Yourself?

Just picked up this book at the school library (RJ)... cute little children's book that is titled The Tale of the Magical Seeds. Produced by the National Parks Board, and sponsored by HSBC.

I've never felt more humbled in my life.

Approached the book with the same sort of mindset I had in my youth, childlike curiosity... poring over the pictures, and the pictures and barely reading the text. The stories ARE told by the pictures, and the story never really existed anywhere else outside my own head. It seems to me, that simple words can really tell wonderful stories, why then do we use difficult polysyllabic words in almost every essay we write in order to obtain good grades?

The adult world is a strange place. People use ever more specific words not because it makes the passages more beautiful, but because the more difficult and specific words make it more beautiful for him and him alone. A children's book is a book of your own interpretation, because the words cannot dictate what you are thinking of, but are only guides to your own imagination. An adult book is but living in another person's world, in another person's imaginations.

I'd like to discuss a children's book. Because even when arguments arise, there is a very high likelihood that we are both right, that there are more agreements than disagreements, that because the text only says so much, the rest is filled in by the voices in our heads. And what can be sweeter or more beautiful than your own voice?

And pictures! Where have pictures gone? I paused for a full two minutes on the inside front cover, which said (in green), the tale of the magical seeds. And wondered what it was about, and gazed at the text (no not black) but Dark Green! And suddenly, that really set the mood, dark green words on a olive green page. What has happened to colour in our own adult books? Front cover and nothing much else.

I'd like to make my own book someday. I'd like to make it colourful, and open, and with cute little pictures. I want to make it talk to my readers, not of my own voice, but theirs, like a mirror in which they peer in, but different, because what they'd never realize that THAT particular mirror is created not by an author, but the voices in their own heads.

posted by Downhere. @ 9:53 am