The Values and Influence of Children's Literature: Coraline and Alice in Wonderland

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The Values and Influence of Children's Literature: Coraline and Alice in Wonderland

Children's literature is critical to the developing minds and interests of young readers. There are countless excellent and popular series of children’s literature such as Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince, The Adventures of Pinocchio, and so on; and also many great writers such as Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, etc. Children’s literature provides opportunities for children to be educated and inspired. However, what are the values of these children’s literature? What kind of influence do they have on children’s future? What else do they offer the children? This research carries out on the basis of those injuries.

This paper focuses on the values and influences of children’s literature and picked two famous book, Coraline, and Alice in Wonderland to analyze. The results show that children’s literature contributes to many aspects in children’s lives including shaping their values and ways of thinking, building up their identities, and encouraging them to explore. In addition, this paper suggests writers and educators to pay more attention on the possible effect that children’s literature might have on kids and to make sure the contents and forms are appropriate for kids.

The first question is how to actually evaluate the influence of a specific children’s book? It is nearly impossible to quantify. However, there are some factors worth considering, such as the times it has been published, the length it has been in the market, its condition in different countries and languages, and if there is other media or literature forms based on it. There are also a lot of lists of books, such as BBC Culture’s “the 11 greatest children’s books” and the “100 best children’s books of all time” by the Time Magazine, and a huge amount of other lists. There might be a standard to develop this kind of rankings of books but it is not clear. Another problem is they usually play the “classic” card so some amazing newly written stories might just lose the chance. Therefore, forget about those lists, this paper picked two similar stories, Coraline and Alice in Wonderland to examine the values and influence that children’s literature have on kids.  

Shaping Children’s Ways of Thinking

Good children’s literature could change children’s ways of thinking to some extant (Kimmel 214). The stories of Coraline and Alice are both fantastic and absurd but really attractive. The reason is the characters are developing along with the story.

Some people argue that children show different cognitive characteristics in different ages, and many of them only have limited ability to understand changing and complex characters. As a result, a lot of famous cartoon characters are quite simple and this is easy for the kids to sympathize with them emotionally. Children’s literature also obtains a direct feelings to spread the positive values to the kids. Children usually have a shallow realization of a lot of things because they lack of life experience. They usually separate people simply as “good” or “bad.” Good literature could lead them to discover more aspects in people’s personalities in general in order to enrich their ways of thinking and establish their own values.

Building up Children’s Identities

Both Coraline and Alice go through a separate process of travels through these strange worlds which both changes and builds up their identities. Alice has grown through her series of adventures, and her sense of identity will certain affect the audience. For Coraline, the crucial difference before and after defeating her Other Mother is the degree of appreciation for her overworked and distracted parents and for the mediocrity of her life, as well as an affirmation of her resilience.

Alice’s journey, on the other hand, is largely remarkable for the lack of effect it has on her personality rather than the changes it makes to her; she retains a basic British politeness and coolness even when she is changing rapidly in size, at a strange tea party where all normal rules seem to be reversed, and even when she is going to be executed by the Queen; futile situations and ridiculous contradictions do not faze or truly challenge her or her identity, even when she has no perspective by which to analyze the validity of Wonderland’s discourses (Bivona, 144). Her falling into Wonderland does not change her core identity, but she is afraid of not being part of the social groups of Wonderland, and she makes increasingly successful efforts to navigate their discourse as she switches back and forth from polite Victorian discourse to the absurd discourses of Wonderland. Alice is able to maintain her wits and follow the discourses of Wonderland while maintaining civility and class. This sort of lesson is critical for children in an age of globalization. For Carroll, living in the height of the colonial era, adapting to strange native customs would have been the polite thing to do, but could not be done at the sacrifice of one’s moral core. Alice in her innocence and resilience reflects the need for children to maintain their principles even as they change their social behavior for the sake of politeness.

In contrast, Coraline’s exploration of her two new worlds reflects a more conventional hero’s journey of realization, struggle, soul-searching, conflict, and triumph. She is able to defeat the threat to her family and to her relationship with them, take control of her destiny and resist temptation in a way the previous victims of the Other Mother could not, and even though her status has not really changed at the end of the book or film, because her parents and environment are basically the same, she now has a more resilient and positive outlook of herself and the world around her (Rudd, 14), and stronger social connections to help her support herself. These lessons help Coraline and her readers to face conflict and pursue personal growth more healthily.

Encouraging Children to Explore and fantasize

The ability to explore and fantasize is the most precious character of children. The appeal of literary works can make children's feelings richer and more fulfilling to resist the pain and misfortune in life. For example, Coraline is smart and knows how to resistance hollow temptations. Especially in the end, she saved her real parents and it highlights the importance of communication. Her image makes kids in real life reflect the relationship with their parents and affect them to adjust it in a positive way. Similarly, in the story of Alice, no one will easily forget the magical rabbit hole, the caterpillar on the mushroom, and the scary queen. Alice gained courage and the children reaped the joy of exploring in the virtual world.

Fantasies occupy quite a wide space in children's daily thinking. Childhood is an era full of fantasy. Fantasy may or may not play a substantive role for children. However, children are born with the nature of exploring and fantasizing. As children continue to grow, the fantasies that come with them gradually become rich and have certain realities. Children need fantasy, which greatly contributes to the development of children's thinking. Children who are good at fantasizing often have more creativity than children who do not like fantasy.

As a supplement, both Coraline and Alice in Wonderland have different versions of TV figures, films, comic books, video games, and other forms of media. In this digital era, it have become the norms that children have the access to many media platforms. Many studies have agreed on the positive effects of educational media on children’s cognitive skills (Kirkorian et al. 53). The positive effects require two conditions, good products and responsible supervision from schools and parents.

In short, the purpose of literature is to make this world a better place and the people in it better. The very basic foundation of literature education is to arouse people’s desire for the unknown world, as well as a kind of imagination, and romantic spirits. Children usually have strong curiosity and higher tolerance of new concepts, and they are eager to discover the world through different ways. Excellent children’s literature plays a subtle role on improving children’s language accumulation and writing skills. More importantly, good children's literature embodies the value of educating and inspiring children's minds, and can help children's personality development and the establishment of their values. It is our responsibility to create better quality children's literature.

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