How does cartoonist Richard Thompson do such a splendid job of channeling the thoughts of preschoolers with their questions about the order of the world? In the world of Cul de Sac, Blisshaven Preschool reminds me of Every School where the goals of (us) teachers seem mysterious to children and often not aligned with their own. In “real life” we may operate side-by-side, each with different aims, like the parallel play often seen in two-year-olds. We have best intentions, but sometimes send children home with a gluey blob and an incomplete understanding.
The thoughts of the children of Blisshaven sound true to what I hear in the classroom:
Alice: “stactic elastricity.” She remarks that helium balloons would have taken her classmate halfway to the moon. And says of her summer, “I slouched in front of the TV for days and my eyes bugged our so far my optic nerve is now two feet long.”
They notice things, like the cobwebs in the corner of the preschool bathroom, and shrubs.
“I live on Cu de Sac Circle, in that house with the shrub.” Probably every house has a shrub but Alice knowsher shrub—I imagine she’s picked the leaves off of it, scratched her hand on a branch, lost a toy in its depths, and saw a bird fly into it and never come out—so it seems remarkable and the other shrubs are insignificant because they aren’t central to her experience. She misinterprets her brother Petey’s comment about a tipped-over electronic snowman to be a prediction of snow.
Her classmates are just as (in)accurate at assigning meaning to natural events in ways that have a kind of logic: Dill with his theory of jungle gyms going dormant in the winter. These children may have some misconceptions about natural phenomena but they accurately skewer adult behavior: “Adults can be so grabby.”
If your newspaper does not carry Cul de Sac, visit Gocomics.com for your daily lesson in the world of the suburban family through the perceptive eyes of young children.
Peggy