t need to come up with creative metaphors or beautiful sentences, because the audience isn’t very discerning. There are supposed to be illustrations, but they don’t need to be particularly good. And they’re short! All in all, you can probably knock one out every week or so. But some people put a lot of work in them!
Karina Schaapman,1 for example, puts a lot of work in her mice. She doesn’t just quickly doodle a few lines and colour them in. She takes pictures of a large, self-made doll house, for which she crochets new inhabitants, or crafts them some furniture from discarded cardboard, or gets them tiny little props to make the house feel alive. And nothing makes a house feel more alive than a chessboard.
But, given the size of the doll house, they had to make do with a tiny wee thing with almost indistinguishable pieces. And they have thrown the pieces over. The pieces that are still standing are in the following position and probably have the following identities:2
There are many more scattered around on the queen’s side. Some strange things seem to have happened. In particular, the white’s king and king’s rook seem to be oddly placed. But clearly the whole board has had some hard knocks in its existence, so perhaps the king was actually on e2 or something.
But that’s the problem. This sort of disturbing content should not be in books for children! They’ll grow up thinking it’s normal to throw pieces all over the living room. Or to have mice in the house.
Realism: 3/5 It’s a bit of a pointless grade, since many pieces are missing. But then again, this is a pointless blog about a pointless subject.
Probable winner: Impossible to say. With the pieces that are still standing, whoever is to move can win a queen.3
1. [Nomen apparently non est omen.] ↩
2. [You need a change of identity? Only one address!] ↩
3. [For black it even leads to checkmate: Qxd1+ Kf2 Qe2+ Kg3 Qe3+ Kxg4+ Rhg8+ and then either Qg5# or Qh6#.] ↩