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It's A Mad, Mad Lib
One of my fondest childhood memories involves Mad Lib.
I had only two of them - one pad's cover was mostly green, the other mostly blue - and I remember opening them up to find blank spaces, with figures of speech written below each one.
At family get-togethers, I'd ask for a noun, or a verb, or an adjective, and a cousin would call out a word for me to write down in one of the blank spaces.
When each space was filled, I'd read the resulting story out loud, and everyone would laugh at the incongruities.
Sometimes, if you didn't read ahead, you could even write in your own words and entertain yourself.
This I did more often than not.
What can I say?
I'm easily amused.
There's only one problem with Mad Lib.
You have to have some basic knowledge of grammar in order to play, so if you don't know the difference between a noun or a verb, you might want to read the brief grammer lesson below before filling in the blanks.
A Brief Grammar Lesson
(in case you need one)
Noun - person, place, or thing, such as "ball" or "city".
Singular means one.
Plural means more than one.
Anything after the colon (:) is for a more specific noun.
Adjective - a descriptive word, such as "pretty" or "hot".
Verb - an action word, such as "run" or "work".
Intransitive verbs don't require an object noun, like "sit" in "I sit."
Transitive verbs require an object noun, like "cut" in "I cut the apples."
Verbs can be in past tense and present tense, such as "I ran" and "I run" respectively.
There is, of course, much more to grammar than this brief lesson, but it should be enough to get you through the mad lib.
When you've filled in all the blanks, you're on the way to writing your own version of one of Aesop's fables.
A Note About Aesop's Fables
If you know the tale of "The Tortoise and the Hare", then you're familiar with one of Aesop's Fables.
Aesop was a Greek in classical times, and his fables were populated with animals whose human-like speech and actions taught a moral in the end.
Aesop's Fables are public domain.
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