{Stella with elf ears, 2004}
Chris is a fantasy geek. There, I said it. Mostly it is an obsession with Tolkien (did you know that he wrote so much more than just the Lord of the Rings trilogy? I didn't either) but from time to time some other fantasy world blows through our house in the form of a new book or tv program. I like to think I'm pretty game, as fantasy geek wives go. I can totally see the appeal of getting lost in a time and place where the rules do not apply. (Childhood friends may remember my wackadoodle assertion throughout sixth grade that I was, in fact, Han and Leia's daughter...) And I find much in the Lord of the Rings movies extremely beautiful and creatively inspiring.
But, lucky for Chris, he seems to have found a true fantasy soul mate in Stella. She is his new buddy in all things elf- and wizard-related. They are reading The Hobbit together - sometimes I hear her giggling to herself in the backseat of the car, "Oin and Gloin!" - and they are also reading a non-Tolkien kids' fantasy series, Fablehaven. Both books are pitched to a target audience a little older than Stella's five years.. ok, maybe a lot older. But with Daddy reading it is easier to be brave during the scary parts.
{Stella eating the elf ears, 2005}
(As an aside, I will say that in general I am much more concerned with my kids encountering scary or difficult material from a screen than I am from a book. From a tv or computer screen the hard stuff comes at them fast and I worry that a kid brain is trapped, forced to watch, like the aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange. They are at the mercy of whatever the producers want them to see, and the pace - in modern entertainment especially - is crazy fast, way faster that a little kiddo can digest. Reading, on the other hand, gets filtered through their own imaginations. Their brains get to work through the descriptions and they can set the pace that works best for them. Or, if a parent is doing the reading, the kid can stop and ask questions, have a conversation. I'm not a Luddite; one of my great pleasures in life is going to the movies alone so as to enhance the full immersion I am advocating against inflicting on children, but I just think we have such a small window of time when our little ones are sponges and we must tread lightly with the responsibility we have for what they soak up.)
One part of Stella's induction into this realm that I am excited about, if only as an observer, is Chris encouraging her to make up her own stories. She gave us this whole treatise the other day at dinner about how she is a red wizard, because evidently that means she is good at lots of different... um, wizardy things. And now he's got her working on a little book.
It started out with the assignment: Three characters: an Orc, a Hero and a Magician. Plus assorted Places and Other Things. After that, freedom to make up whatever she wants.
Right away, Stella came up with a title: "the woman magician the orc and the man hero!" I'm not the biggest fan of gratuitous exclamation points but here I find it charming and stylistically necessary. I am unbiased, of course.
Then a couple of days later she returned to it and wrote her first page.
chappter one Orcs!
Men used to live in the castles. But tHar were orcs around! WHen the orcs came they killed all the men. Only one of them servived! tHe one wHo servived was named: Alton. tHe Boss of tHe orcs was named: BHurz.
I love the high drama. When Chris first read this he looked at me all worried, like he was in for a lecture on non-violence, but actually I am kind of thrilled. This is not violence to me - this is imagination at work, and whatever she comes up with is what her brain needs to come up with. I am not going to judge.
Very excited for further installments and hopefully, at some point, illustrations. Clearly this is a slow process, but if Stella has taught us anything over the years it is that some things cannot be forced. Or even encouraged. Or whispered about. Or looked at sideways. So this really needs to be her own thing. I wouldn't want her to put a spell on me or anything...
