Preschool Demographics 2: Magical thinking

Initially, I have defined the ideal type of book to produce by my previously outlined criteria—the type that does the most good to early readers—as being the read-to-me type. The goal is to produce a book that entertains the kids, on a kid level, but also, more importantly, entertains the parents. Because, as I started out the last entry saying, ultimately, if you’re selling a book to a kid who can’t read and can’t pay for it, you have to know you’re selling to the parent. So, on some level, the book always talking to the parent.

But the book also is not. The book is also talking to, and aimed at, kids that are able to think magically, a gift that a lot of parent’s have lost. This is why you can make a balloon a main character, why animals talking makes perfect sense, and why the illustrations become so important in communicating multiple layers of subtext that the content cannot.

So how do you speak to magical thinking, which is ideal for the target, without the parents getting in the way? In other words, how do you make something magical enough to capture the kids, without making it so alien that it turns off the parents? First key is to understand to some degree, what magical thinking is, how it relates to preschoolers, and how they interact with their parents.

Preschool age kids are going through a lot. They are growing physically, at an exponential rate. They are just beginning to learn independence from their parents, for the first time at this age starting to have an appreciation for their parent’s as separate entities, rather than somehow additional external appendages to themselves. And as such, they are beginning—just beginning—to assert their independence, in baby steps. They are testing the world, as they explore it, and learning to differentiate how many other external elements are within, or out of their control. In this, the boundaries of imagination and reality are interchangeable to a large degree. This is the age of the development of the imagination, and it coincides with their brain growth.

Children’s brains at this age are likewise developing at a rapid rate. It’s amazing to think that, conglomeration of cells that could only carry out autonomic functions four years ago have, by age four, begun to think abstractly. While all this development is going on, it’s important to realize it’s within an egocentric atmosphere. Preschoolers are learning about their world, but within the context of how it relates to them. For example, they may understand that it gets dark because the sun goes down, and they have to go to bed. That may translate into an understanding of the sun, that includes the sun having to “go to bed.” And on an overcast morning where they don’t feel like getting up, and don’t see the sun, it may seem perfectly reasonable that they are mad at the sun for not getting up, and mad at the parent for making them get up, and grumpy without explaining why, until and unless the sun comes out. These and a hundred other complex “I shouldn’t have to do this” scenarios reflective of egocentric thinking, mixed with magical support, make up some of the problems parents can run into with their kids without even knowing it.

Parents (often) “grow out” of the ability to think magically, and therefore have a hard time making these connections. Therefore parents, while supportive of the magical thinking, are also working to pull their kids more into the concrete of the parent’s world. And kids are frankly, just as anxious to go. The key becomes how to use and allow for kids magical thinking, while allowing for the introduction of realistic, rational elements, in a mix that parents find palatable, acceptable, and will want to pass on to their kids.

And publishers are aware of this push and tug. Therefore a story like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, so popular it was just turned into a major motion picture, would frankly have a difficult time being published, today. The idea of a book making it okay for a kid to climb out a window and sail across the world would set off alarms. Similarly, Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat: The idea of letting a stranger in when you’re alone in the house, or even being left alone in the house, would be a hard sell today. This is because publishers are creating a third firewall, in front of the parents, who are the initial firewall in front of the kids. All this without any of these bulwarks necessarily appreciating the element of magical thinking, and acknowledging that kids can know not to let a strange man in the house with no one home, while still letting it be okay that a giant talking feline with a haberdashery fixation is perfectly fine. Magical thinking allows for both options.

There are a few studies out there (most notably in England), studying the connection between children's magical thinking and perception of reality. These studies have rested on three main pillars of study; parental input, children's inherent beliefs and children's responses to "magical" events. Obviously these are inter-connected. Parents encouraging a belief in Santa Claus play on inherent beliefs, and have a response that is reinforced not only by society (television specials, movies and mall Santas) but also be perceivable events (Christmas morning). The gist that I got out of it are the 3 main points I presented above; 1) magical thinking is natural part of development, 2) parent's encourage magical thinking while also working to educate children beyond it, and 3) most children and the luckiest adults still use creative and magical thinking. That, then, is my target.

Understanding, and really being able to take advantage of this, is the area that produces the best read-to-me children’s literature. So with that understanding, we move on to the language, and the imagery.

Next: What’s the words?