Creative Kids

A wonderful author friend of mine has a daughter who has started making "contraptions" as he says: so young and she's already creative.  I've been sort of obsessed with 2 very different movies: Never Let Me Go, based on the amazing novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (author of The Remains of the Day, also a fantastic book and movie).  I read the former on vacation and it blew me away more than any book I've read in such a long time so I'm so excited that the movie releases next month (movie poster above, trailer below):

The children in the novel have a tragic fate ahead of them, but in the meantime they become prolific at creating art: drawings, paintings, sculptures, poetry and more, which they trade at school sales and for which their caretakers select from to create a gallery of sorts, the meaning of which is not clear until very late in the story.  I was interested that there have been several different covers for the different versions of the book.

And then a very different kind of movie: Children of Invention, featuring two adorable, enterprising kids who try to help out their struggling mother by buying a ton of supplies and getting to work on their creations.

Two very different movies to be sure, but I like how the themes are both about kids who are creating something to improve their situations in life, even though one has more dire consequences than the other.

Oh, and there's still time to enter my knit sushi giveaway, drawing is Labor Day, 9/6, so I need to get working!