White Bird

One of my fallback activities when my kids are out of school is to go see a movie. Yes, the expense is atrocious, but it's something to do when I'm desperate. We end up going to a lot of movies. On Monday,* I looked at what was playing and figured we'd end up seeing Wild Robot (though I really didn't want to. I am so sick of animated movies and have been for years and years. I typically sleep through them or play Wingspan on my phone if I'm able to get a seat where that's not a disruption to other people). 

When I was looking at showtimes, I saw that White Bird was playing. My kids love Wonder, so I wondered (no pun intended) how they would like White Bird (if you're not familiar with White Bird, it is a companion story to Wonder with a tie in to the character Julian, who was expelled from school for making fun of Auggie. White Bird is the story of Julian's grandmother who grew up as a Jew in WWII. Julian learns his grandma's story of hiding from the Nazis as a teenager and about his namesake, Julien). I decided to try seeing White Bird even though I wasn't sure how my little girls would handle it (they are still cartoon-only kids, though I've been trying to branch out for years). 

Going into it, I knew I needed to fill them in on some things. I told them about how the story connected to Wonder. But then I also had to give them their introductory lesson in WWII. Oh, how tragic it is to have to teach kids about the worst of humanity. 

That morning, I took Zoe and Eva to the skate park and the craft store. While we were driving around, I told them about the movie we were going to go see. I talked to them, in the briefest way, about Hitler and some of the details of how he treated people. Then mid-day, we hit the movie theatre. 

I was worried because the movie was two hours long, and I didn't think those two would endure it well. To my surprise, Zoe and Eva both watched and paid attention to the entire movie. They were very reactive to the story. They gasped, they asked questions, they covered their eyes, and they even cried. I was stunned by their attentiveness. Fortunately we were the only people in the theatre so I didn’t have to worry about shushing them - I was able to answer their questions and let them give commentary. 

They liked the movie and talked about it off and on for the rest of the day. It felt so good to have that experience and reminded me of how much I like that phase where my kids and I start to connect more in interests. That’s something I have really enjoyed about having older kids.  

*Monday, October 14. Sheesh, I’ve been writing this post for a long time. In the weeks since we saw White Bird, Eva has become fascinated with Edward Scissorhands. I’m excited about anything that’s not animated!