PRETENDING....

      Definition of pretend in English:

pretend

Line breaks: pre|tend

Pronunciation: /prɪˈtɛnd 

  

VERB

·       1[WITH CLAUSE OR INFINITIVE] Behave so as to make it appear that something is the case when in fact it is not:

Remember as a child when you had watched a movie, or read a book...and then you were that character? Perhaps you were Peter Pan ready to battle Hook....or maybe the cowboy riding in to save the day....Indiana Jones escaping the storm of arrows.... the princess waiting in her castle...a young wizard wielding a wand....

As a child you had the ability to pretend, to lose yourself and become someone else. 

The above 'I'm a Frog' is one in the Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems (love Mo's work). And in this book Gerald is totally upset because Piggie is no longer herself, she ribbits, she hops, she is in fact a frog. When did this happen? Gerald can not understand why his friend is no longer a pig...until the concept of pretend is explained. 

Last week for the school holidays, we had a Storytime called Funky Monkey. There were monkey stories, monkey songs and rhymes and we made a monkey, a funky one, to take home.

I of course, brought along a few monkeys....

Now the observant among you would have noticed that there is a pretender in the mix. We have a white gorilla, a dinosaur, a smiling monkey, and then of course the now famous monkey. What, a dinosaur you say....

Imagine the reaction when I pulled the monkeys out of my bag and placed them on the bookshelf behind me. 

'That's not a monkey' they all said. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'He told me he was a monkey.'

Dinosaur did in fact make appropriate monkey noises, and attempt to swing from book shelf to book shelf (a tough act when he is in fact a hand puppet)....but all the children agreed, that no matter what the dinosaur had told me, he was not a monkey.

I then explained that dinosaur was in fact pretending to be a monkey. That solved it all. Everyone was happy to have him then sing monkey songs, they accepted him...more importantly they understood.

It was more of a problem to the children that my monkey, the one nearest the camera, had no tail. There were many options of what had happened to it, some great ideas, and at one stage he did sport a bright pink tail sticky taped to his behind.

This is what we attempt to do as a writer. Create a world filled with characters that become so real, that people think about them long after they read THE END. 

Imagine the excitement of seeing children pretend to be a character that you have created. What could be more thrilling, more wonderful than seeing a child's ability to pretend include a piece of writing that you struggled over. 

When I take monkey to work, the children love him. They talk to him, they cuddle him, they put their hand out so that monkey can high five them....to them he is not a tail-less piece of fluffy material (that really needs a bath)....because I act as though he's real, they have accepted him as real. 

And I'm too afraid of the consequences to tell him the truth.

Vicki

http://vickithornton.weebly.com/