Imaginary friends might have been around as long as childhood imagination, but today's figments are on the wildest rumpus ever.
Writer-illustrator Dan Santat's The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend (Little, Brown) is the latest Caldecott Medal winner for excellence in children's literature.
Beekle sets sail from the island of imaginary friends to the big city, looking for a child to believe in him. But who wants a blob like him? He looks like a squat cousin to Poppin' Fresh (the Pillsbury Doughboy), gumdrop-shaped with pen dots for eyes.
Ever since the award announcement in February, Beekle's 40-page picture book has been as hard to find as a green cat or a tattooed octopus -- two of the creatures in Santat's illustrations.
And not just children are seeing things. Best-selling author Neil Gaiman's new collection of stories, Trigger Warning (William Morrow), includes "The Thing About Cassandra."
A man begins hearing that his high school girlfriend, Cassandra, is back in town. His friends say she looks great, and she wants to see him. The trouble is, Cassandra does not exist. Lonely and stuck for a date, he made her up. Gaiman adds that his teenage self really did make up a girlfriend.
North Little Rock author Erica Taylor tells of a happier outcome to the presence of an imaginary companion. Her 3-year-old daughter, Laila, came up with an imaginary friend named Figler -- a boy of many talents.
"She talked about him all the time," Taylor says. The wife of former middleweight boxing champion Jermain Taylor, she began to hear in Laila's stories that Figler could do everything Laila couldn't.
"She said, 'I wish I could read as well as Figler." Figler could draw, too, and Laila thought she couldn't. Mom heard in these accounts that "Laila was having confidence issues." She played along to learn more.
Figler had a car seat, a place at the table, "and I know it's extreme," Taylor says, "but we had a birthday party for him at Chuck E. Cheese's."
The experience gave Taylor the idea for a children's book, her first, Figler: My Imaginary Friend (Parkhurst Brothers, 2014).
"I hope to say, first of all, that it's OK to have an imaginary friend," she says. "And if you believe in yourself, you can do anything you set out to do. You can be a great artist, a genius, you can tie your shoes -- anything you want to do."
Publisher Ted Parkhurst illustrated the book by his pen name, Mr. Piecrust. Parkhurst co-founded August House books in Little Rock. Parkhurst Brothers is based in Marion, Mich.
"I don't remember having imaginary friends myself," he says. "Both of my daughters, however, did have imaginary playmates, so that may have been a factor in my decision to publish."
Seven-year-old Laila no longer pretends to see Figler, Taylor says. She suspects that her daughter never did believe whole-heartedly in Figler -- that Figler was just a bright little phase of development. But he is far from gone.
The book's drawing of Figler is straight from Laila's imagination, complete to the details of the boy's bunny slippers, bow tie and missing tooth, Taylor says.
But Laila tells a different story now in regard to her imaginary friend, Taylor says: "'He's real, and he's right here on the cover.'"
IMAGINE THAT
Imaginary Enemies is an animated feature in development at DreamWorks. Make-be
lieve companions run from the hunter in A.F. Harrold's latest young adult novel, The Imaginary (Bloomsbury).
Meantime, children make up friends the way they always have, seemingly out of nowhere. And child experts look for reasons why.
Most children play with dolls and stuffed toys in general as if the objects were alive, according to Psychology Today magazine. Imaginary playmates represent "a step farther."
Nearly 40 percent of children create invisible friends, the magazine reports from a study at the University of Oregon. (Other studies vary to as high as 70 percent.)
People used to worry about imaginary companions as signs of mental disturbance. Before psychology gained a better sense of childhood behavior, a make-believe friend sounded a lot like seeing spirits. Today's view of childhood imagination is more to the happy and harmless.
Big Bird's idea of a make-believe friend is Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street, and The Cat in the Hat makes mischief on stage at the Arkansas Arts Center Children's Theatre through March 29. The cat wrecks the house, but only the children can see him, and Dr. Seuss makes sure that everything returns to normal. See arkarts.com/the-cat-in-the-hat for details.
Imaginary companions can be important as well as entertaining, according to "Allegorical Lives: Children and Their Imaginary Companions," by Robert D. Friedberg in Child Study Journal, 1995.
A make-believe pal differs from, say, a teddy bear in several big ways, Friedberg's study points out. The bear can be lost, and it can be taken away. The imaginary companion "goes where the child goes," and never has to be shared.
"Imaginary companions," the study finds, "are the child's true possessions."
Friedberg continues to investigate the phenomenon of imaginary companions as a psychologist at Palo Alto University in California. The field remains as he reported it 20 years ago -- "underdeveloped," he says. But time has clarified some parental worries.
"The younger the child, the more appropriate the imaginary companion is," Friedberg says. For children from kindergarten to first grade, such make-believe is normal. A child of smart imagination, rather than be alone, invents a friend.
The same behavior at age 14 or 16 "would be cause for concern," Friedberg says.
As children develop, "they have to become more socialized," the psychologist says. "High school is the ultimate social situation. You really want kids to be making real friends, rather than imaginary."
Other guidelines he cites for parents:
• If the child talks openly about his imaginary friend, and the make-believe is positive, not disruptive to home and school life -- make room for one more. Children come up with some marvelous creations the psychologist enjoys as much as anyone else.
Millions of readers delighted in the adventures of Calvin and his imaginary friend, a tiger, in Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Friedberg points out. Calvin explained everything: "I'm very selective about the reality I accept."
• But if the imaginary friend is a secretive presence, and especially if this character appears in the wake of a trauma, this could be trouble.
Friedberg finds a case in point with Tony, the imaginary friend of young Danny Torrance in Stephen King's horror novel, The Shining, and director Stanley Kubrick's 1980 movie version. Danny depicts the creepy Tony as a wriggling finger. "Tony, I'm scared," he says.
In real life, a figure like Tony would be a troubled or abused child's try at a coping mechanism, but not a very good one -- not a way to recovery.
• The final sign of a good make-believe playmate is that he goes away in favor of a real relationship.
Ultimately, Friedberg says, "you can't play catch with an imaginary companion."
THINK SO
Newspaper readers of Bil Keene's comic feature, The Family Circle, saw a common sort of figment in action. The kids blamed accidents and misbehaviors on "Not Me," a ghostlike little figure that ran around, tracking dirt and filching cookies.
Imaginary blame-catchers give make-believe friends a bad name. In fact, the idea of any sort of relationship with the invisible makes some people see squirrels in the rafters.
Scoffers include the German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche. "There is not enough love and goodness in the world," he said, "to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings."
A search for "imaginary friends" on the Internet turns up tale after tale of strange things parents supposedly have heard children say about their imaginary friends -- dead playmates that hide in the closet.
More often, children come up with make-believe friends to have the sort of perfect-match relationships that real-life seldom provides. For now, only Beekle knows exactly where imaginary friends come from.
Friedberg and other researchers expect to see more focus on make-believe companions for what these characters have to say about child development. Friedrich expects more on the benefits of having an imaginary friend.
Rabbits and warriors, pirates and unicorns might tell a great deal about personality, intellect, coping strategies and how to know what's real.
For now -- would it hurt to read a bedtime story to a sleepy little friend who isn't there?
Family on 03/11/2015