Imagine

Imagine

Picture book
"If I picked chamomile flowers as a child
in the windy fields and whispered
to their fuzzy faces
imagine."
Juan Felipe Herrera has written poetry, YA novels, short
stories, and juvenile literature. From 2015 to 2017 he was America's
Poet Laureate. In Imagine he shares his life story with children
through a series of vignettes.
We meet him as an overall clad child and see him go on to become:
*a migrant moving from village to village;
*a child starting school not knowing English;
*a teen writing poetry and playing guitar...
Each vignette closes with the word imagine. But Herrera doesn't
just want his child readers to imagine his life. He ends the book
with "imagine what you could do."
On a purrrsonal note, here is something I do not like to imagine--the
damn Coronavirus. It's like nothing that's happened in my life. In
fact the flu it resembles too much at the end of World War I predated
my mother. Will universities shut down? Will there be quarantines
here in Maine? Will big pharma develop a vaccine and not price it out
of the means of anyone but the rich? Your guess is as good as mine.
Are we in more danger from the virus or our reaction to it? Who
knows? So beyond stocking up on what my family will need in the event
of a quarantine (namely food for us all and books for me) and doing
stuff like sleeping and hydrating and choosing nutritious foods and
avoiding large gatherings life is basically out of my control. So
I'll try not to stress needlessly. Take it day to day and do my best.
A great big shout out goes out to the scientists and others who are
working overtime to stem and stop that nasty mess.
jules hathaway


Sent from my iPod