Imagination

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, believed that imagination is a "higher gift." We watch a beautiful three-year-old play throughout a day creating a series of fascinating imaginary worlds.

Using few props, she excitedly draws the adult into her games incorporating stories that she has been told, experiences that she has had in her short three years and her childlike, innocent imagination. The line between fantasy and reality is indistinguishable, barely defined.

In Joy of Books, Eric Burns expands on Faulkner's theory that a story comes from three sources: observation, experience, and imagination. Faulkner explains that it is hard to know just how much comes from which source.

We watch our three-year-old go off to Junior Kindergarden on September 8. Will her imagination survive or will she be channelled and moulded into a replica of students who came before and those who will inevitably follow?