The Wise Eyes of Children

There are strange and fascinating creatures that only the wise eyes of children can see.

The world around us is not always entirely as it appears. Lurking under the safety of our beds, hiding in the woods out back, waiting patiently behind not-quite-closed closet doors, and even camped out in our clothes' dryers there are wild beasts that no adult human has ever seen. Some are viscious, some are cuddley, some come from far away planets, and some have always lived right here, but all of them have been discovered by children. Adults, as they typically will, do not believe in these creatures for the very simple fact that they have not seen them. If everyone believed, as the adults do, that we had to see something to know it existed, the world be a very dull place. But not all grown-ups are simple-minded. Like the man whose plane crashed in the desert where he met an extrodinary boy from asteroid B-612, there are a few adults who can see what the children see.

How It All Began

There still exists today an excellent magazine for children called Highlights. Growing up the through the 1980s, this magazine, though not a staple in our household, became a solid fixture is our imaginations. One section in particular held the interest of my older sister. It was a segment that asked for reader submissions. This section, which is still in the magazine today, was called Creatures Nobody Has Ever Seen! "Draw a picture of a creature that no human has ever seen before and tell us a little bit about it!" Could there be anything more fun!?!

And that's how it all began. Soon my sister was drawing away, using whatever scrap paper was around. The information for each creature was neatly typed up on the family typewriter, with my older sister making sure that everything looked as neat and proper as it possibly could. Why was it important that the pages of type looked correct and professional? Because we were going to make a book out of them of course! On lined paper and old business balance sheets, with pencils, pens, crayons, and magic markers, the Taylor Children's first Creatures Nobody Has Ever Seen book was created.

Following the first book came four more and these later books sometimes included work from guest artists and authors, generally cousins passing through town or friends from across the park.

Old Books Reborn

Imagination and technology have always been great playmates, so it seems only natural that these books become digital. All five books have been painstakingly transferred to the realm of the computer and now live on here, amoung the vast wanderings of interstellar-webspace. So take a moment, remember the boy wandering lost in the desert, relax your mind, and delve into a world full of Creatures Nobody Has Ever Seen!