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Dear Mrs. Saarinen:

Finally. This is a rough draft, and in order for it to make sense, I think I would have to look at the pictures again. I couldn't always remember exactly what they were like.

I found when I sat down to work on it that I had some problems with the "message" as it was written. This may be because I had in my mind a child too young to know about danger, but in any case, I felt that it would be a mistake to stress, too much, the protection angle. This maybe my psychological hang-up, but when someone says "I'll protect you", I always feel more scared, because it implies that there is a peril too great for me to handle alone. I would tend to tell a child (who expressed fear): "this is what you are scared of, and this is why" not "I'll protect you from those wolves under the bed" - which, always said to me "There really are wolves - eeeeee". Also, in this day and age, I wonder about fear. I think it may have changed in the past decade or two. The things which we have, rationally, to fear are things from which their is no immediate protection. You can't protect yourself from nuclear holocaust or a deranged murderer - except by voting, or advocating better mental health centers, etc. I'm not making myself terribly clear, but I [[strikethrough]] trsut [[/strikethrough]] trust you will understand what I'm saying better than I.

The other problem I had was with the concept of a leader - one person or animal which the others followed - the elephant and the shepherd's dog. I suppose this is because I am feeling so depressed about leadership, and coming to believe more and more in a group leadership - be that a parliamentary system or a truly (could it ever be) representative democracy where one person, the president, was on hand to sign bills and salute the flag and that's about all. Legislators would together do the rest.

Anyway, I'm sure my philosophical bent of the day is not of primary interest. I mention it only to give the reasons why I [[strikethrough]] chaned? [[/strikethrough]] the slant of your book. And made it a bedtime story for a 1 1/2 - 3 year old.

I have the question "What's this?" before each block of text because I find that generates interest and excitement [[strikethrough]] and qz [[/strikethrough]] with David. Also, I think it important that children start questionning and learning how to say a question and get an answer, a response, very, very early. Some parents are probably bored by prefacing every piece of information with a question - [[strikethrough]] so [[/strikethrough]] if this is so, we could cut it out, and merely say "This is a rhinocerous" etc.