"Have you ever wondered how soap was invented? Was someone thinking, “Hey! I bet if I mix some cow fat with some ashes from the fire, I could rub it all over my body and feel clean!”
How exciting it must have been when popcorn was first
discovered! After some very cursory and inconclusive research, here’s one
scenario I can imagine: A young Aztec woman sits by the fire when she realizes that
she waited too long to roast the corn she had picked. It is all dried out! Now, how is she going to eat that desiccated,
hard corn?! “Oh, well,” she figures, “I might as well chuck that dried up cob
into the fire.”
Suddenly –Boom! Pop!
Pop! Pop! That corn explodes right there
on the cob! Her heart races, she falls over backwards and for a moment, she is
really scared. Wouldn’t you be? But when
the popping stops, she notices that some fluffy, puffy balls have shot out of
the fire. Carefully, she picks one up,
sniffs it, and pops it in her mouth.
Wow! Crunchy and delicious; She
has accidentally discovered popcorn! “Now, I just need to invent butter and the IMAX 3-D experience.”
Most often, inventions are created because there is a need
for something that doesn’t even exist yet.
For instance, maybe there was a student walking around with a whole
bunch of books falling out of her arms. Until one day, she thought, “Hey, I should invent a backpack!”
So how did I invent the story of Ziggy’s Big Idea? It all
started one evening when Grandma Evey, came by our house on her way home from a
lecture at the Sephardic Jewish Society.
She was eager to tell me all about the interesting speaker she had just heard: The speaker focused on the history of the
bagel. My first reaction was, “What?! Why didn’t you invite me?” My second comment was “Wow! That would make an awesome story for kids. I think I’ll call it Ziggy’s Big Idea.”
Actually, the title and the complete story came to me in
teeny bits and pieces. I knew I wanted
to write about a kid who was the same age as my own twins. Like Ziggy, my children are curious and
creative, and I thought, “If I were a
kid, what would lead me to make a bagel?”
So I did some research to find out the real history behind
that yummy bagel, and it turns out there are a smorgasbord of possible ways the
bagel came about. The lecturer had
suggested that, compared to ordinary breads, bagels were quicker to bake before
Shabbat because the insides didn’t have to cook for a long time. That was a key piece of information for me,
as it presented an idea for a problem within the story. Every story’s got to have a problem to solve!
My favorite reasons for the invention of that beloved, baked
treat were the ones that came from specific needs. I learned that the baskets the bread vendors carried
were heavy when filled, so some bakers made the buns with holes, so that they
could be easily stacked and transported on a walking stick. I thought that would be a great detail to
include in my book. So I had Ziggy stack
the bagels on a broomstick to show Papi how that would work. My kids weren’t crazy about that part of the
story. They worried that the bagels
would touch the tops of the broom straws and get dirty. I assured them that the broom was brand new,
and had never been used.
Are you curious to know the some of the other possible
histories? Check out the back pages of
the book, where you can read some other details about the bagel’s origin. I was interested, for example, in finding
out where the word bagel came from. Can
you find the two possible origins of the word bagel? If you can, then you are on your way to
becoming an etymologist - a person who studies when and how words are born. By the way, it’s a great hobby, but you
can’t make a living off of it, so don’t quit your day job. If you don’t want to be an etymologist, you
could become an entomologist and study bugs.
But, again, don’t count on making the big bucks.
I sure had a lot of fun writing Ziggy’s Big Idea. I hope you
find yourself inspired to create, to build, to discover, to invent and to
develop your own really BIG ideas!"
How insightful. Who knew? Thank you for writing this wonderful and fun book☺.
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