Writing and Reading Children's Literature: Pleasure or Teaching Element - Essay Example

? There's nothing wrong with people, children or adults, just enjoying themselves. Indeed, the idea that life needs some special justification to be lived is a terrible imposition. Play itself is valuable, and encouraging children to have fun, imagine, create and learn new vocabulary by reading is worthwhile: Not every book has to be strictly educational or stick to some strict regimen, advancing this arithmetic goal or that grammatical technique. Yet a good piece of literature will have universal themes that will appeal to children and adults, and will teach more than just developmental skills. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a premier example of this principle. It is a piece of literature that is children's literature in that it is accessible to young children but not in the sense that it is exclusively for young children, it teaches not only vocabulary but also mythology and ethics, and it is excellently written. Jon Sciezska, author of stories like The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, argues that many of the approaches of educators in the West has been misleading or wrong (Zastrow, 2008). “I would say just to let kids play around, and let them play around with reading” (Zastrow, 2008). Everything that a child interacts with is educational: Every experience, every tree, every song, every book, will have indelible impacts that may resonate for their whole lives in ways no adult can predict. “Educational” children's literature, then, isn't different because it teaches something; rather, it's different because it teaches particular things and sets out to teach those things, like civics, morals, values, good social behavior, math, grammar, colors, shapes, etc. There is nothing wrong with this kind of literature. But it's not the only kind of literature children should read, any more than adults should only read newspapers and journal articles. Sciezska recommends that “Reading shouldn't be a bitter pill” and that children should have choices in what they read (Zastrow, 2008). There are few choices more apt for children than Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The book is not an educational book: It is magical fantasy, pure and simple. It begins with a Cinderella dream: Child growing up among cruel step-parents with arbitrary step-siblings is revealed to have a special destiny. But the book actually is filled with all sorts of educational elements nonetheless. By not being specifically “educational”, it is actually able to have fully-fledged themes and elements that lead children away from the simple grammar school progression and towards advanced life skills that will pay off for the months, years and decades to come. The composition of Rowling's work is itself highly educational. Children learn all sorts of vocabulary from the book, and not just vocabulary of magical phenomena but of a far broader nature. But it's not just vocabulary: Children pick that up constantly, from the telly to conversations to the schoolyard. What the book teaches is how to write. Children reading Harry Potter learn accessible techniques of description, sentence construction, suspense, comparing and contrasting, etc. It is true that children could also learn how to write from Mark Twain or Plato, but Harry Potter uses modern elements, modern themes and appeals to modern needs. It uses contemporary language that British, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and Yank children can understand. This paper focuses on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone because, being the first book, it has the least adult themes, is the least likely to scare children (though the image of Voldemort growing out of the back of Quirrel is fairly grotesque) and has the simplest plot and language, but all the books are quite valuable for young readers. In particular, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as well as the other books in the series teach good narrative structure. The books have an element of the mystery novel to them: The reader is told clues that allow them to piece things together. In fact, fans accurately guessed that RAB in the sixth book meant Regulus Black, showing that the world had enough fidelity to it to entertain and reward guesses (MuggleNet, 2005). Children reading the books are rewarded when they pay close attention to detail, construct hypotheses and learn about relationships. The book uses Snape as a red herring to keep the readers' attention off of Quirrell, and reveals information at the end that casts the prior events in a different light, just as a good mystery novel should. The books also have many more lessons, though. They teach mythology: Children learn not just about the regular and expected elements like centaur, but also about more sophisticated elements of history and myth such as the Philosopher's Stone. The Latin in the spell phrases is of course dramaticized, but children nonetheless learn basic Latin techniques and construction. Most importantly, the books teach moral lessons (Armstrong, 2008). At the end of the book, Harry is able to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone because he had no ulterior motive for it, so that when he saw into the mirror, he wanted the stone itself and not what the stone would provide for him. Hermione's character teaches that hard work and study pay off, while Ron teaches that courage and loyalty pay off. Neville's stand against his friends is a sign of someone who is not considered very popular doing what is right and getting rewarded for it (and Neville's arc over the books as a character is to develop into a confident, gifted young man, which helps to teach children that there are hidden depths to people). Harry himself is loyal, kind, and believes in others. The book has a fundamental faith about people, about good conquering evil, that is immensely valuable for children to learn, far more important than teaching their letters and numbers. It is true that the impact of the book has been much exaggerated (Rich, 2007). The book has had an unquestionably positive impact: Children read at least the Harry Potter books, and there is some evidence of a spillover effect. But unfortunately, the effect in total is very slight. “It got millions of kids to read a long and reasonably complex series of books. The trouble is that one Harry Potter novel every few years is not enough to reverse the decline in reading” (Rich, 2007). But what educators are discovering is that the problem is not with Harry Potter, it's with the ten books not being written, the “scaffolding” that would have children go from book to book in a trajectory of engagement. The solution is not to write less books like Harry Potter, but more: Create authentic experiences for children to grow in, and the rest will take care of itself, because a fully-fledged and authentic world is one that will teach children lessons. Works Cited Armstrong, A, 2005, Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles, Ember Publishing. MuggleNet. 2005, “MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling”, July 16, Available at: http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview2.shtml Rich, M. 2007, “Harry Potter has limited effect on reading habits”, New York Times, July 11. Zastrow, C. 2008, “Turning Boys into Readers: An Interview with Children's Literature Laureate Jon Scieszka”, Learning First, March 6. Read More