It’s been amazingly/frighteningly warm for December, with rain instead of snow in the forecast. Nevertheless, I’ve been reading seasonally appropriate books to the Boo — The Snowy Day, Snowmen At Night, and Raymond Briggs’ classic The Snowman.
For the unfamiliar, this lovely book has no words, just small soft-edged drawings with an impressive amount of nuance. A boy builds a snowman, goes to sleep, then wakes in the night and has an adventure with his creation. I was curious to see how the Boo would react to the lack of words (he didn’t) and the fanciful plot line (again, no comment on a snowman walking and flying).
What really got him going was what they did in the house. In one part that I found funny and charming, the snowman tries on the boy’s father’s clothes.
“Mama! They shouldn’t be doing that, Mama!”
Also, the boy turns on the stove.
“Mama! He shouldn’t be doing that! Why is he doing that?”
And horror of horrors, the snowman climbs into the deep freeze.
“Why is he doing that! He shouldn’t be in there Mama!”
I explained that the boy wants to show the Snowman everything it was his first time in a house, but that didn’t make much of a dent in my kid’s unease that they were breaking the rules. Maybe I should have pointed out that the boy was dreaming and told him there are no rules in dreams.
Or maybe it’s time to introduce the concept of willing suspension of disbelief.
Mama-Come-Lately 