Burningham, John: Oi! Get Off Our Train
(Originally posted January 14, 2005.)
Way back when we were embarking a train journey, we bought a book for Helena, hoping to keep her fascinated and occupied. About a train! (It was actually J-F who picked it out, but he can't have read it or he would've mocked its strong environmental message.)
Oi! Get off our Train, by John Burningham.
Helena had no interest in this book until very recently. It's a mystery to me what draws her to any particular book and how her attachment to it then borders on obsessive to the exclusion of all else, at least temporarily.
We've only read the story in its entirety a couple of times. Helena gets stuck on page 5. The 2-page spread closes in on our hero's toy train as it churns to life. In the background, but taking up a lot of space, is the boy's bedside table, fronted with a cabinet door.
Helena needs to open that door.
She reaches into the page, grasping about for the knob. She knocks. She tries my keys, as if by this magic object she can shrink herself down to step through the looking glass, as it were, to unlock the mysteries that lie therein. Occasionally she looks around to the next page, but on her face is always disappointment, as if she's been cheated.
(I ended up housebound the other day, as I couldn't find my keys. They were last seen being used by Helena to unlock the door to her space capsule underneath the kitchen sink.)
I find this to be odd behaviour, but I can only assume it to be a common manifestation of a child's imagination in a particular phase of cognitive development, grappling with spatial perception, switching between 2 dimensions and 3, and the concept of representation.
Similarly, Helena shares her milk and cookies with the creatures of Jamberry, flicks bugs away from Kitten, and pets and kisses all her book friends.
It's as if she slips into another realm between the pages, literally being "lost in a good book."
That's a neat trick. Are we born with the ability to cross over, to give ourselves over, to suspend disbelief? Do we lose it (in varying degrees, from individual to individual) as we gain our footing in the material world?
Way back when we were embarking a train journey, we bought a book for Helena, hoping to keep her fascinated and occupied. About a train! (It was actually J-F who picked it out, but he can't have read it or he would've mocked its strong environmental message.)
Oi! Get off our Train, by John Burningham.
Helena had no interest in this book until very recently. It's a mystery to me what draws her to any particular book and how her attachment to it then borders on obsessive to the exclusion of all else, at least temporarily.
We've only read the story in its entirety a couple of times. Helena gets stuck on page 5. The 2-page spread closes in on our hero's toy train as it churns to life. In the background, but taking up a lot of space, is the boy's bedside table, fronted with a cabinet door.
Helena needs to open that door.
She reaches into the page, grasping about for the knob. She knocks. She tries my keys, as if by this magic object she can shrink herself down to step through the looking glass, as it were, to unlock the mysteries that lie therein. Occasionally she looks around to the next page, but on her face is always disappointment, as if she's been cheated.
(I ended up housebound the other day, as I couldn't find my keys. They were last seen being used by Helena to unlock the door to her space capsule underneath the kitchen sink.)
I find this to be odd behaviour, but I can only assume it to be a common manifestation of a child's imagination in a particular phase of cognitive development, grappling with spatial perception, switching between 2 dimensions and 3, and the concept of representation.
Similarly, Helena shares her milk and cookies with the creatures of Jamberry, flicks bugs away from Kitten, and pets and kisses all her book friends.
It's as if she slips into another realm between the pages, literally being "lost in a good book."
That's a neat trick. Are we born with the ability to cross over, to give ourselves over, to suspend disbelief? Do we lose it (in varying degrees, from individual to individual) as we gain our footing in the material world?
posted by Isabella K at
12:00 AM
2 Comments:
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Anonymous, at 7:49 AM
Isabella, This is a strange request - I desperately need to know the words to that story (Oi! Get off our Train) for a segement I am doing with a group of Brownies on Tuesday night - of course none of the local book stores have a copy or I would simply purchase it and as it is Easter weekend and my local library is not open. Could I beg a big favour of a stranger and ask you to email me the words??
If yes, thank you so much! email address macneilj@accesswave.ca
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Anonymous, at 7:50 AM
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