So there you are parenting along and trying to find the best books for your child and trying to do a good job of it all, and sometimes you just stop and wonder, where am I going with all this? What am I really aiming for with my children and my job as a parent? Well, a wonderful thing happened. Katherine Paterson stopped and wrote about trying to do a good job of writing and where she is heading when she puts pen to paper for children. In this book she talks about the invisible child which she actually defines as a secret self. Ahhhh, yes. There is the character that we read about and see in action, but there is that other part of the character that we "know" intuitively, and we can connect our secret, invisible self to that secret character.
I host a local cable TV show here in Maryland, and usually I'm interviewing children's authors and illustrators for that show. I had the privilege of interviewing Katherine Paterson and in preparing for that interview, I found this book. Katherine talks about children and wonder and how these days we seem to be trying harder and harder to give children what they want by making movies scarier and then even scarier and making TV shows violent and even more violent ... all perhaps in vain. Katherine asks the question of us all, are our children asking for bread, and we're giving them stones? What do you think?
