I’m sitting in a coffee shop, supposed to be busy as a bee at about a dozen different and deadlined tasks, but I’ve just begun a marvelous book and I’m momentarily rebelling against responsibility in order to tell you that I think you should read it too. It’s called Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, by Anthony Esolen. My lovely friend Lancia set this in my hands two days ago, and though I’m only into the first chapter, the book promises to be a lively and convicting exploration of what imagination is, why it’s so precious in childhood, and what exactly we are all doing to kill it. Yes, kill it dead. I’m assuming it will also suggest how we might spark it alive as well. I knew I would like this book when the author began by describing a college librarian who discarded thousands of “outdated” books (like medieval Latin grammars and guides to Anglo-Saxon language – you know, the kinds of books that founded Western culture) as a vandal.
I don’t think this writer is going to pull any punches. And ah, how good that is for us in our busy, dazed state of modern existence. I get excited by books that offer a rallying cry to all of us who believe that imagination is a precious thing, our gift and birthright, a fragile, but powerful force that will shape every aspect of interior self and outer action. The blood in my veins quickens when I find an advocate for childhood wonder, for innocence, for a life in which imagination has room to run and play and beckon us toward eternity.
I’m just doing to you what I did to Joel and Joy, my ever-patient siblings, when I demanded a few moments ago that they cease their work and listen to this passage in which the author suggests that, when it comes to children, we might be in danger of becoming vandals ourselves: Books are bulky and inconvenient – like rocks, and trees, and rivers, and life. It occurs to me that everything that can be said against the inconvenience of books can be said about the inconvenience of children. They too take up space, are of no immediate practical use, are of interest to only a few people, and present all kinds of problems. They too must be warehoused efficiently, and brought with as little resistance as possible into the Digital Age. Provocative, eh? If you read it, let me know what you think.
Cheers on this blustery June day! Back to work I go.