 The stories for Pencil Box, a half-hour program for children produced in Ottawa, were written by children. The producers solicited stories from Ottawa students, and chose about l00 each season to adapt for production (about a half-dozen stories on each broadcast). Productions involved a wide range of techniques, including puppets, mime, masks, and animation. Actors performed in black limbo sets and were electronically keyed into cutout sets representing the creation of schoolchildren. Most of the stories, which came mostly from kids age eight to twelve, ran only a couple of pages. They involved ghosts and monsters and disasters, but others combined elements of the everyday with the fantastical.