My thinking about Pobby and Dingan

Pobby and Dingan is a book written by Ben Rice. It’s about a family with a girl has two imaginary friends. I think it’s just a story about a tricky girl that has many troublesome ideas at first. The girl always thinks the imaginary friends are true and make the whole family in trouble only because she thinks her father has lost them. I really don’t think it’s a serious issue for a girl to lose some imaginary friends. In my opinion, imaginary friends are somebody would come when you want to see them.

However, by reading more about the book, my ideas changed. Also, I think I start to like the book now. I looked for some reasons why would a girl have imaginary friends. Based on the book, I think the main character Kellyanne has imaginary friends because of her family. I like a book because it’s a deep thinking book that the father is a drunker who only care about finding opals and never believe in his daughter; the mother supports her daughter but still focus on her homesick most of the time; and the brother Ashmol is a kind person, but he still never believe in the creative ideas that her sister has.

For example, the dad says, ”I completely forgot. They are out in the back yard watering the plants,” (Rice p.13) after Pobby and Dingan were lost, he doesn’t believe in they are true and he just make things up. For Ashmol, “I knew he had forgotten to bring back Pobby and Dingan from the claim, but I didn’t say about it. I wanted to see what Kellyanne would have to say about it, so I just sat there playing on my Super Mario with its flat batteries, hoping Kellyanne would come in from the kitchen and get all ratty.” (Rice p.12) He even knows what his sister would think, but he doesn’t care, and even wants to see that. The problems of their family make Kellyanne to be sick, and I like this way that the writer imply the book

After that, I still think there are some points that I don’t really like. For example, the plots go so fast, there are too many things happen in each chapter. It makes me feel it’s not enough to understand the ideas of the book just from these few chapters. For the start of the second chapter, “When Dad left for the claim one morning he volunteered to take Pobby and Dingan with him to get some exercise while Kellyanne was at school.” (Rice p.11) However when this chapter ends, “When the flames were out I went into Kellyanne’s room and told her what happened.” (Rice p.23), the house even starts burning. There are many plots happened in one chapter, and it makes me cannot really understand this amount of information.

To conclude, it’s still a good book for people to read over all. It’s really interesting to think of what the writer reflect in the book. Thus, I highly recommend people to read it and also think of it.

Rice, Ben. Pobby and Dingan. New York: Knopf, 2000. Print.