"Don't look now Philly, but...

...I think a fairy is sneaking up on you!"

Dear Diary,

Here she is again, sitting on the fence apparently fully engaged with eating something.  I just chuckle when I see her sit still for the longest time, surveying her little world.  The silhouette of the fairy adds a bit of whimsy to the scene and I can feel a story peculating.

This week a lost Beatrix Potter story, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, was published in honor of the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth.  The famous children's book illustrator, Quentin Blake, was commissioned to create the pictures.  I have been a passionate fan of Potter all my life and when I made my grand tour of England in 1990 one of my stops was at the Potter farm in Yorkshire.

I often made up little stories for my students and illustrated them but one of my favorite activities was to read a story with no illustrations and ask them to imagine what the picture would look like.  Each child formed a different picture in their heads.  Sometimes I think children are fed too much visual information today which doesn't allow them to forge a rich visual imagination of their own and like Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."