The Cardboard Kingdom

Dressed as the Mad Scientist, Amanda bursts into her cardboard laboratory, ready to experiment. She wears a lab coat, goggles, and a cardboard moustache. A series of her friends show up looking for help with their problems, and she “fixes” each problem with a solution that leaves her friends even worse off. For example, Miguel wants different hair, so she replaces his whole head, and the Knight doesn’t like her big feet, so the Mad Scientist gives her even bigger, backward feet.

That evening, as Amanda excitedly tells her dad about her day, he stops her and tells her that people are different for a reason, and that changing them doesn’t help them. This idea upsets Amanda until her dad tells her never to be afraid of being different. This gives her the idea to make her friends even more different.

The next day, a boy comes to see her with a broken arm, and instead of trying to fix it, she adorns it with cardboard and paper so that he looks like the shape-shifting Galipotes, a creature from Dominican folklore. When Amanda’s dad arrives home from work, he is upset and immediately calls her inside.