{ my history of pirate stories }

i have always enjoyed making origami - the act of creating a beautiful model out of a simple piece of paper is attractive to people of all ages. as an occasional teacher, i use origami as an extra "lesson" to add something different and fun to the day.

i discovered traditional model of "the pirate's shirt" around 2004 and it quickly became a favourite model with the surprise ending. as i continued making origami with different classes, i found myself having to make more and more models as students would often "not know" or "forget" the steps. i began to think that a story would be a great format to introduce people to the model and possibly link the folds to important parts of the story.

in Dec 2005, i wrote an early draft of the "Storyboat" to teach beginning steps of the "pirate's shirt." over the next couple of years, i revised with hundreds (if not thousands) of re-tellings to people of all ages (even in australia and singapore!), finally submitting a draft to Kids Can Press and coming to the current draft.