Finding the Beauty - Day 8

Ahh, Garfield.

I'm reposting an oldie-but-goodie about Garfield and the comics in general over at The Relaxed Learning Cafe. If you want to read about how comics help us learn about life, go check it out!

That's My Motto

When Luke was really into Harry Potter, a favorite book of his was J.K. Rowling's fundraising book, Quidditch Through the Ages. One night, he told me that his favorite quidditch team is the Falmouth Falcons, because their motto is "Let us win, but if we cannot win, let us break a few heads." He mispronounced motto (calling it mow-tow) and as I corrected him, I asked, how did he even knew what a motto was?

His answer, so casually related, still fascinates me: "Oh," Luke said, "from Calvin and Hobbes." He then described a favorite comic strip in which Calvin and Hobbes have a huge fight in Calvin's bed; at the end, Hobbes says to Calvin, "my mow-tow is, Revenge or Death!"

Imagine grasping the concept of a motto before you can even pronounce the word.

Another comic-related story that stopped me in my tracks was more recent. We get this totally awesome left-wing newspaper of comics and articles (Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor) called the Funny Times, and in a recent issue was the following: a one-panel comic of a huge, globe-shaped birdcage and inside it, swinging on the canary swing, sat a little polar bear. Luke didn't get it - until I asked him if he knew what the saying 'canary in a coal mine' meant. Watching the light dawn on your child's face is so cool! - he said, "ohhh yeah, the polar bear is the canary of the world!"

When I think of the knowledge that went in to the light dawning in Luke's mind, I am amazed. He had to know about the polar bear's endangerment, that the cause is global warming (yes, I really, really believe that - and if you don't, you ought to watch the Planet Earth about the Poles), and that people used to use canaries to see if there was breathable air before going underground themselves.

I think Luke's ability to draw from different sources will serve him extremely well as he moves through life. Also, it amazes me that, at age 7, he can mentally fit things together with connections that I may not even see at the ripe old age of 37.

It sure justifies all the time he spends reading the comics!

Comics

I can't believe it's already Sunday - on vacation as I am, forgive me for not posting as often as I'd planned... we are settled in, adjusted to the new time zone and, for the most part, the altitude. I'll do better this week!

Anyway, on to the subject at hand. At the library here the other day, young Owen pulled a Garfield comic book out of the "to be shelved" stack, plunked himself down on the floor, and read that book cover-to-cover. He hadn't even taken his coat off yet; needless to say, we checked it out and brought it back to the grandparents'.

Fortunately, the grandparents own quite a few comic books already, including a beautiful, hardbound, annotated edition of the Peanuts, with strips from the 50s on into the 90s. Pretty much nonstop, the boys read from the Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts books available; enter the room in which Luke is reading and he'll corner you to read "a few of my favorites from this book."

We're on vacation, so I decided that 24/7 comics were okay with me; originally, I thought they'd be fluff, with strips to make him laugh but not much else. Now that this has been Luke's habit for the last few days, I feel differently - the concepts and lessons that come up while reading the funnies are surprising!

Several times it has happened that Luke reads a strip, laughs uproariously, pauses and says, "I don't get that one..." And one of us will explain why it's funny, usually because a word has two meanings, or the strip refers to some cultural touchstone that, at 7, Luke doesn't know about yet. Also, a few strips have been downright educational.

In one Calvin and Hobbes, for instance, Calvin finds some cigarettes and is amazed that his mom gives him permission to try one; later, as he's coughing his head off, he tries to figure out how something so awful could be habit-forming. This strip left Luke puzzling for days, asking questions about not just cigarettes, but other addictions too (the grandparents have an extensive shot glass collection, and Luke's trying to figure out the line between a glass of wine with dinner and alcoholism.)

In what has become my favorite Peants strip, Snoopy imagines himself a soldier at the infamous Revolutionary War winter camp for soldiers, Valley Forge. In the strip, Snoopy, dressed in rags and wearing no shoes, asks General Washington for an indoor hockey rink. To boost morale for the soldiers, he suggests weekly hockey and figure skating clubs, and thinks to himself as the General has him thrown out of the tent, "I didn't even get to ask him about the Zamboni!" This strip sparked so many questions: starting with why it's funny and moving onto history about Valley Forge and the awful conditions everyone lived under there, and coming back to the absurdity of a hockey rink in such a time/place.

It turns out that reading the funnies has been a boon, not just because we all like to curl up with them (especially on a snowy, wintery day like this one) but because they convey important information - to readers of all ages.