December 21, 2012

Janet Morgan Stoeke: Christmas Eve with Minerva Louise

And don't eat that! It's their breakfast! What will my farmers say when they wake up?

We first read this book in German, as one of a series of "Pixi" books released for Christmas 2009. Appropriately enough, it and 23 other Pixi books were part of an Advent calendar. Even in German, Jake loved it.

Minerva Louise is a chicken, and not a very smart chicken. This is not a chicken that could build an airplane of scrap lumber and Christmas lights. She sees the world in chicken terms.

She's never experienced Christmas before, and has such silly ideas about Santa, decorations, and reindeer. To Minerva Louise, Santa is another farmer, whose truck has very flat tires, and has somehow parked on Minerva Louise's farmers' house. She follows Santa down the chimney, a very brave act, considering she believes he's a burglar! She is unable to keep him from touching the socks hanging on the fireplace, or from leaving things under the tree that's come in from the cold. She is finally appeased with a present of her own.

It's a delightful book that makes children giggle at how silly and wrong a chicken is. For a small child, who can't figure out how the world works, it's great to finally be the one who is in the know.

Or, one could argue that Minerva Louise is a sly expose of our own limited understanding. We reduce all experience to some comprehensible, something within the boundaries of what we have already experienced. We cannot fully understand anything because it is far beyond our boundaries, but if we are lucky, we can push those boundaries out just a bit further.

Or not.