Books Are Child’s Play
Recently a friend and I were discussing what things kept us occupied for great lengths of time as children. For me, this included a container of buttons my mom had. I don’t remember what games I played with them but I do remember spending hours playing them whatever they were. We then began wondering if little kids today, with the 24 hour availability of TV networkTreehouse, used their imaginations as much or in the same way as we did.
In a weekend New York Times article, Joanna Rudge Long has a similar discussion and looks at picture books that seem to have been written with the concern that children don’t have the tools to use their imaginations. She reviews books that appear to have the intent to take children to an imaginative world that they otherwise wouldn’t go to on their own. In particular Long reviews Not a Box by Antoinette Portis (“Honor Book†- 2007 Geisel Award) a book about a rabbit using its imagination in playing with a cardboard box and The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli, another tale of a box but this time used by a human baby.
Let’s hope such books help children who are imaginatively challenged to experience an important part of growing up, not to mention a memorable one. After all, without imaginations, who’ll write the next generation of books?
