This blog will be about what is Real. It will be about the relationships between people who have been young for a short time and people who have been young for a long time. It will be about the children's literature that draws people of all ages into conversation with each other. It will be about the program Pages Across the Ages: An Intergenerational Reading and Writing Exchange.
Let this excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit explain what I mean about what is Real:
Skin Horse: “Real
isn’t how you are made […] It’s a
thing that happens to you. When a
child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves
you, then you become Real.”
Rabbit: “Does it
hurt?”
Skin Horse:
“Sometimes,” […] When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
Rabbit: “Does it
happen all at once, like being would up, […] or bit by bit?”
Skin Horse: “It
doesn’t happen all at once […] You become. It takes a long time.
That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have
sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has
been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
shabby. But these things don’t
matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people
who don’t understand.
Rabbit: “I suppose you
are Real?”
And then [the Rabbit] wished he had
not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled...
The
Velveteen Rabbit. Original
text by Margery Williams. Original
Art by William Nicholson. Doubleday
& ompany, INC. Garden City,
New York: pp. 17-21
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| Kimberly as Anne of Green Gables from the children's book with a participant in Pages Across the Ages. |
It is my firm belief that we are all more Real when we connect with each other across the generations. When we ask the questions about things we are hesitant to question yet all need to know. Let's use this blog as a place to launch our intergenerational adventures!
