Chapter 1
Sabrina

As happens in small towns, there were many families in Grimacia and a lot of them had children. One of these children was a little girl called Sabrina.

Sabrina was a very smart girl and very pretty. She had shiny black hair that went down to her shoulders. When the sunlight shone on it, you could see some hints of red. She had a wonderful smile that everyone liked.

Sabrina lived with her mom and dad. Being from Grimacia they didn’t have a lot of imagination either but they were smart and they loved Sabrina very much. Because they loved her so, they would always listen to her talking about new things in the world.

Sabrina would show them a new flower and ask them to imagine what it would be like to be so small that you could live between its petals. Then she would show them a new lake and ask them to imagine what it would be like to be a huge fish living in an underwater cave. Her parents didn’t always understand what she meant, but they really tried to see the world as she did.

Sabrina liked imagining things. She would take a walk in the forest close to her house with her mom and imagine one day that she was a magical fairy from an enchanted island, and another day imagine that she was a dragon protecting a beautiful treasure. All of this would make her very happy.

Because she liked imagining things very much, she would find her friends and ask them to imagine things with her. But because almost everyone in Grimacia was very dull, including the children, she found that none of her friends could imagine things with her. As hard as they tried, they could not come up with anything new.

Sabrina was a very smart girl. She realized that the children were dull because they did not have imaginations, and they did not have imaginations because their parents did not have imaginations either. She would be invited to dinner at one of her friend’s houses and the conversation would be something like this:

“Hello Sabrina, how are you?”

Sabrina would say, “Oh great! Today I played with a unicorn that took me to a waterfall made of honey!”

Everyone at the table would look at her for a few moments without saying anything and after a while they would talk about how hot the weather had been that day. They would not ask Sabrina anything else that night.
Instead of being sad, she would go out and sit in her house’s porch to think about this problem.

One day, she was sitting in her favorite chair next to the family dog Tedi. Tedi was a happy go lucky dog, maybe a little overweight but always a good dog.

“Tedi,” Sabrina said, “I’ve been thinking about my friends. I really like them and their families, but I wish they could imagine things with me.”

Tedi looked back and scratched his left ear.

She would think about this problem long and hard for many hours, until one beautiful spring day when she was walking with Tedi on a path near her house. The flowers had started to bloom and there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of flowers. From the path she could see the field of flowers that went on and on. She could also see many of the houses in her town.

Sabrina stopped walking. She looked at the flowers and then at her town. Then she looked at the flowers some more.

Although from a distance all the flowers looked alike, if she looked closer she could not find two that were the same. They were all different sizes, with different shapes and a lot of different colors. This was really a lot of imagination on the part of the flowers, Sabrina thought.

However, when she looked at the houses, she couldn’t really tell them apart. They were almost all the same size, and all of them were the exact same color.

“I hadn’t noticed before how different the flowers and the houses are,” she said.

Although the flowers were small and there were many more than houses, she said, “Tedi, have you noticed that all of the flowers are different?”

Tedi didn’t reply, as dogs do.

Sabrina went on. “I wonder. If there are so many more flowers than houses, how can all the flowers be different and so few houses be the same?”

She was quiet for a little bit. “I got it!” Sabrina told Tedi. While she was looking at the flowers and the houses, she thought of an idea to make Grimacia a place full of imagination.

Sabrina thought she knew the answer. Remembering her friends and her friends’ families, she went to ask her mom.

“Mom,” she said. “Why do you think all the houses in Grimacia are painted the same color?”

Sabrina’s mom said, “Hmmm. I’m not sure, but I was at the grocery store the other day and I heard Mr. and Mrs. Poole talking about what color they should paint their new house.”

Mr. Poole said , “We finished building our house. Now we need to paint it.”

“We do,” Mrs. Poole said. “An unpainted house is not beautiful.”

“I’m so excited!” Mr. Poole said. “Once we paint our house the same color as our neighbors’, it will really become part of the town.”

“But Mom! How boring. There are so many colors and they never even thought about using a different one that is not brown! What a waste.”

“I know honey. I know,” her mom said.

Sabrina went out to her yard to play with Tedi and think. She thought that people’s houses were all the same color because people in Grimacia didn’t have imagination.

“What would happen,” she asked Tedi, “if everyone started painting their houses different colors? Wouldn’t the town be much prettier then? Although, that would mean that they would have to start using their imaginations,” she said.

She knew that would not be an easy task. However, Sabrina wanted to be around people with imaginations and play with friends that could imagine new things.

“If they are going to use their imaginations, they just have to start practicing, don’t they?” said Sabrina.

Tedi just looked back at her, as dogs do.