"Every
book is a question I don't know the answer to.
I don't want my books to be read, I want them to be played.
What I want is after they've read the book to say, 'I've got an idea!'"
I don't want my books to be read, I want them to be played.
What I want is after they've read the book to say, 'I've got an idea!'"
My 5 year old reads books this way. After we read Float, within minutes she was making paper boats and floating them in a little pool. After reading Mrs. Maple's Seeds, she was Miss Maple, dressed in an apron, scattering seeds across the living room. We read Hogwash and she was quickly drawing her own mud/paint/shower machines complete with magnets, faucets, and piggies hanging up on a clothesline to dry. After almost every story that she loves, she says 'Mama, I want to BE that. How can I BE in Hogwash? How can I BE in Miss Rumphius, how can I BE in Virginia Wolf? (Lots of paintbrushes and a big bow in her hair seem to be a good starting place for the latter.) It's a question that I've learned not to answer, as whatever she comes up with is always more surprising, more interesting, more wonderful than anything I could have suggested.
Of course when we draw together, she is also full of ideas. Sometimes we trade our drawings back and forth, sometimes we swap them right before adding color. We draw a lot of girls in flying machines and long fancy dresses. But today I was drawing a creature in a scarf which she thought looked like a bandage. Which seemed like a fun idea, which led to these—
