Shady Characters

The first time I heard the word “eclipse,” I was in Pam Studer’s fourth-grade class, and I was skeptical. The sun gets blocked out? During the middle of the day? And you can’t look at it or your retinas will burn up? Right. But the most unbelievable part of the whole thing was when she said that if we poked pinholes in two index cards and held them one over the other just so, and turned our backs to the sun just so, we would be able to project the eclipse safely onto the bottom index card. Through holes the size of pins. Right, that’ll happen. Being an obedient child and an uptight student even in those days, I dutifully did the requisite hole-poking, card-holding, and back-turning without even the most remote belief that this voodoo would work…and darn if it didn’t. Standing there outside the portable classrooms with my knee socks and braids, I learned at least three things: ancient people were justifiably freaked out by eclipses, projection is weird black magic, and I don’t know everything. Or at least I didn’t then. Which was hard news for an overachiever, but did leave open some previously untapped possibilities, so I was able to weather the blow. Oh, and I also learned that natural phenomena are hard to wrap your head around sometimes. In Frank Asch’s Bear Shadow, Bear goes to great lengths to outrun his shady companion--only to discover he never can. Nature just does its own thing sometimes.

http://www.amazon.com/Bear-Shadow-Frank-Asch/dp/0671668668

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/910/Asch-Frank-1946.html