Sunday, June 20, 2010

Spring, Summer, Anthropomorphism


Of Spring, Lexie writes this:

The warmth of spring starts life over again for many things. Trees and flowers start to bed and many different kinds of animals are born. Animals come out of their homes from their long winter rest.

And indeed we do get to see all sorts of animals, or at least all sorts of signs of animals, being born. We collect the little blue robins' eggs that tumble out of nests after the birds have hatched, and marvel that something could be born out of an egg so tiny. And there are folks in town who have sheep who have kids every year, along with the chickens, though they don't have sheep mixing with chickens, because that would be weird. Anyway. On to summer:


Summer, for Lexie, is still all about growing things:

In the hot summer most plants and animals continue to grow. Trees and flowers are in full bloom. Summer is a time of fun, activity, and growing.

And of course in her cotton-wooly world, bears do plant and tend to flowers. We are not anti-anthropomorphists in our house; both parents are too steeped in the likes of Tolkien, Potter, Adams, O'Brien, Lewis and others not to be. We will assign human attributes to animals and do so with impunity until our imaginations are pried from our cold, dead fingers.

No comments:

Post a Comment