Felipe Garrido

Every day, we listen to stories and we tell stories. When we come home from school, someone always asks us, "How was school today? What did you do?" And we tell our little stories of everyday things; María wasn't at school, there was a big fuss when a street dog got into the schoolyard, the teacher wore a lovely new dress today.

But by using our imaginations, we can also extend these stories, making up new versions that are more exciting, funnier, or more elaborate. We might tell about how María left for a long trip to the East because she found out that she has cousins in Japan... that a pack of wolves chased the physical education teacher up a tree... that the teacher found a chest of gold in her house, and now she is rich. We could add even more details to these stories; María's cousins have a trained monkey that can tell the future. Fernando and Julián helped me capture the leader of the wolf pack. The teacher discovered the treasure because a little old lady told her in a dream where it was buried. Every story in the world starts with ordinary things just like those that happen every day.

Writers don't make up their stories, they find them in the street, at home, or at school. Writers have learned to find stories where other people think that nothing is going on. That is how I started telling my stories when I was a child, and it is how I am still writing them now. One of my stories is Lección de piano (The Piano Lesson) published by CIDCLI in 2002.