Toy Dance Party (11 page)
Authors: Emily Jenkins
Highlander pricks his ears. Bonkers squirms and occasionally bites his own tail, while Brownie falls asleep on top of Millie and Rocky. Spark chews on a puzzle piece while she listens. Plastic, feeling gorgeous, rolls back into the bedroom and leans herself against Lumphy.
StingRay makes up stories, and she can tell it is helping.
The stars twinkle outside the window, and the toys cuddle up.
Everything is good again, because they are together.
The book about the mouse in the dungeon is
The Tale of Despereaux
by Kate DiCamillo. The TV show about the children who drink pink milk is
Charlie & Lola,
adapted from the picture books by Lauren Child:
I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, I Am Too Absolutely Small for School,
etc. The movie entitled
The Fairy Treasure
does not exist.
As Spark points out, Lumphy is an American buffalo, which is to say, he is technically a bison. American buffalo are not true buffalo (like the water buffalo of Asia or the cape buffalo of Africa—to whom they are only distantly related). Instead, they are most closely related to the European bison, and the species to which they belong is
bison.
However, Lumphy himself knows nothing about any of this.
“Love Train” is the 1973 hit by the O’Jays. I chose it as Frank’s favorite song from the radio because I thought it would sound good in Frank’s voice and because children I know enjoy it.
The nature documentaries described are imaginary, and the “facts” about great white sharks spurious. Likewise, the information about cheese.
Thank you, first, to all the children who wrote to me asking for a sequel to
Toys Go Out,
many of you sending paintings and drawings of the characters. I have loved getting your mail, and it inspired me as I worked on
Toy Dance Party.
Thank you to Ivy for listening to lots of early drafts, inviting me to spontaneous dance parties, and giving me the idea of naming a rubber shark after a princess. Thanks to Daniel for asking if the washing machine talked, back when I was writing the first book—and for the rubber shark itself. And for being so patient when I had to write on our long-awaited vacation.
Griffin was the first person to shove garbage into our rubber shark, and I appreciate his ingenuity. Errolyn allowed her toy buffalo to be photographed for my school visits, and Heather took the picture. John and Maureen, my writing companions, helped me think of disgusting ingredients for pink milk. Scott was not there on the pink milk day, but he kept me on track by writing next to me as well, while Libba did the same during final revisions.
My debt and admiration to the incomparable Paul O. Zelinsky for his art, advice, and enthusiasm. And for naming Spark, after I came up with DaisySparkle.
Enormous gratitude to Anne Schwartz for saying she’d publish a sequel if I wrote one, for editing me with a keen eye, and for waiting very patiently for me to be done with other stuff. I couldn’t ask for better publishers than Anne and Lee Wade. Thanks also to Annie Kelly, Rachael Cole, Emily Seife, Adrienne Weintraub, Chip Gibson, Lisa Nadel, Lisa McClatchy, and Kathleen Grigo—plus everyone else who has worked so hard on my books at Random House.