“You must have hated The Polar Express when you were a kid,” my friend Stacy said to me.
The two of us were sitting in our class, Writing for Children, talking about picture books. As the semester came to a close, we were finishing our unit on illustrated stories, and meandered to The Polar Express. Being a Caldecott-winning story adapted into a movie, it was an ideal book for class discussion. Most of my classmates heard it at least once, and had their own stories about hearing it for the first time. Mine was not particularly memorable, seeing as I was nine and the elementary school librarian read it to my class.
At least…I did not think it was memorable until Stacy pointed out a central theme to the story.
Continue reading “Hearing, Listening, and The Polar Express”
