Some other Morals

When typically thinking of morals in folktales they have a tendency to be more rigid.That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

"If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buy-er...

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!"

This is the opening poem of the "Where the Sidewalk Ends" book by Shel Silverstein. The poem is entitled "Invitation". It pretty much sums up the theme of Silverstein's work. His poems are all about opening up ones mind and dream but not just any dreams, big elephant sized dreams.

My "day job" is being a substitute teacher. One day while the kids were restless at the end of their day I noticed "Where the Sidewalk ends" sitting on one of the student's desk. I picked it and asked if she had read it yet. She had so no to which I replied, "This is a really good book, one of my most favorites." Of course when I said that the other children became very interested and I spent the rest of my time that school day reading poems from the book. The children ate them up like it was a cartoon on TV.

There are so many complaints that children watch too much TV, that they have become a product of junk food. They are not to blame for this. The blame rests squarely on the parents for not introducing them to things other than the babysitter known as TV. Give a child the chance to use their imagination and they will take it. Let them read books like this that not open up imaginary horizons but also give them an opportunity to learn and grow. One of the things that I will always thank my parents for is that they instilled in me a love of literature from a very young age. I grew up with Shel Silverstein, pleasantly putting myself in the middle of his literary world.

The great thing about Shel Silverstein is that his work is like an introductory to great literature including classic folktales and myths for his work is really modern folktales. Instead of telling people how to live and act he tells people to love, to laugh and to dream. It may not seem as important as some of the other morals but if people didn't dream then we would not be able to advance as a society. Technology probably would have stopped evolving at about the time the wheel was invented.

Granted some of Silverstein's poems are just pure silliness that does not have a moral lesson or insight, however the silliness of the poem itself is the moral. It can't all be serious adult time all the time; we need to remember our inner child.