Creativity is key. We need to encourage the youth of America to be more creative in their thinking. Creativity leads to change. Creativity leads to innovation. Creativity leads to growth.
When we think of creativity, we think of Dr. Seuss. So we wanted to pay tribute to one of our favorite authors with a book of our own.
The Ideaparnockolis was born in March of 2015.
At school visits, kids always ask, “how do you come up with these stories?”
Our answer is always the same. We take stories from things that happen to us in our daily lives. The inspiration for The Ideaparnockolis is a doozy.
For years, Joe Kelley has been visiting his friend Shawn in the Naples, Florida area. For a time, Shawn was a manager at a local Starbucks. He would come home in the evening and talk about this one customer who was quite a character. This lady, based on outward appearances, was homeless. She would be dirty, mutter off-the-wall things to herself and other customers and come-and-go on foot. Yet, every single day, she would pay with a crisp $50 bill.
Joe told Shawn to write down whatever she said the next time she came in. He wanted to know what types of things she would say…
The very next day, Shawn came home with a piece of paper. On it, he had scribbled what the customer said. She said, “I’m gonna take my brain, put it in a coconut and then take the coconut and put it on a non-coconut tree.”
Of course, this was years ago. But we never forgot about this story. And thus was born The Ideaparnockolis. Kids love the story… and they love talking in “Ideanockolese” after reading it.
