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Piles and piles

When is a pile not a pile?

I guess it depends what type of pile is being considered.

In this case, it is Littlest's assertion - the day before she goes back to school - that she is the only one in her class who returns at the start of term unencumbered by a mini-mountain, or small library of books, that represents her holiday literacy effort. She "loves reading" but to say she reads at a glacial pace might imply an element of speed that is distinctly lacking.

What she "loves" is a good story with interesting characters that might do adventurous things and meet real monsters and travel to exciting places and need strange and inventive clothes and perhaps a decorated cardboard box or two to live in and several pets to care for and exotic food to eat and ... was there a book? Really? Her imagination is fertile and terribly time consuming. She reads and dreams.

I am NOT advocating a war on dreams. I never would. If a child can't indulge her fantasies who can?

Imagination is a very human gift; it is perhaps what makes us different from all other animals. But the human animal is gifted with it, in very differing proportions - proportions that affect not only its expression, but also, whether or not its expression is appreciated. Clearly, Littlest is endowed with galleons laden with a rich treasure of imagination, on which to sail away and would do so happily for days and days and extending into weeks i.e. the whole holiday. Sometimes, reality steals into the dream and becalms the ships and insists on homework, piano practice ... and reading. Hopefully though, it will never engineer a ship-wreck.

Becalmed on a sea of help-its-school-tomorrow-and-I'd-really-like-to-try-to-have-a-pile-of-books, Littlest read and read and read and now has a pile of three !!! books. And she has started a fourth. It is a very small pile - no thousand chapter bricks here - but nonetheless, it is definitely a pile, which she can carry in to school tomorrow, while feeling justly proud of herself ... and dreaming of a Milne-Morpurgo-Dahl-Cowell mish-mash adventure, featuring a dragon-riding, sullen, old donkey, who rescues a diminutive tortoise from the playful grip of a lion, who would far rather eat sausages.

You can award yourself a prize if you can name all four books - an imaginary one, of course.

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