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Quote of the Week
“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.” -- Albert Einstein
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Fire your imagination this week with sisters, Satsuki and Mei, with their adventurous forays with "Totoro", the magical spirits of the forest, next to their new house in the Japanese country side where they have just arrived with their father, to be closer to their hospitalised mother. A stunning visual masterpiece by Miyazaki, this story effortlessly gives coherence to the deep themes of sibling bonding, loneliness, friendship with the human and more-than-human (animistic) world. It is more so a fun, gentle and poignant tale of children's imagination finding a seat in the spirit world, in its varied cultural understandings. (Trailer)
We hope you will savour this classic!
Reading Corner
 Title: All Around Us
Author: Xelena González
Illustrator: Adriana M. Garcia
Ages: 5+
"In this warm, gentle story that celebrates family, culture, community and the connectedness of all things, a young girl and her grandfather work side by side in their vegetable garden, hang out in their backyard, walk around their neighborhood—and find circles to see and contemplate. A rainbow, whose other half is down below the earth, “where water and light feed new life.” And stems, leaves, and seeds—veggie leftovers—“to bury back in the ground.” And round body parts, such as bellies and eyes, to laugh about. And bicycle wheels, and the sun and the moon, and gentle lessons about the cycles of birth and death [...]
In her author’s note, González explains the story behind this story. “When I was six,” she writes, I was given a class assignment to draw a timeline of my life. Birth was the beginning. First steps and first fallen tooth were milestones. I wondered aloud how my timeline would continue, and more importantly, how it would end. My father shook his head when he heard me. “People will tell you it’s a line, but we believe it’s a circle,” he said, gathering two imaginary points of a timeline and joining them midair to form a circle.
While “timelines” are typical first-grade assignments, they undermine Indigenous knowledges and nonlinear ways of visualizing time." -- A reviewer
Recommended by Kindful Kids Editors
Be The Change
Consider hosting a movie night with children and watch 'My Neighbor Totoro' and open up a post-movie exchange of impressions. In particular, situate your discussion on what it might mean for children to communicate (speak/listen/see/touch) with more-than-human world around them, e.g., trees, wind, streams, creatures, clouds -- and what are some of the perceived boundaries in action and where do they become fluid.
Title credit: William Shakespeare
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