I don't think I could have asked for a surer sign that James is going to turn out okay than his sudden love of Calvin and Hobbes. It's as if he's finally found a small person who he can relate to--someone who lives in his head most of the time, has incredibly vivid imaginary adventures, is part little boy and part wizened grown-up, and also does hilarious things with snowmen.
His conversations with Owen have certainly become more entertaining since he started working his way through our Calvin collection. A few days ago I found them in the library both sitting in turned around chairs. They were busy in their time machines. I asked them where they were going, and Owen told me that they were going "time machines so we can get filthy rich."
A lot of the content is going over his head, including some of the words. He was telling me about something the other day that I couldn't decipher for any effort, and it turned out to be "transmogrifier." He's also called Hobbes a "hermisynal pishko jungle cat," among other mispronunciations. (This is the problem of reading lots of words in books before you ever hear them pronounced."
There are some drawbacks to Calvin and Hobbes, too. Calvin can be a pretty naughty kid, and James has repeated some things from the strips that we've had to talk to him about. There's a bit more violence and fighting and "killing" than we'd like to see, and some of this has even trickled down to Owen. Owen came up to me after lunch the other day and whisper-confessed that he'd said "I hate this" two times while we were in the art gallery.
But mostly Calvin has been a positive. James has been buried in a book for most of this month, and when he does come out to play it's with spectacular maps and plots. ("Owen, if Felix comes around the side of the house, all of our plans will be RUINED.") Plus, he can never read for too long a stretch, because Owen's new favorite game is "I'm going to steal James' George and run off with it."
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