Miles of Crooked Smiles

Kids’ Crooked House Visits the Burbank Campus

On the surface, it seems so simple. After all, it’s just a nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man,
Who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.

It’s when you start to think about what that word “stile” means that it gets interesting. Just what is a stile, anyway? A turnstile, of course, is one of those one-way revolving gates that lets people in or out, but not out or in, respectively.

A stile, it turns out, is a border, and the border in the rhyme is the one between Scotland and England. And the crooked house? That’s an allegory, too. It refers to the newly cobbled-together United Kingdom presided over by the doomed King Charles I in the 17th Century.

But we’re not going to let all that weighty knowledge spoil our fun at hosting a genuine, Yahoo! branded, Kids’ Crooked House, right here at on Burbank campus. In fact, this knowledge only adds to the good times.

This wonky little playhouse was built especially for Yahoo! by Glenn Halliday, owner of KidsCrookedHouse.com and one of the winners of our Ultimate Connection contest. If there’s a 90-degree angle in this miniature villa, our little friends here couldn’t find it. It’s been great having it around, and the big Yahoos love it almost as much as the little ones. It’s been a lesson in geometry, poetry, history and fun.

Thanks, Glen, and again, congrats.

—The Team