My fourteen-year-old daughter, Ruby, and her two besties (both named Abbie) have taken on a summer project.
They’re working creating on a comic.
It’s fascinating to me, to just be on the outskirts of this big project that these rising ninth-graders are brainstorming and sketching.
Ruby and the Abbies all live within walking/bike riding distance from each other and since school’s out, they spend nearly every day and most nights at one house or the other.
Lately, they huddle around their notebooks and talk about this story. It’s apocalyptic — about a society of clones meant to repopulate the Earth following nuclear war. The non-clones are called Goners, because all of their memories have been transferred into their clones.
It’s something else, listening to these kids hash out the ethics of whether or not a clone is a real person.
Ruby’s the artist, although one of the Abbies likes to draw, too. That Abbie is the natural storyteller of the group. The other one likes to research the details. What should Goner Milo’s eyes look like? What would Amelia wear? What does a domed city really look like?