When I was a child, seeing myself as a character inside a storybook was something I often did. Picture books were amazing places where I pretended to live. I was mesmerized by the colorful scenes where animals talked, houses could walk, and people flew on the wings of a butterfly. I believed magic was real and those who lived inside books came to life when when a book was opened. I hoped books were real places where I would be taken on incredible journeys. I once believed that little people lived inside my radio and music boxes, playing their instruments, singing, dancing and telling stories.
Although I knew people were not small enough to fit inside my radio, as a child I imagined it, so it could be true, ah the innocence of children! When I first read the book "Horton hears a Who" by Dr. Seuss, I loved how a tiny speck of dust was home to people smaller than Horton and it made me question what I did not know. If Horton saw a speck, then there had to be specks on Whoville with more tiny planets and inhabitants. It must have gone on forever! However, If true, it was possible that I too was a tiny person on a tiny speck floating through someones space!
Mind blown!
But wait, this means that those living on specks had giants who could see their small world floating by and they were looking at them! Oh my, this is getting to be too deep of a thought process for a child!
So, would it mean that giants and tiny people all share the same space? When I read the book "Jack and The Beanstalk" it seemed to prove that they did indeed share space! So at any moment, there is a larger person than me listening in, but we are too tiny for them to see.
Years later when I saw a movie called "The Borrowers." from the book "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton, it again confirmed that tiny people and giant persons existed together! But, what is normal, I wondered? Who is the correct size, the people under the floor boards, or the people who live on top of the floor boards? I started imagining an infinity of specks and giants, with no end. I think to some degree I still believe there may be little people living in tiny mushroom homes or that I can walk into the pages of a book and experience worlds more intriguing than my own life.
Maybe we are toys which come to life when the giants play with their doll houses or open their books?
What really matters is that we always believe in the fantastical world of a children's book. Never stop reading, or writing children's stories, even as an adult. Purchase books for the children in your life. Encourage them to pretend, play, read and believe in power of imagination.
