Sunday, October 15, 2017

Imagine



We were in a super cool bookstore in Ann Arbor this weekend and so I checked out some new children's books. (I'm excited to read The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine--all I could do in the bookstore was flip through. It looks innovative and charming and indulgent--there are spreads with just a small picture on a page or two.)

The kid loves his Puff, the Magic Dragon book, which I generally sing rather than read. And I love the song Imagine, so I thought I'd try this book, which I sang to him (quietly) in the bookstore. I guess it didn't go well because he demanded, "Read the words, not sing them."

The funny part is that the song and book advocate moving past nationality and religion with pictures of birds. This, of course, reminds us that animals don't have silly things like nationality and religion. I guess that gives us hope that humans can get past them too? It just sort of reminds me that I'm nothing like a bird. And the idea of birds sharing things (except in the cases of mothers and baby birds) just doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not a biologist; I don't know: Maybe birds share stuff all the time. The illustrations just didn't convince me.

Moreover, the illustrations are all about this pigeon and his olive branch of peace. But don't they know--this is an image rooted in religion. (And there's a whole lot of wiping out of the world before we get to the olive branch.) I guess we could go into immanentizing the eschaton here.

But really, I love the song. And not the book.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, many birds are territorial, hummingbirds and robins for example.