Stuart Baum: Stuart's Story

Stuart's Story

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In 1990, the year his first child was born, Stuart Baum '85 wrote a children's story, "The Laziest King." Some of his friends asked him for copies so they could read the story to their children, so he printed out about a dozen copies and sent them to these people as holiday gifts. They loved the story and clamored for more. Thus began a tradition, Stuart'�s holiday stories, with a mailing list that grew, and grew, and grew—until it seemed to make sense to put them online.

StuartStories.com currently features 19 stories for children, seven "early reader" stories for beginning readers, and four activity areas with writing contests children can enter. The activity areas give kids wonderfully imaginative options for honing their own creativity—"Finish Me" Stories, where the beginning is provided and the child writes the ending; "Frankenstein" Stories, where the basic ingredients (setting, characters, and problem) are provided, and the child creates the story; and "Machine" Stories, where the child is given an imaginary machine (the Talking Machine, for example) and then asked to tell the story of what happened when s/he used the machine.

Every year, over 50,000 visitors from all over the world find their way to StuartStories.com. The writing activities and contests on the site have been used as teaching materials for classrooms and homeschoolers in the U.S. and abroad, with ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms frequently asking to use both the stories and activities as classroom materials. All the materials are downloadable for free. The site is also linked with Amazon.com and Mindware.com, both of which donate a percentage of purchases made through Stuart's website to the Baums' local school system.