Sharing Imaginary Things

"Of the pretend worlds of children, pretending to be children is their masterpiece."

The fifty rhymes, poems and stories in this book form a weave of Spring, Summer, Childhood and Dreams. Children are imprinted for life by the seasons, those four, large friends. Some of the pieces presented here have the indefinable quality and taste of fairytales, like The Summer Solstice Crow, but a Spring day can also be the theater of a bloody Civil War battle, as in Appalachian Mythology, so innocence is tempered with experience. Some of the sketches, such as The Short River, are rooted in the immediate present, miles from childhood.

Like the pieces in this book, dreams are islands, tips of icebergs. Remembering, itself, is a form of dreaming, dreaming is a form of imagining, imagining is a form of seeing. A variety of inscrutably-flavored dream islands, such as Hurry Home, are included.

Sharing Imaginary Things is a companion book to A Year Tightens Its Belt which is assigned to the districts of Fall, Halloween and Winter.