Once upon a time there was a paper doll that had no face. His whole body was perfectly cut out and painted, except for his face. However, he had a pencil in his hand so could choose whatever face he wanted to have. How lucky! He then spent all day asking everyone he met:

“What’s a perfect face like?”

“One with a big beak” answered the birds.

“No. Not one with a beak” said the trees. “The perfect face is full of leaves”.

“Forget the beak and the leaves” interrupted the flowers. “If you want a perfect face you fill it with colours”.

And so everyone he met - animals, rivers or mountains - told him to draw his face with their features and colours. But when the doll drew a beak, leaves, colours, hair, sand and a thousand other things, it turned out that nobody liked that face. And now he couldn’t erase it!

Thinking about the wasted opportunity to have a perfect face, the doll cried for days.

“I only wanted a face that everyone would like” he said. “And now look, what a disaster”.

One day, a small cloud heard his cries and came closer to talk to him:

“Hello doll! I think I can help you. As I’m a cloud and don’t have a shape, I can make you any face you like. What do you think about me changing faces until there’s one that you like? I’m sure we can fix you a little bit”.

The doll loved the idea and the cloud made all kinds of faces for him. But none of them was perfect enough.

“Don’t worry” said the doll as he was about to leave, “you’ve been a great friend”.

He gave her a great big hug and the cloud smiled from ear to ear, happy at having helped. Just then the doll said:

“That’s it! That’s the face I want! It’s a perfect face!”

“Which one?” asked the puzzled cloud “But I haven’t done anything…”

“Yes, yes you have! It’s that face you make when I hug you… Or when I tickle you! Look!”

The cloud finally realised that he was talking about her big smile. And together they took the pencil and drew the paper doll an enormous smile, ten times better than beaks, hair, colours and leaves.

And that face was indeed the only one that everyone liked because it had the secret ingredient for perfect faces: a big smile that could never be erased.

(Story translated by Lauren Forrest / Julie Spink at Manchester Metropolitan University)