Ha, ha! Made you look! Or at least I hope so. This is partly an experiment to see if I will get more views merely by putting the name of a popular and addictive game in my title. I'll let you know in my next post if it works. And you thought only foxes could be crafty!
PRINCESS:
So, I've been away for a while in Spain. I did some reading on the plane, as the movie was terrible and the earphones wouldn't stay in my big ears. Mom said I didn't miss much. She had given me two of her favorite classics to read, and also brought along a paperback that neither of us had read. We were very cozy and companionable while reading those books, just as I know you are when you are reading with someone you love.
We begin with "The Phoenix and the Carpet" by E. Nesbit, but Mom says we could start with any of her books. "E" stands for Edith, a singularly ugly name in my opinion, but who am I to talk? I curse whoever named me Princess. Five brothers and sisters live in England at the beginning of the last century. I gather that children then got to gallivant around without anyone paying any attention to what they were doing, as these children have all sorts of adventures without leashes or fences. They start the book by burning a hole in the nursery carpet, and then are punished in the same way that our little one is punished here - one parent takes away a privilege and the other forgets and gives it back. The next day a new carpet is purchased, and inside it is an egg, which is put on the mantelpiece. Later, again unleashed, the children knock the egg into the fireplace, and before they can pull it out something amazing happens. It hatches into a Phoenix! Crikey!!!
MOM:
This is a fantasy with old-fashioned charm but an amazingly modern appeal. E. Nesbit is so funny, the children she has created are full of squabbles and laughs and mischief. Their adventures with the magic Phoenix are wondrous, but they are also full of little disasters. You will laugh reading about them, I know you will.
When you create a world with Minecraft you keep adding on to what you first created. One thing leads to another, and that's a lot of the fun, and you are also picturing your world in your brain as you create it on the screen. When you read a book by a great author you picture the world they created through their words, but you are using your own experiences to fill it in. What you are picturing will be different from what another reader would be picturing, but with the same basic structure. Now add another layer. Suppose a writer loved a favorite author so much that he or she decided to write their own fantasies in the same spirit. That is what happened with Edward Eager, he modeled his wonderful series on the books he loved by E. Nesbit, but he wrote them 50 years later.
PRINCESS:
Boy, her part was boring, wasn't it? You just want to hear about the books. So we read "Half Magic" by Edward Eager. Another silly person name. Anyway, there are three sisters and a brother on a summer vacation. They get E. Nesbit's book "The Enchanted Castle" out of the library and then wonder why exciting things like that never happen to them. Well, they're in for a surprise! They find a magic thing on the sidewalk, almost as good as the squirrel pelt I found in the bushes behind the firehouse tonight (which I didn't get to keep). But it's only half a magic thing. So when they start figuring out that it is magic and experimenting with making wishes things go hilariously wrong.
MOM:
Yes, my favorite part is when Martha wishes the cat could talk, because she is lonely and needs companionship!
PRINCESS:
Stop interrupting! So the cat suddenly starts talking, but she is saying things like, "Azy ooselfitz! Powitzer grompaw!". Plus she won't stop talking, and she is driving the children crazy. You get the idea, wishes can only half come true, and it takes the children the whole book to figure out how to say the wishes so they won't backfire. So funny!
MOM:
Amazingly coincidental, but the paperback book we brought on our trip, "Any Which Wall" by Laurel Snyder, turned out to continue this trail of authors, E. Nesbit to Edward Eager. There is a quote from Edward Eager's "Seven Day Magic" at the beginning of the book, and as I read further I saw the similarities. A group of children with time on their hands and very little supervision, finding a crack in the mundane fabric of their everyday world. Magic seeps through and changes their lives, this time in the form of a huge wall in the middle of an Iowan field, and a little key found in the dirt. And their adventures
PRINCESS:
Blah, blah, blah. What she's trying to say is that the fun lies in the unleashedness of it all, running free and having adventures. They each get a wish, and each wish goes a bit astray. When things go wrong they have to use their brains and bravery to make it right.
MOM:
Magic is a tricky business, with no guarantees. But like all things worthwhile, you'd rather have it than not, no matter how problematic. And finding magic is a matter of keeping your eyes and heart open, and believing that it is possible to find it anywhere.
PRINCESS:
I find magic every day, it arrives twice in my bowl, once in the morning and once at night. And squirrels are magical all the time, with their quick escapes and ability to disappear into thin air. Books are magic, taking me to other worlds in my fuzzy head. If you happened upon this blog entry because you typed "Minecraft" into Google, try picking up a book instead.
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