star wars poster
When George Lucas set out to make Star Wars he was a young man with a dream. He wrote a story that excited him and shot a film about a fantastic world that absorbed him. Years later he continued the series with a film stuffed with farting aliens and racial stereotypes.

There are two ways to approach children’s material. You can write material that you think children will like, or you can write material from your own loves that, it just so happens, turns out to be what all humans love. The incredible thing that I discovered about the farting aliens is that kids do in fact enjoy that movie. So when George set out to make a movie that kids would like, he was successful. But my guess is that as those children grow older, the sweet memories of alien farts will grow foul and dissipate until they are no more. There isn’t much in that thin cloud to carry forward into adulthood. Meanwhile, there are adults well into their forties and fifties who are still captivated by the magic of the first Star Wars (Episode IV) film.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) never had any children of his own. Apparently he used to say, “You have ‘em; I’ll entertain ‘em.”1. Audrey Geisel, his wife, said that he was even, “afraid of children to a degree”.2 It was Geisel’s childlike imagination and his love of language and play that made his art something that reached all ages. He was writing what he himself enjoyed.

If adults aren’t as charmed by my children’s songs as their children, I’m not reaching deeply enough into my vault of imagination. I’m not tapping into the universal core that we humans share that makes us crave and delight in stories. From a practical standpoint, children insist on hearing the songs they love thousands of times, and so parents are the ones carefully selecting material least likely to encourage themselves to damage expensive stereo equipment. Thinking long term, this allows well written metaphors to have an effect on both children and the adults they become, as they carry the best stories of their youth with them. Their understanding and interpretations change and expand as the person evolves, continuing to encourage them for a lifetime.

I want to be the planter of seeds, not the forgotten cotton candy. I want to be the New Hope, not a Phantom Menace.