My three-year-old granddaughter has a new favorite book. It's a blank journal. I think Snoopy is on the cover, but Snoopy doesn't play a part in Audrey's delight with the book. She likes to open the journal, turn the pages and "read" a story. Usually it's a story made up of things that have happened that very day, bits of other stories from published books, and plenty of random gibberish that only she understands. Her stories are "read" with great drama and purpose.
When Audrey's finished with her story, she wants me, or Poppa, or her parents, to "read" her a story from the same blank book. And we have to turn the pages at the right time or she does it for us. I have to be honest and say that our stories are nowhere near as entertaining as hers.
I've been dismayed lately at the barrage of articles about the demise of books as we know them. The world is going digital. Computers and electronic devices are replacing traditional books. Don't get me wrong, I own an e-reader and Audrey likes her share of gadgets, too. But, at the moment, the blank journal is her favorite thing. Holding a book in her hands, opening and closing the cover, and turning real pages of paper is what captures her fancy and sparks her imagination. It gives me great joy to see her imagination at work and it inspires me to fill the blank pages of my journals with wild stories.
I don't think Audrey is all that rare with her love of blank books and her conversations with dolls. After all, she's a child and she lives in the world of imagination--where the paper that wraps a box is as interesting as the gift, where a blank page is as intriguing as a touch pad, where a fluff of dandelion floating past your eyes is a whole world ...
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso
April 28, 2011
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