Let's Build a Kids Crooked House!

In Maine there was a fun-loving Dad named Glen who was a graphic designer but really loved to build things out of wood. Glen frowned when he saw how his three adorable kids (Jake, Bailey, and Madison) were glued to the TV. He wanted them to go outside and tumble around the backyard so he thought he’d find, or make, something fun for them to play with. Glen’s cousin, Jeff, said he wanted to help because he had a cute kid (Sebastian) who wanted to be part of the outdoor play scene. After Glen and Jeff thought and thought, they decided to look for something their kids could play IN, not with.

So Glen and Jeff went to lots of stores and web sites looking for a decent, ready-made playhouse, or even a build-it-yourself one. But the houses they found were plain and ordinary, and just not, you know, FUN. It made Glen and Jeff pretty darn sad. So they went home to sulk and watch some children’s TV with their kids. They liked the cartoon shows featuring houses with wonky lines, skewed angles and off-kilter windows…houses where everything is just a little bit funky, sort of off, and, well—crooked.

"That’s it," they cried. "Let’s build a Kids Crooked House." And so they did.

After much sawing and hammering and painting in Glen’s old red barn, they finished the very first Kids Crooked House. The Crooked House thrilled their children and when all the neighbor kids came to see it, they loved the house too. The kids went home and told their parents about the incredibly cool, wooden Kids Crooked House. It didn’t take long before the parents wanted Kids Crooked Houses in their own backyards.

Glen and Jeff started to tell lots of people about their nifty hand-crafted Kids Crooked House and, in no time at all, the Fairy Godmother at Yahoo dubbed them the winners of a huge 2007 marketing contest. They set off for the Big Apple to load up on advertising ideas for the company and when they got there, Princess Ivanka Trump granted them a boatload of wishes and that’s how Kids Crooked House became a nationwide sensation.

Glen and Jeff began building so many Kids Crooked Houses that their barn was bursting. So they moved the business to a giant, new workshop (4000 square feet) and people from far away lands (Germany, Sweden, Pakistan, Ireland, England, Kenya and more) started to ask about Kids Crooked Houses. Today, Glen and Jeff have built tons of Kids Crooked Houses, and gazillions of kids are abandoning their TVs and heading outside to play the days away in colorful, customized Crooked Houses.

Kids think it’s neat to have their own house, furnished with their own stuff, a place where they can make up the game AND the rules. Children’s imaginations are running wild in the Kids Crooked Houses that are springing up all over the place, and the kids themselves are getting lots more exercise. Weird, wonderful fantasy worlds are being constructed (cooperatively, of course) during great, rumbling creative bursts of energy and lots of kids are making their own dreams come true.

And all the people are living happily ever after. Especially the children, who play in total harmony, and secretly wish that kids everywhere will get a Crooked House of their very own.