看了英语的版本,中文的收了还没有看。我倒觉得是我们看书人心态的问题。
1 “成年儿子的过程还给他唱,爬窗进去”没有我们想象的那么可怕。” 文章中的一条主线是妈妈的一生都是在爱孩子的,所以在妈妈变老孩子长大的过程中她一直是这样认为“
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
妈妈变老的过程中孩子自然会长大。妈妈爬窗是因为孩子已经睡着了,没人给她开门,但是这也难不倒她。爬窗她也要进去。因为她爱孩子。
2 书中描写孩子有种种奇怪的行为并不是写实,不是像有写妈妈们认为正是有这么样的妈妈才教育出这样的孩子。这我理解其实是一种象征性的。因为孩子成长过程中会出现许多问题,会和妈妈格格不入,即便如此,即使有那么多他人甚至妈妈都认为是strange的事情,妈妈依然爱他。这才是文章的主题 I will love you forever.
3 所以故事的另一个主线是爱会一直延续下去。文章的最后,长大后的男人抱着妈妈说的话是 And he sang this song:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my Mommy you'll be there.
你看他唱的是 my MOmmy you'll be there. ,是因为妈妈就是一辈子这样唱给他听的。他的心里就一直会有妈妈。虽然他做strange things, make strange friends.
这就是说爱已经传承下去了。所以最后的画面才是他会抱起自己的very new baby daughter 像妈妈一样地唱I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
4 外国人其实是比我们更看中隐私和给孩子自由空间的。作者本身是加拿大人, 他是因为自己的孩子夭折了才有感而发才写了这个故事。所以里面的画面不是写实的,不是说即使是成年的孩子妈妈硬是要闯入他的生活还要抱着他唱(她也报不动啊),这个画面只是想表达即使孩子长大了,妈妈依然爱他。
Love You Forever started as a song.
"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."
I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn't even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn't sing.
For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.
Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book.
My regular publisher felt that it was not really a kid's book and I ended up doing it with another publisher.
One day the publisher called up and said "This is very strange. It is selling very well in retirement communities in Arizona. It is selling in retirement communities where kids are illegal. This is supposed to be a children's book. What is going on?"
"Grownups are buying it for grownups!"
In fact, it turned out that parents buy it for grandparents and grandparents buy it for parents and kids buy it for everybody and everybody buys it for kids.
As a matter of fact, everybody buys it for everybody. That's why it sells a lot of copies. I think it's my best book. So far it has sold about 15,000,000 copies.