Superman and Paula Browns New Snowsuit.

This is a short story that I thourally enjoyed. It was well written, thoughtful and interesting from beginning to end, really my kind of story. It is about a young girl and her transition from childhood into, not so much adulthood, as the age of knowing, the loss of her innocence. She was forced to eat the forbidden fruit and unwanted knowledge came to her. The story is told through her eyes and begins with bright lights and technicolour dreams in which superman comes to teach her how to fly. She even plays superman games with her best friend at school and Sheldon, the loner "mama's boy" who always plays the villain. Sheldon does however bring quite a disturbing element into their games, the girl mentions that he could come up with the most inventive tortures and that he even spends his spare time pulling the wings off flys and watching them struggle. This suggests to me that little Sheldon might turn into a sciopath one day. Anyway the girl's world starts to shift as the story goes on and she describes the start of the war and the air-raid drills that the children must take part in at school. The last day of her untainted childhood comes on Paula Brown's birthday. All the children on the block are invited, including the main character, despite the fact that (according to the main character) no one really likes Paula all that much because she is "bossy and stuck-up." After Paula spends some tims showing off her presents, including an expensive new snowsuit from Sweeden, the children are all taken to see Snow White at the cinema after cake and icecream, but here is where the story becomes disturbing again. Before Snow White, the cinema plays a propaganda movie about prisoners of way in Japan. The girl watches in horror as the prisoners are first slowly starved, then brutally shot as they try to escape with the Japanese laughing and stamping above them. That night, instead of superman, the girls dreams are invaded by Japanese soldiers and the groans of dying men. The last straw comes comes for her when she is playing tag with Paula and the other children. At one point in the game, Paula manages to trip and fall into an oil slick, spoiling her brand new snowsuit. Eager to find a scapegoat to shift the blame, Paula accuses the main character of pushing her. It only takes. A second for the other children to join in, shouting "you did it, you did it," taunting her with the thoughtless cruelty of those who don't yet believe in consequences. Running home she has a brief respite with her mother and uncle whom she says bears an uncanny resemblance to superman, but this ends when a neighbor tells the girls mother that her daughter pushed Paulaand should therefore buy Paula a new snowsuit. The girl tells the truth and denies this of course, but of course one of the most unfair and frustrating things about being a child is that adults will hardly ever believe you, even when your being sincere. In the darkness on her bed that night, having been exposed to the cruelties of life and having been failed by both her mother and uncle, all of her dreams and childish fancies that she had painted to brighten the dark blackboard of life were all rubbed away, and she was left with nothing but harsh reality. All in all, I think that this was the best short story that I have ever read, it was dark and thought-provoking, so right up my ally ;).