Children's Literature - Essay Example

? Children’s Literature The about whom I would like to write upon is Alvin Schwartz. He was born in Brooklyn on April 25th 1927. Brooklyn is a town situated in New York City. The author passed away in 1992 after writing numerous very interesting stories for children. Mostly all of his books are targeted towards children. He incorporated folklore and wordplay in his stories. Folklore may contain many different myths or legends that are deep rooted within one’s culture or subculture. Word play is a literal technique of playing with words for the purpose of tautology or just for mere amusement. Word play and folklore are very much found in the work of Alvin Schwartz. Schwartz most famous work includes Scary Stories to tell in the Dark series. It had many gruesome and scary illustrations and depictions (American Library Association). Alvin Schwartz is a very famous write having written more than two dozen children’s books of folklore. These books are a window of exploration of a range of topics; wordplay, humor, tales, legends and so on. A couple of his stories include Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Scary Stories 3, and two I Can Read Books, In A Dark, Dark Room and Ghosts! I would like to quote the reviews of certain sources here: “A wonderful collection of tales that range from creepy to silly to haunting...Gammell's drawings add just the right touch...” – John Scieszka, Entertinment Weekly “Guaranteed to make your teeth chatter and your spine tingle” – School Library Journal “Read these if you dare” – The New York Times (Amazon.com) The names of the stories include: The Big Toe, What do you Come for? The Walker, The Hook, High Beams, The White Satin Evening Gown, etc. All these stories are a part of one book called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The reason why Alvin Schwartz wrote this book was because in his opinion, people have always scared each other for the sake of amusement. A lot of young boys and girls do the same thing. They gather at each other’s houses, put off the lights and scare each other, play ridiculous pranks on each other for scaring each other and when their friends would really get very frightened, they would just laugh uncontrollably. So fear sometimes becomes humor for many. For thousands of years people have spent time and found entertainment in reading scary stories or narrating them to others. When we talk of scary stories, there is so much diversity. There are ghosts, there are witches, there are draculas, monsters, dragons, aliens, vampires, zombies, supernatural creatures and what not. Since there is no harm in creating fantasies about such creatures, Alvin Schwartz chose to write on them just for the sake of amusement and many people find pleasure in coming across scary stories. However, Alvin Schwatrz himself has written as a prologue to his book that not all the scary stories are based on mere assumptions or fantasies. They have a certain amount of truth in them. There have been so many scary books and stories written all around the globe, all of them can just not be discarded on the excuse that they are mere fantasies. There exists some truth and some substance within them as they are based around the narration of people’s experiences. They are based around what people actually felt, heard or saw at a certain point. So we can say that all the scary stories have similar origin. In the foreword to his book, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Alvin Schwatrz communicates a very deep message and explains his main motive for writing this book. He narrates a story within the foreword. The story is about a young Prince called Mamillus. The prince became famous for telling a scary story but he was not able to finish it. He is the hero of one of Shakespeare’s novels The Winter’s Tale. One night Mamillus’s mother asks him to tell a story to her. He says he would tell her the story softly. She said that Mamillus should try his best to scare her while narrating the story, but Mamillus insisted that he wanted to narrate the story softly and slowly. He started with the story and said that there was man who lived in a churchyard (Shakespeare 40). He just got this far with his story that the king came in and arrested the Queen and took her away. Soon after this, Mamillus died. Schwartz at this point posed a question to his readers that what would they have done if they were Mamillus? How would they have narrated the story? Schwartz concludes that some stories are just meant to be told and scary stories are one of those. They are really important. Who else would have completed the story for Mamillus after he died? No one. Because only Mamillus knew what he was going to speak further. Hence scary experiences can only be understood by the ones experiencing them. But in order to make them more interesting and more effective, one should know how to communicate them to the other person. In this case, Mamillus knew that his story would create the desired impact only if he narrates the story slowly and gradually and not fast forward it. He should go on softly with it, so that the listener or the reader would look forward to it and would develop an interest in it. Schwartz also gave out another deep message in his foreword. He said that the best time to narrate scary stories is during the night. This is because it is dark and gloomy during the night. By doing this, Schwartz is coaxing the readers to read his books only during night time so that the book would create the desired impact on them. If they read it during night, they’ll enjoy it more because of the compatible ambience (Schwartz). Hence, the main aim of Schwartz is actually to provoke the readers to read scary stories, enjoy them, get amused by them and also be serious about them at the same time, This is because he has clearly stated that scary stories are not at all fluff without any cake. They are true. They are based on real life situations. In this way, he is creating a further sense of fear within his readers and making it more interesting for them. The first story of this book is The Big Toe. It is a short story based on a boy. The main aim of the story is to scare the audience. If teenagers or children would narrate the story to their friends it would make them jump! The story is about a boy who finds a toe while digging up in a garden. The boy was on his usual voyage one fine day that he came across this toe. He took it back home and showed it to his mother. The mother said that the toe looks fresh and soft and that she would put it in their dinner soup. The boy’s father cut the toe into three pieces and after having dinner all the family members went into their rooms for sleeping. Just when the boy was about to sleep, he heard a voice in the street which said “where is my toe?” Schwartz has tried to keep his books very expressive and tried his best to make the readers feel as if they are experiencing the entire situation. He has done this by writing this question “where is my toe” like “whhhheeerree is my t—ooo—eee??” Just so that the readers get more intrigued by it, and children while narrating it to their friends could also sing along the voice to make the story feel as realistic as possible. It is very easy to dodge children. They are naive and they easily fall for traps. Schwartz has thus created a perfect context for them to believe in these stories. He has written the stories in a very easy land simple language so that children can casually talk about them and read them out to their friends. Later what happens is that the voice keeps coming closer and closer and Schwartz way of writing the dialogue “Where is my toe” keeps getting more intense. Suddenly the voice gets so close that the boy started hearing footsteps. Schwartz has also written techniques along with the story which tell the reader about how to scare his/her friends. Just like when the story come s to an end Schwartz writes that at this point the reader should move very close to his friend and shout in his ear “YOU’VE GOT IT!!!” so that the friend jumps off and the reader could enjoy and laugh at the listener’s reaction. The stories are short and not boring at all. Just when the listener is waiting for a new twist or turn, the story ends with a surprise. Schwartz has also presented alternate ways of ending the story. Keeping our discussion restricted to this specific story only, Schwartz says that the story could also end in a different and a more scary way. This could be done by narrating that the boy actually saw two big eyes from the Chimney when he was getting very scared and trying to hide under his blanket. When he asked the strange creature that why he had such huge and scary eyes, the creature replied in a horrendous way “So that I could see throughhhh YOUU!” So basically, all the stories by Schwartz are meant for children only. They are short and concise. They are written in a believable and a humorous way. The main intention of the author is to provide a blend of horror, humor and entertainment for the young readers. This way they would learn to express themselves in strange and uneasy situations. They would also learn the art of narrating a weird or extra ordinary situation. They won’t just break the news but would reach the climax slowly and gradually so that the listener awaits and enjoys it. Works Cited Amazon.com. Scary Stories Treasury. n.d. 09 December 2011 . American Library Association. 100 most frequently challenged books: 1990–1999. n.d. 09 December 2011 . Schwartz, Alvin. Scary stories to tell in the dark. HarperCollins, 1981-1991. Shakespeare, William. The Winter's Tale. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Read More