Sixteen-year-old Joseph Corky was not a typical leading man: with pimples, glasses, a “woodpecker’s nose” and braces, he was the kind of person one would expect to find sharing a tiny apartment with five rats, a Gila monster, and a small army of cockroaches—and he did. His older brother Tim, on the other hand, had everything Joseph longed for: as a world famous archaeologist, he found enough ancient Mexican gold to bankroll a huge mansion with six swimming pools. To make matters worse, Tim was a scoundrel who tried to bribe his way onto the International Soccer Team while Joseph, an undiscovered talent, lingered in the background playing with his imaginary friends. And then there was the beautiful, commanding presence of Gloria Ken, as tall as she was stunning, one of the great coaching talents of our time.

These characters—and the delicately crafted relationships between them—emerged from a collaborative story-telling session held last week with fourth and fifth graders from the Treasure Island School. With a little prompting from an 826 Valencia team, it only took half an hour for these kids to get together and produce four pages of detailed descriptions, nuanced interactions, and sophisticated moral ambiguity. At that point, the collective effort branched out into a set of distinct individual voices as each student provided his or her own ending. Joseph made the team; Joseph and Gloria kissed; Joseph and Gloria didn’t kiss; the team defeated Brazil in the International Championship; Tim was arrested for bribery; Tim and Joseph reconciled; Tim and Joseph didn’t reconcile. There were as many climactic endings as there were imaginative kids, and when it was time for our curmudgeonly book-making boss Mr. Blue to review the final products, he was floored by Treasure Island’s creativity and enthusiasm. Each kid left with his or her own book, complete with Mr. Blue’s coveted 826 Valencia stamp of approval; as they paraded out, books in hands, their only complaint was that it was already time to go.