New Voices in Children's Literature Criticism - Essay Example

 Outline : A) The genre of the children’s literature. B) Literacy theory. C) A good reader. D) Picture-books E) Folk literature. F) My literary class. Foreword: This research paper answers several questions referring to children’s literature. 1) The basic structure of all narratives as well as the children’s literature has three main elements. The first one is opening that brings in the characters and depicts the setting. In this element some vital or secondary events take place. For example, in “Alice in Wonderland” the opening introduces Alice and sets her to the adventures. The second element is conflict – the confrontation that becomes clear while the plot develops. In The Secret Garden (1911), Mary's conflict is most of all with herself and about her learning to interact with her environment and thus gain access to the secret garden symbolizing her emotions (Chapleau, p.13 ). And the last element is resolution when the conflict is resolved in some way. The vivid example is given in the book “The Illustrated Mum” when the protagonist dares to speak to her mother about the problem. The genre of children’s literature is rather specific since it demands to be catching and at the same time easy to read and understand. Fist of all it must be about childhood or animals. The plot is to be simple and straightforward, the author expresses a child’s point of view, as a rule the stories tend to fantasy, repetitions, has a form of pastoral idyll, represents the world from the innocent viewpoint, is didactic, tries to balance the idyllic and the didactic. Genre - a type of literature in which all the members of one genre share common characteristics (Chapleau, p.24). Nancy Anderson, associate professor in the College of Education distinguishes seven genres of children’s literature: 1. Picture books, such as board, concept, pattern and wordless books (Chapleau, p.24). They are characterized by colorful pictures that are followed by small pieces of text. It makes the reading process for children interesting and fascinating. The example here is “The sleeping house”. 2.Traditional literature: myths, fables, ballads, folk music, legends, and tales. Traditional literature is characterized by the stable description of natural events and situations that are common in the whole world. Usually, such literature doesn’t have a definite author. The example here is "Hansel and Gretel" by Ian Wallace, "The Dragon's Pearl" by Julie Lawson 3. Fantasy - is based on traditional literature, but has the tendency to magic, quizzes and confrontation of good vs evil. "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams 4. Realistic fiction – though currently it is untrue it can happen in future. The author describes the possible schemes of the things development. A Day's Work by Eve Bunting. 5. Informational books – they provide information for children usually with the help of illustrations and pictures. "Transformed: how everyday things are made" by Bill Slavin 6. “Biography - includes biographical fiction, fictionalized biography, authentic biography and autobiography” (Chapleau, p.25 ). The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank. 7. Poetry and verse – it can be a free verse or concrete verse. The topic is usually taken from every day life. "In Flanders Fields" by Linda Granfield 2) There are several stages how to get a child interested in literacy: introduce a title and let children speculate what it is about; introduce some details of the plot, encourage the students to read a book in order to see whether their suggestions were right, organize the group discussion of the book in the form of game. “Literacy development occurs in the "zone of proximal development" - a stage in which a child has partially mastered a skill but can only use this skill with the help of others” (Chapleau, p.38 ). It is determined to fix deep knowledge on the piece of literature, when a child works alone but consults adults. For example, the task to analyze what characters are good or bad in the text. 3) Good readers: 1. Will self-correct – if they haven’t understood something they come back and reread the passage or ask someone knowledgeable. 2. They ask question while reading. 3. Make predictions about the plot. It signifies that a child is interested in plot and uses logical creative thinking to predict the events. 4. Establish a purpose for reading. A child can have such aims: to have a good mark, to get acquainted with the piece of literature or just to do the home task. 5. Comprehend the material. It means to analyze and discuss the material with other children. The functions of the class library are: 1) provision of the independent reading – when a child has an opportunity to choose a book by himself it adds to his independency; 2) encouraging students to read – having books at hand facilitates the process of getting a book and thus doesn’t demotivate children; 3) being a place of group-discussion – it is possible to have a round table after reading a book; 4) it teaches the students to have books in their environment – in other words children get used to be with books. The supportive classroom environment represents the class where the students are encouraged to read; moreover they are willing to do this. A teacher can introduce this by encouraging fascinating discussions in class, by giving the value of book and certainly through the marks. The supportive environment includes several aspects: good students’ interaction, teachers encouragements, having library at class and giving some parallels of the plot and real life. 4) The picture-book is to be of a good quality, because a child is going to spend a lot of time gazing at the pictures and even touching them. The pictures are to illustrate the plot step by step. It is very good when the text comes on the same page with the picture. The pictures are to be colorful – not black and white and the dye is not to have any specific smell. The choice of paper does influence a child’s interpretation of the book. Children like viewing pictures on a glossy paper. They usually touch it to perceive the plot better and when the feeling is not pleasant the children subconsciously don’t like the book. Using picture-text-picture technique is effective, since a child gets the picture first. He can see the stale figures but don’t know what has happened or what is going to happen. This motivates a child to read illustrations. 5) There are different theories of the borrowed topics in folk literature: Aryan myth theory (or monogenesis--Іsingle originІ): all folk tales came from the Teutonic myths of a single ancestral people; polygenesis (іmany originsІ) theory: people everywhere in the world experience the same emotions--love, pity, fear, anguish, jealousy, hatred--and results of these emotions--greed, selfish ambition, courage, kindness--and conditions of people--cruel step-parents, neglected children, resulting in many variants of the same story (such as Cinderella), psychoanalytic theory: folk tales come from the dreams, nightmares, unconscious emotions of the storyteller (Chapleau, p. 104) 6) My literary centre will have several book-cases – picture-stories, fiction and non-fiction stories, informative and biography books, fairy tales and myths. As you see – I want to have all genres of children’s literature. The room is to be light and spacious with the pictures of the book-characters on the walls. Bibliography 1. Chapleau, Sebastien . New Voices in Children's Literature Criticism. Lichfield, 2004, Pied Piper Publishing Read More