Papa: You can do all sorts of cool things when you're a character in a book.īrontë: Yeah, there's this one part where I was able to cut some pages and make my own monster out of them. And Mom made a Dobby doll for me and it took her two months, so I don't know how Franny did it but it was cool. And she sewed him up in one day, it's crazy. Papa: Seriously? You have nothing to say?īrontë: Well, I really just liked how she made a monster out of lunch meat. Papa: So you finished your first chapter book my lovely seven year old reading star. Maybe tonight we can make another cayenne pepper infused potion. Smart girls, quirky girls, strong girls rule! And kooky girls rule most of all. I don't know that I buy it, at least not entirely, but I see it impacting the way Brontë sees herself, and that impact is positive. In the end, in kid book style, she learns that being herself is enough, and that she can have friends, truer friends, by being true to herself. She makes lunch meat monsters, transformation potions, analyzes everythimg critically, rejects PB&J and Barbies, yet wants very badly to have friends, so badly that she tries to change her ways to achieve their love. Stein books may tip the scales in that direction.įranny, like her namesake, is a mad scientist. I hope that the latter will always weigh heavier in her estimation, and I think that Jim Benton's Franny K. Sometimes it makes her sad, but other times it makes her proud.

Most of the little girls she knows look at her askance. If it's supernatural, Brontë loves it with the same intensity she fears it, and she pursues it with passion. Her favourite role in Hamlet (a role she is currently playing as we perform Stoppard's 15 Minute Hamlet) is Hamlet's Ghost. Brontë loves anything that has to do with Frankenstein. But she suffers for it later, even the tiny bit she catches - as do I). She can be asleep, and she'll still turn up. in fact, putting on The Walking Dead, no matter when I put it on, is the flame that draws my little moth into the room. One of her greatest pictures, 'The Dark Queen' will someday be a tattoo on my left thigh.īut that's not all, Brontë loves Zombies (they scare the shit out of her, btu she loves them. Brontë, my lovely seven year old, is a kooky girl.įrom the time she was wee, she's been a talented artist, and her greatest influence, then and now, was Tim Burton.

Franny k stein lunch walks among us