Mythology vs. Reality...

IT'S FUNNY TO ME how we all tend to judge books by their cover. On our last library visit my 5 year old picked a few books that featured knights and mythical creatures on the cover. While I tend to look over their choices, I am sometimes suprised when we get home.

Last night we read Behold...the Unicorns!and as I was reading I discovered this is not a "story" book. Instead it is a book about the lore of unicorns. Since we are beginning our study of the anceints it kind of fit right in with what we are doing. For me it was the Europen mythology vs. Greek mythology. I think we all learned something from this little book.

Maybe you reading this post were familiar with this, but I didn't know that there were christian teachings about unicorns or that there were stories about them not making it on Noah's boat so they died in the flood. I guess I just always put unicorns in the category of mythical creatures and left it at that. They are equal in my mind to greek mythology. This little children's book has left me wanting to research more.

Reading is such a powerful medium. That's why I'm always on top of what my kids are reading and the sources they are coming from. The timing of when a child is exposed to a thought or theory is so important. I've heard some say, "it's just a kid's book, how harmful can that be?" Sometimes things are not "harmful" and sometimes they are, but this book got me thinking again about how we teach certain things.

When my oldest was much younger he loved dragons. He love the imagery and anything pertaining to them. We would talk about how dragons were mythical creatures and not real, only for him to ask one day, "What about St. George?" That question began a whole conversation about what is real. Just like this book has again. How do you answer those questions for your children? How do you separate imagery from reality? Some times it's tricky.

Had they just left the unicorns with knights and the typical depiction I would have been just fine, but when they included Noah and stories from the bible I was in the odd place again. What's real and what's imagery. Guess it's just all food for thought.