Day dreams and reading

When I was younger, I loved going to the library and exploring the wonderful world that was opened up to me through books. I would read a book and then create daydreams of how I would solve the mystery or slay the dragon or invent the machine to save the world. Those were magical times for me.

I still believe that dreams, daydreams, you know the ones you dream with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing. These are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The creative person will be most apt to understand the power of image-making. The perception of the image, to help create, invent, and encourage society to understand and grasp the implications, of the image is important. The control by the creator which is necessary for the successful expression of the idea may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind.

If you have a grandchild or a child who has a creative imagination, help them build their worlds and create. Help them to understand that fiction is something they can build using 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and they, and they alone, using their imagination, can create a world and people to fill this world. Using writing they get to feel things, visit places and worlds they would never otherwise know, and they can share these with their friends, family, and maybe one day the world.

Start children young by telling them fairy stories. Our society has tamed down the original stories, so our grandchildren and children are not scared to death by these stories anymore. However, fairy stories give children things to think about with images to think about. They also give our children the sense that all kinds of things are possible. Because we tell the story to impart a moral, the children may hear a fairy story that is ridiculous or terrifying, or consolatory.

Start by telling or reading fairy stories that capture the imagination. Help by asking your grandchild or child to retell the story in their own words, using their imagination. The more imagination the child has, being an untrained listener and reader, the more she will do for herself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion images and ideas, and they will never guess that she is herself chiefly making what she enjoys. So, the love of reading and day dreaming will continue.