I’m reminded, this past week as I’ve been reading Moominsummer Madness to Sylvia, of a device that I reliably find really intriguing in children’s books: the characters are interacting with something familiar to the reader but outside of their experience, and trying to fit it in to the world of their experience. In this case it is the Moomins and their hangers-on, trying to understand the theater by describing it as a house, and the ways that breaks down throughout the book. It is very familiar as a device, though I’m not sure I could point out any other instances of it right now — I think I’ve seen similar things in Babar books, probably in Roald Dahl, maybe in Narnia too. And of course that joke about the blind men describing an elephant. (Update: speaking of which, I am just now watching Lifetime cable’s new TV show “State of Mind”, and it started its first episode with a re-enactment of the blind men and an elephant joke.)