Fantasy and Storytelling: Children at Play

This article/story is a reflection on the author, Harry Crew's childhood. He "grew up in Georgia the son of a poor farmer." He and his friends Willalee and Lottie Mae spend all of their free time looking at the Sears catalog, or what they have named the 'magic book.' They do more than look at toys longingly. They take the models and create incredible stories about them. Harry and Willalee begin by opening the catalog to a random page, where they study the model. Then, they open to another random page and beging coming up with a story involving both of the models. The story they came up with in this article was about a dad that had an elaborate plot to kill the man that was dating his one and only daughter. He didn't trust him because he wore a fancy suit. Harry and Willalee said that men in suits couldn't be trusted and this particular one was a theif and that is why the girl's father had to get rid of him.
The time spent with the Sears catalog was very important for these children. Not only did they use it to get away from their lives on the farm, but they also used it to cement a lot of their feelings about the outside world. When they said the man in the suit couldn't be trusted they were expressing their fears and anxieties about people outside of their social class and used these stories to reinforce those ideas. I guess I never really examined the meaning behind
the things children imagine, but this one seemed pretty straightforward. I remember pretending, like most girls do, to be a mommy. I think the most important part is what we do when we're playing mommy. I would always clean or cook becuase that's what my mother did, but I'm sure it was very different for other girls. They might have gone shopping when they were playing mommy because that's what they think moms do.
The way these children used pictures of models they knew nothing about to create backgrounds and plots for each of them shows a real transformation from the sensorimotor child. A child that is still tring to grasp basic concepts like causality could not begin to invent such in depth narratives. This really sets them apart and shows their cognitive development. It also shows their views on punishment. Because they believe a man is untrustworthy and probably steals, they believe he should be shot. They want the worst punishment they can think of for him.
I could probably use this in my classroom to take a closer look at children's stories if they have a writing assignment and really examine what the characters in thier stories represent and how they solve their conflicts.