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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Dear Colleagues,<br>
Laura Murry helps CaMP anthropology feature Brad Wiggers' new
book, Invisible Companions this week.<br>
Check it out:<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://campanthropology.org">
https://campanthropology.org</a><br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Ilana<br>
<br>
<br>
Press blurb: </font><br>
<font face="Arial"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-size:
12.8px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal;
font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align:
start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(246, 246, 232); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">From the US
to Nepal, author J. Bradley Wigger travels five countries on
three continents to hear children describe their invisible
friends—one-hundred-year-old robins and blue dogs, dinosaurs and
teapots, pretend families and shape-shifting aliens—companions
springing from the deep well of childhood imagination. Drawing
on these interviews, as well as a new wave of developmental
research, he finds a fluid and flexible quality to the
imaginative mind that is central to learning, co-operation, and
paradoxically, to real-world rationality. Yet Wigger steps
beyond psychological territory to explore the religious
significance of the kind of mind that develops relationships
with invisible beings. Alongside Cinderella the blue dog,
Quack-Quack the duck, and Dino the dinosaur are angels,
ancestors, spirits, and gods. What he uncovers is a profound
capacity in the religious imagination to see through the surface
of reality to more than meets the eye. Punctuated throughout by
children's colorful drawings of their see-through interlocutors,
the book is highly engaging and alternately endearing, moving,
and humorous. Not just for parents or for those who work with
children,<span> </span></span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;
font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; color: rgb(68, 68,
68); font-size: 12.8px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;
font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align:
start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space:
normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(246, 246, 232); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">Invisible Companions</i><span style="color: rgb(68,
68, 68); font-size: 12.8px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px;
text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(246, 246,
232); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline
!important; float: none;"><span> </span>will appeal to anyone
interested in our mind's creative and spiritual possibilities.</span></font>
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