You’re wondering how we are hooking young citizens like the ninja lover with our educational goods day after day? Like any do-gooder, we are forced to use a disguise—in our case, it is the storefront that conceals the tutoring workshop. Unsuspecting citizens believe that the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. has moved to the neighborhood and, if they are ever in need of a cape, they’ll find the storefront quite a convenience. We sell secret identity kits, anti-matter, a Fog Blaster, a wide variety of grappling hooks and utility belts (vintage to deluxe). It is a wildly successful ploy inspired by 826 Valencia, our predecessor sister organization in San Francisco with its writing center/pirate supply store. Somewhere between half and three quarters of our students started showing up for tutoring after visiting the Superhero Supply Co. They come to try out the cape-tester, they stay to get help writing their social studies reports. Besides being fun and practical—sales at the store support 826NYC’s programs—the store is kid-friendly and welcoming. One favorite feature is the secret door that separates the store from the writing lab. Waiting behind it? A secret lair of scholastic improvement! For knowledge is the true superpower.
Along with tutoring, the writing center at 826NYC hosts other free educational events, most notably our workshops and field trips. Upcoming workshops include, for elementary and middle school students, chances to learn how to make pop-up books or write fairy tales (“Elves Under Your Bed,” that one is called); and for high school students, in-depth courses on how to write short stories or song lyrics as well as strategies for taking the SATs. That schedule actually paints a fairly accurate portrait of what the organization is about: It is possible and important to help students improve their scores on standardized tests (or write a better college entrance essay) while at the same time remembering that a love of writing and storytelling can come from pondering more whimsical questions about whether elves do or do not live under one’s bed and, let’s say they do, what would they say and how would they say it?
As of the spring of 2005, we will be sending tutors into local public schools en masse. This will be a huge undertaking, helping potentially thousands of students develop better writing skills on a daily basis. And, because our interest in students’ potential extends beyond high school graduation, we hope to start awarding college scholarships.
Our field trips are especially popular. We regularly host entire classes from New York City schools who show up for the day to write and publish a book. The students write the book together, save for the last page, which each student finishes alone. Then the book is illustrated, published, and bound, and each student goes home with his or her own copy complete with author photos and blurbs. Recent titles include The Swooshys Save the Day!, about married superheroes made of Swiss cheese, or Leafy Goes to School, about a maple tree “in the rainforest of Pennsylvania” who, along with her best friend, a dingo named Morris, encounters “Crabby the boy crab.” Toward the end, “Morris and Crabby ran as fast as they could but, out of nowhere, the aquarium keepers grabbed them and threw them in the recycling bin!” What more could one ask from a story than that—friendship, action, and a devotion to conserving natural resources. Perhaps David Sedaris will soon have a new favorite piece of short fiction?
Visit us online at www.826nyc.org. And please stop by if you are in the neighborhood. Look for the Superhero Supply Store at 372 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, NY 11215.
Ask Ted for directions to the secret door.
Permissions Acknowledgments
“Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired.” From The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates. Copyright © 1957, 1961, 1962, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 2001 by The Estate of Richard Yates. This story previously appeared in Liars in Love (1981). Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
“Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired.” From The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates. Reprinted by permission of Methuen Publishing Limited.
“Gryphon.” From Through the Safety Net by Charles Baxter, copyright © 1985 by Charles Baxter. Used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Interpreter of Maladies.” From Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Copyright © 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
“Interpreter of Maladies.” From Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Copyright © by Jhumpa Lahiri.
“Half a Grapefruit.” From The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro, copyright © 1977, 1978 by Alice Munro. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Half a Grapefruit.” From The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro, copyright © 1981 by Alice Munro. Reprinted by permission of William Morris Agency, Inc. on behalf of Author.
“Applause, Applause.” Reprinted with permission of Jean Thompson.
“I Know What I’m Doing About All the Attention I’ve Been Getting.” From Yo, Poe by Frank Gannon, copyright © 1987 by Frank Gannon. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
“Where the Door Is Always Open and the Welcome Mat Is Out.” From Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith by Patricia Highsmith. Copyright © 2002 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“Where the Door Is Always Open and the Welcome Mat Is Out.” From Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith by Patricia Highsmith. Reprinted with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
“The Best of Betty.” From Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett. Copyright © 2002 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.
“Song of the Shirt, 1941.” From Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker, copyright 1924–29, 1931–34, 1937–39, 1941, 1943, 1955, 1958, 1995 by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
“Song of the Shirt, 1941.” From Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker. Reprinted by permission of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
“The Girl with the Blackened Eye.” From I Am No One You Know: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Copyright © 2004 by The Ontario Review. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
“People Like That Are the Only People Here.” From Birds of America by Lorrie Moore, copyright © 1998 by Lorrie Moore. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“People Like That Are the Only People Here.” From Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. Reprinted with permission of Faber and Faber.
“Revelation.” From Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. Copyright © 1965 by the Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor. Copyright renewed 1993 by Regina O’Connor. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
“Revelation.” From Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. Copyright © 1964 by Flannery O’Connor; renewed 1992 by Regina O’Connor.
“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolsen Is Buried” by Amy Hempel. Reprinted with permission of Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman Literary Agency.
“Cosmopolitan.” Reprinted with permission of Akhil Sharma.
“Irish Girl” by Tim Johnston. Copyright © 2002 by Tim Johnston. Originally published in DoubleTake, vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 2002). Reprinted by permission of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. All rights reserved.
“Bullet in the Brain.” From The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff, copyright © 1996 by Tobias Wolff. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Bullet in the Brain.” From The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff, copyright © 1996 by Tobias Wolff. Used by permission of International Creative Management.
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David Sedaris, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules
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