Visions of Childhood

Pick a TV show or movie that depicts childhood. What does it seem to be saying about the nature of being a kid? What "story" does it tell about childhood?

The movie I thought of when asked this question was "Hook" with Robin Williams. This is a story about a man who grows up, has children, and is married. While it seems he has a fine life, he has forgotten what it's like to be a child, and has also started forgetting about how important his family is. When he was a child, he used to pretend he was Peter Pan, and his fairy Tinkerbell comes to get him as an adult and takes him back to Never Never Land. It's here that Peter is reintroduced into childhood, and gains his imagination back again. I think this movie is trying to say that being a kid is precious, even though you always want to grow up. 

In the four stories we’ve read, how is childhood depicted? What similarities or differences are there? What are the authors saying about childhood? Do they get it “right?”

In the four stories that we've read so far about childhood, it seems as they are trying to depict childhood as a rough time. It's confusing, being in that state where you're young, but you know something is going wrong around you. In "Every Little Hurricane", the boy isn't naive. He knows exactly how hard it is living on a reservation, and he knows exactly how his entire family deals with it. He's surrounded by alcohol, depression, and poverty. In "With Love, For Esme", the little girl acts like an adult in dealing with her parent's deaths. I believe that the authors all presented childhood correctly. I agree completely with what they were trying to get across.