"Finding Cozy": Theme and Tone

We'd like to thank the many people who have purchased "Finding Cozy" on Amazon. At last count More than 100 copies sold in the first five days. If you enjoy the book, please leave a comment and lots of stars as those two features at Amazon help advance the book. Thank you for the many kind words in social media, that's also very encouraging.

Based on the texts, etc. from purchasers across the country (and the globe—japan, so far), there are lots of parents and teachers enjoying this book. In the "Author's Note" in the above post, I explained the events that brought the book together just days before Christmas 2020. For those who may want to know a bit more about the writing itself, I'm adding this post about "theme" and "tone." This might help you maximize "teachable moments" as you share the book with others. There is another post after this one about  importance of fostering imagination in childhood (and adulthood for that matter). That's so important. After that there is a post full of "details" in the book. Colton calls them "Easter eggs." That one's just for fun.

Many years ago, when I told various versions of "Finding Cozy" to my girls at bedtime, the room was dark, and the purpose of the story was to lull them to sleep. In fact, most of my ad lib tales ended as soon as that was achieved. I kept that in mind as I put the story in writing in 2014. It was written to be read aloud. It is a risk to create a tone that takes the reader and listener to the brink of believing a dream-like state we sometimes associate with being "cozy."  A risk because younger children may be lulled to sleep before the final page. I can live with that.

I don’t mind sleepy heads as long as the reader occasionally keeps reading and thinking to the end... because--guess what?--"Finding Cozy" is also a story for the "grown ups." It's perhaps most meaningful to those old enough to recall when each childhood day was a book instead of a turning page.

It is older readers who will be able to read between the lines like looking through the blinds at night to watch the falling snow. Older readers will see the hints of  the rhythms (ticking clocks, fleating days and nights, changing seasons, and passing generations). Lost on younger readers are the contrasts within these pages: near / far, dim / bright, inside / outside, warm / cold, animals / humans, dreams / doubts, etc. You'll see them. The most important contrast of all in "Finding Cozy" is that of the vast expanse of space to the tiny specks we call home on the dot we call Earth (and more importantly to the perfect enclosure where each of us spent the first nine months of our lives). This contrast is first shown in the starry moonscape over the little blue house (pp 9-10). It's later replicated as Kenzie stares at the starry image of her mitten under the shelter of the juniper which happens just after the theme is said aloud.

A theme is an underlying truth that runs through a story. In this case, "Finding Cozy" refers to both an accidental encounter between a girl and a rabbit and to the theme of the story which is the notion that "finding cozy" is a subconscious reconnection to the most perfect shelter humans ever know. The feeling we call "cozy" is to well-being what food is to hunger, what love is to loneliness.  It is hinted at in hundreds of songs from "My Blue Heaven" to "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." 

Some embrace the word cozy and use it freely while others pretend to be too tough to say the word aloud. In truth, however, it's a need whether the word is uttered or not. It may be found in the quiet nursery of a cottage or a foxhole in a battlefield. It may be enjoyed by a couple on a snowy sleighride or a hermit in a snowbound cabin. We may apply the term to many things, but its deepest meaning is nestled in the basic need that chicks find under the wings of a hen. Much of life is quite the opposite of cozy, and that's why we are drawn to the people and places that help us find it.

SIDE NOTE: A theme is sometimes confused with the "moral of the story" often tagged on to the end (as in Easop's Fables, which are fanciful tales of personified animals, that teach a truth [like "The Tortoise and the Hare."] Though "Finding Cozy" shares some elements of fable, it deliberately stops short of anthropomorphism choosing instead to provide only the ability to communicate in order to contrast human and animal as distinctly different in that animals lack Imago Dei.. The distinction goes beyond physical differences [e.g. the fact that rabbits lack the ability to cry tears as humans do] to highlight the ability to "create" from concepts (as seen in art, music, literature, and Kenzie's vivid use of simile.) This innate distinction between these two new friends is what prompts the search for the meaning of cozy.. 

An author's own disposition toward a story's theme sets the story's tone and style of presentation. Because I wanted the story to be read aloud,  rhythms and  rhymes of verse sometimes slipped into the narrative prose.  When I noticed this happening, I stopped and tried to rewrite the whole story with no hint of poetic device. The result read like an instruction manual. So I attempted writing the entire story in verse, but that became labored and threatened to trivialize the theme. It was this struggle that eventually shelved the project in 2014. When I came back to it six years later, I reverted to the original completed draft and let some verse slip in an out of narrative prose naturally (often keeping poetic lines in paragraph form).  This tends to happen while describing the extraordinary nature of otherwise ordinary things: falling leaves, snow-covered moonscapes, being carried to bed, returning a mitten, etc.  My hope is that the blend of poetry and prose helps contrast childlike WONDER and "grown up" certitude.