Pagan books for children are not always easy to find. A glance through the blogs on Google which deal with Pagan parenting reveals that many parents who want to bring up their children with ideals of living in harmony with nature often have to search hard to to find suitable children’s books.
Of course, it is not hard to find children’s books with magical themes. Alan Garner, C.S.Lewis and Susan Cooper novels have been enthralling generations of children. The more recent Harry Potter phenomenon testifies to the everlasting appeal of magic.
However, Pagan and Wiccan parents know that there is more to magic than waving a wand and casting spells.
The real value of Neo-Paganism lies in the appreciation of the cycles of nature and the recognition that we humans are a part of the natural world. We are not its masters or manipulators. Two thousand years of Judeo-Christianity and four hundred years of scientific materialist philosophy dominating the mainstream, has led us not to salvation by either God or Science, but to the brink of ecological catastrophe.
The ideologies which view the Earth as a mere resource to be exploited and bled dry by the leeching dominant species have directly led to the felling of the rain forests, the pollution of rivers, streams and seas and the dramatic decline in bird, animal and plant species.
And it all starts with the kids.
If you sit in church and learn that Man was given dominion over the earth and everything on it, you absorb the the attitude that you can take or destroy by God given right.
If you sit in a classroom, dissecting a dead frog or rat, and learn that the world around you and all its forms are nothing more than lumps of soulless matter and life is nothing more than a giant food chain with you at the top, why should you bother to care that that piece of blood and meat under your scalpel was once a living breathing little creature who cared about its life and its mother, brothers and sisters just as much as you.
So that it why books for children which present the Earth as our home, our motherland, our Mother are vitally important.
Those of us who write Pagan children’s books, see the Earth and her life forms as a part of a great, wondrous interconnected web; the whole created universe as a fantastic miracle – no less amazing because it renews itself each day with the rising of the sun and the passage of the moon across the sky.
Every animal, every bird, every rock, every tiny plant are important in the Neo-Pagan world view because the creation and destruction of each part of this miraculous web affects us all. A breath of wind on one part of the web shakes the whole.
Children are shaped by the philosophies of the world in which they grow up. The printed word plays a huge part in disseminating those ideologies, often through the unconscious mind.
Words have magical power. Ideas have magical power. Books have magical power. Stories have magical power.
Children have magical power.
One day those children will grow up to inherit the Earth.
The way they treat Mother Earth and her creatures will depend on the ideals which shaped their minds as they grew up. The way they treat the planet will affect every person, every animal, every living thing, every part of the web.
That is why those of us who wonder if we are insane to spend so much time struggling to write books for children, (and even more insane to try publishing them!) do put up with the financial hardship, the lack of comprehension of even people close to us and the harsh materialism of mainstream society.
Promoting the Magical world view of interconnectedness and Respect for All Life, and its weaving into the minds of our children is, perhaps. the most important thing we can do during our passage through this incredible Web of Life.
Pagan children’s books truly have magical power and life beyond the page.
Cara Louise
Cara Louise Children’s Books
http://www.caralouisebooks.com
Author: Cara Louise
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Originally posted 2010-09-22 21:10:16. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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