While we were in Alaska, we got two birthday cards from Bobbledy club members who happen to be sisters.
Here’s one from Thalia, who recently turned four:
Her mom sent along some helpful commentary.
Thalia’s features “a cat who is scared of the alligator (dark blue) because it thinks the alligator is a bad alligator but really, the alligator is good. The orange snowman taked the cat away to his house because actually the snowman is bad. The alligator went to the rescue to sting the snowman. And the snowman had to run backwards and he fell into the garbage can. Then the alligator told the cat that he was good and then the cat said, phew, and he wanted to be the alligator’s friend. So they both laughed at the snowman because he was bad and feel into a funny garbage and the cat and the alligator like laughing together.”
I must say, I appreciate the story as much as I do the drawing, especially since the nuance of the snowman’s badness and the alligator’s goodness might have been lost on me otherwise. I love the idea of a villainous snowman. They are often so merry with their carrot noses and corncob pipes. It’s good to see this churlish snowman get put in his place (and who knew that the proper way to defeat a snowman was to “sting” him?). Thanks, Thalia, for this great drawing and riveting tale.
As for her sister Phoebe, who just turned six:
Phoebe’s cat is afraid of a tiger. “There’s a tiger in a pretend picture and the cat is real outside, and the cat got scared of the pretend tiger. And there’s a little mouse in a mouse hole in the pretend picture too, only the cat side is real, you see? because it has a sky. The mouse isn’t afraid of the tiger or the cat because the mouse is pretend. Only the cat can be scared because the cat is real.”
Yes, tigers are very scary. There’s no denying it. But this story is about so much more than a cat, a mouse, and a tiger. This is a story about the dizzying nature of being. The seen versus the imagined. The known versus the unknowable. The real versus the dizzying white space of nonbeing. I think I might have read Phoebe’s story once before in my modern critical theory class in college. I got a B-.
Thank you, Thalia and Phoebe, for sharing your pictures and words with us. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to both of you. Here’s hoping years five and seven are treating you both well so far.
And Thalia, feel free to lay off the postmodern theory for the time being. There’s time yet to just be a kid.