Imaginary Friends

Illustrations!? That's the trouble with these kids these days. They have to have pictures instead of using their mindseye to imagine what the author was describing.

When my brother and I were 6 or 7, our uncle Henry gave us twenty-five Hardy Boys books from his library. I got in trouble more than a couple of times for reading them too late into the night. None of our books had their cover jackets and there was only one illustration in each, (If I remember correctly) so I was stunned when the Tower Treasure Mystery was put on in a weekly series during the Mickey Mouse Club show and the brothers didn't look at all as how I had imagined them to be.

Frank and Joe, uh, they were suppposed to look like me and my brother. Right?

Joe(I was also disturbed the first time I heard how the voice of Snoopy was portrayed.)Nation



He didn't sound like me at all.

The Walter Farley illustrations were very good pen & ink drawings, graphic enough to be interesting, but not overpowering to the imagination. The reader still had the pleaure of building pictures of their own design.

Just ran into this thread. I had an overatcive imagination but no imaginary friends. I lived all over with various relatives when I was very young because my dad was stationed in many temp camps and mom was with him.
When we became a family again, I was like 6 (1956) and we lived out in the country where every tree had a monster or a wolf behind it.

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WHat wrong with illustrations? My mom got a set of used books (old SCribner books) that ere lavishly illustrated by N C Wyeth. These books, including Treasure Island, Last of the Mohicans, Robinson Crusoe, were bought by my mom because she knew I was doing drawings on everything at a very young age. I wrote my own illustrated book when I was about 9 and , although it was not a best seller, I lavishly illustrated action scenes with watercolr . All of which were pasted carefully into a series of ringed notebooks.

I guess that trying my hand at making up characters and story lines was my dip into creating an imaginary world.

Some kids I knew had imaginary friends and these were, sirry to say, mostly the weird ones.

The classic example is the Bronte parsonage at Haworth when the kids were growing up.

They were overboard on imaginary friends and places. Who wouldn't be in that desolation?

We had many, many expensive children's books with fantastic illustrations. We had the R. L. Stevenson books illustrated by Wyeth. We also had a copy of Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, which was beautifully and abundantly illustrated, but i don't recall who did the illustrations. We had quite a few books illustrated by Maxfield Parrish (The Tanglewood Tales was my favorite), and also by Arthur Rackham. We had a copy of A Christmas Carol which was lavishly illustrated by Rackham, and which eventually, literally fell apart at the seams. Someone, Sozobe i think, did a thread on the illustrations for chilren's books once, several years back, and it was quite a trip down memory lane.

Was the Black Stallion series and Island Stallion series the same? If so, I did mention it(them)..

ah, that's how I learned I wasn't all that good at drawing horses..

Hey, no knocking illustrations! That is, after all, what I want to do when I grow up, don't make me feel like I will be stomping out little childish imaginations left and right...

Ooh, Tanglewood Tales, a favorite of mine. I'm going to have to look for Soz's thread about illustrations...

I've read it - read all the "...Stallion" books by Farley

The island stallion was a descendant of Spanish Conquistadores' horses. A boy and his uncle (or somebody) somehow found a tunnel that led to the island interior, where a herd of these horses survived. The tunnel had remnants of the Conquistadores' passage. In one book, they managed to bring the stallion home, if memory serves.

I had imaginary animals. There were crocodiles under my bed. (That's why I slept with my hands under the pillow -- so they wouldn't dangle over the edge of the bed. They were HUNGRY crocodiles.)

How many voices are in your head, one? Six? If I have six and you have one, how do we know which of us has the right number. My voices come out as I'm running. If you've read any of my blog you occasionally met some of them.

There's BigCoach who's all about keeping good form and reminding me to keep looking at the top of hills. "Keep going!"

There's TakeCareDear, a kind grandmotherly spirit/sprite who constantly asks about the condition of my right foot or my left knee or my big toe. "How are feeling, no, really, tell me."

There's WatchOutBoy, a worrier that one is. He sees danger everywhere and yips if I step on a stick. "WhatwasTHAT?!""
BigCoach is always telling him to shut up.

There's SaboteurBrain and his twin, EvilProvocateurBrain. They team up to try to depress me or convince me that whatever I am doing is too hard and they try to get TakeCareDear to listen. "We should stop, for just a minute, not long. Hey, let's take a picture of something." "I'm thirsty. I'm cold. I'm a little tired. My foot feels like there is something stuck in my shoe. Ooo, I think one of the laces is coming undone." ad infinitum

And there is RunningManMind who I think is me mostly. He doesn't say much, he just runs and kind of ignores all the hubbub going on in the various lobes. "Hmmmm. 8.2 miles today and I feel like I could do another eight right now."

Joe(They never show up at work.)Nation

Does this mean you're not lonely? Does not being lonely disqualify you as a long distance runner?

Personally, I approve of well-populated minds, but then I'm old-fashioned.