Monday, January 09, 2012

A little wonder (post-Epiphany)

For those of you not up on your liturgical calendar, yesterday was the feast of the Epiphany. Three wise men, a baby Jesu, a donkey, a revelation of divine splendour ... and some lost camels, if you're T.S. Eliot. If you're Yeats? It's that uncontrollably mystery on the bestial floor. And if you're a parenting journal in Austin, Texas, well, it's David Hickey's A Very Small Something, which was strongly recommended by Parent Wise editor Kim Pletichka. "This whimsical tale," she writes, "told in lilting poetic form, harkens back to stories written a generation or more ago. The poetry itself is beautiful, trumped only by the fantastic tale it tells ... A lovely story for both preschoolers and early elementary children—and parents looking for stories filled with wonder."

Now Olive Bezzlebee might not be as wise or as grizzled as Melchior, or Balthazar, or that other one, but she did go out chasing a small bright something in the sky—and so "wonder" is exactly the right word for her journey. A very small something indeed! May good things and gumballs manifest to everyone in 2012.

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