Wait, what?

Macaulay's Black and White has something unique about it.  Here is the way the dust jacket describes it, "this book appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time.  But it may contain only one story.  Then again, there may be four stories."  See, now you're thinking, "wait,what?" but stick with me.  Black and White has divided each double page (so when you open the book the page on the left and the page on the right count as one complete page) into quadrants and there are 4 pictures per page.  Each of these four quadrants tells a different story...or does it?

I read this to Eva, Leah laughed at some of the cow pictures but was then very distracted by the family cat. After I finished she looked at me and said, "I don't get it."  "Well," I said, "lets look back, how many stories do you think are in this book."  "Ohh so maybe there are four stories but it still doesn't make sense."  "why not?," I ask, thinking that the four stories make sense as individual stories and you can spot at least some of the overlap.  "Well," she said, with a tone that implied I was the young one and she needed to educate me, "Newspaper doesn't just fall from the sky.  It doesn't make sense."  She was referring to one detail on one page but that stuck with her-kids are noticers. 

Isn't it interesting how kids will accept superpowers, magic, and fairies but if a story is mostly realistic they will catch anything that doesn't fit with how they see the world.  There is the way the world actually works with clear boundaries of what can and cannot happen, and then there is their pretend world which can have anything they can imagine. I like to live in both of those worlds. 

Looking at different stories, noticing the details...that's kids stuff.