The Hebrews

I hesitate to resort to the "kids say the darnedest things" school of blog posting, but I will have a longer entry soon, and I can't resist these vignettes resulting from the twins' new course of study, Hebrew mythology.

Nini, holding a doll, to the workman who came by the house: "This is my baby, and his name is Moses. I have to save him from Pharaoh."

Nini pointing to chair in the living room: "This is the flaming bush, and Nini will be voicing God."

The ever-practical Desmond has announced that his favorite thing about the ancient world was the arch.

Mythological at the Met

Nini and Desmond's mother, Leslie, is teaching the twins about ancient history, and as a result they've been very keen on, in turn, dinosaurs, Egyptian gods and now Greek mythology. Desmond wants to be Hermes and Nini wants to be Demeter. (They're particularly fond of the story of Demeter, Persephone and Hades, which coincidentally is the story I used to illustrate Owen Barfield's conception of myth -- a powerful influence on Lewis and Tolkien -- in The Magician's Book.)

Recently, they made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan to search the Met's collection of classical art for depictions of "their" deities. Their friend Benny, a partisan of Zeus's, came along, and everyone was costumed as their favorite god. Here are some photos.

Signs and symbols

Desmond and Nini have gotten to the point where you can’t always be sure which cultural symbols they understand. It makes conversations with them weirdly disorienting. I might need to explain that a crate with a red cross painted on the side dangling from a parachute is full of “medicine and band-aids” for sick people, but other, seemingly more sophisticated markers they already know about. Recently, Desmond was studying the images in Olaf Hajek’s beautiful cover art for The Magician’s Book, and pointed to the figure of a faun:

Desmond (with great authority) : That’s the god of nature.

Laura: How do you know that?

Desmond: You can tell because he has animal legs.

Laura: But where did you learn about him?

Desmond: From a book.

Laura: What kind of book?

Desmond: A music book.

Laura: Do you mean a book with music in it, like with songs that you can sing?

Desmond (patiently): No. A book about music.

The same day, I asked Nini which of her books she would like to jump into if she could.

Nini: You can’t just jump into a book, Laura.

Laura: You can’t?

Nini: Some of those books are just no sense.

Laura: Like which ones?

Nini: Like moomintrolls: (Derisively) Are they real?

I was taken aback to meet such sweeping empiricism in a four-year-old who only a few months ago had to run out of the room if you told her a story with a wolf in it. The same girl who famously brought a puppet show about those very same moomintrolls to a complete halt with her shrieking hysterics when a (by all accounts very mild) puppet “monster” appeared. I made a feeble attempt to defend the magic of make-believe, but she was adamant.

Nini: You can’t jump into a book Laura. Look, I’ll show you. (Opens up a picture book on the floor and jumps on it.) Now you try it.

Laura: No.

Nini: Jump on the book, Laura! Jump on the book!

Laura: I’m not going to jump on that book in these boots. It will tear the pages.

Nini and Desmond in the New York Times

Nini and Desmond, the twins who figure in The Magician's Book appear with their mom, Leslie, in story about "anti-schoolers" in today's New York Times, with a very nice photo.

Secret Rooms

The handful of people who have read The Magician's Book in galleys will be familiar with Corinne (or as she is now called, Nini) and Desmond, four-year-old twins who appear occasionally in the book. Their perspective on things continues to fascinate me, and I hope to post excerpts from our conversations from time to time.

Laura: Did you guys know that some big old buildings have secret passageways and secret rooms? Sometimes what looks like an ordinary bookshelf has a special spot where, if you push it, the bookshelf swings open like a door and there’s a secret room behind it that nobody else knows about.

[Desmond goes over to a nearby bookshelf and begins pressing on all the knots in the wood.]

Laura: Well, unfortunately, this house is a little too new to have a secret room. It’s usually only in old buildings that you find them.

Nini: Maybe when this house gets older, it will have one too.