We tend to think that feeding and watering our kids is enough. Job done. We’re so busy making a living ourselves that we gladly hand them over to schools and to social media, to be fed the mainstream culture.
But that culture broadly supports the status quo. It does not do enough to produce confident kids with an imaginative ability to challenge and change the status quo.
So our true job is to teach them how to look. And when they have been encouraged how to look at things for themselves, how to create, shape and make things and ideas for themselves, then they will deep down know that things need to change.
These poems and images will work their magic, so that kids look for themselves and help themselves. So they write their own poems, make their own images, and live their own lives. That’s the true magic, knowing how to look and learn.
Where We Get Magic From, poems by Martin Hayes with 16 colour images by Adrian Malaiet, ISBN 978-1-912710-28-7. 63pps., price £10 plus £3 p. and p.
