Literary analysis

I am often amazed by my child. I will freely admit that she frightens me, and I am certain that she is smarter than I am. But I am watching her absorbing the literature that she loves so well and I am continually gobsmacked at what she will say. Perhaps these are not the two best examples, but they stuck with me.

We were listening to an audio recording of E.B. White's Stuart Little in the car today. We got to the part when Stuart tries to borrow the car from the dentist and learns about the button that makes the car invisible. Suddenly I hear BC say, "That's a ring problem." I asked her to repeat what she said because I didn't understand. "That's a ring problem, when the little ring slips on your finger and you become invisible." Sure enough, she was comparing Stuart Little's car with Bilbo's ring.

Matt said that last night, they were listening to the same recording, but were at the part when Stuart was lowered down into the tub drain to retrieve his mother's ring. BC said, "Stuart is like Gollum." He had no idea where she was going with this and he questioned her further. "He's like Gollum because he's slimy." At that point, the narrator said that Stuart needed a bath because the drain was quite slimy. So not only had she made the comparison, but she had remembered from her first two times listening to the story that the drain was slimy and made Stuart similarly so.

I think she's going to be better at literary analysis than I am by the time she's 5.