{"product_id":"invisible-companions-1","title":"Invisible Companions","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom 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, \u003ci\u003eInvisible Companions\u003c\/i\u003e will appeal to anyone interested in our mind's creative and spiritual possibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"J. Bradley Wigger","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43572225835190,"sku":"9781503609181","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9781503609181_99a0ad3d-17d9-4d56-b2d4-2fe946d6d91f.jpg?v=1727355432","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/invisible-companions-1","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}