Children's_Literature

Children’s Literature Foundation BA in Education & Community May 2010 Education literature plays a big part in children’s development. There are different genres in children’s literature. In this assignment we will have a look at children’s poems, a novel and an extract of a new children’s literature. Professor Maria Nikolajeva, Director of Cambridge’s new Centre for Children’s Literature, explained: ‘Children can struggle with fundamental questions of life and death, good and evil, what it means to be a human being and many will carry ideologies they pick up from picture books, fairytales, novels, animation and poetry through to adulthood. Any starting point that has the capacity to shape young people’s development deserves serious consideration.’ The material used for children needs good structures of social, educational context. The literature has to stimulate a child interest. Images are used often to stimulate and increase activity in the brain. For example symbolic pictures are used to help student’s memory and for recalling information in children. The writer uses easy-to-read literature to help children to understand the meaning of the texts. Writers use the connection between animals and people to help children get a better understanding of what is written in the literature. To stratify and hold the attention reader the literature has to be interesting. Writers are constantly looking for better methods to write literature for children. The writer has to invite the reader to a journey. There are different ways to write children’s literature. 3 ways are shown in this assignment. Poetry, Novel and an extract from a new literature for teenagers. The poem is written for children at primary age and the novel and the extract is written for teenagers and adults. The first book is called ‘Oranges is not the only fruit’. The author Winterson (1985) wrote about her own experience in her childhood. The novel was written 1985 and it was her first novel. This novel tells us about religious education, home education and how to bring a child up in a fundamental, religious way without them having same aged friends. The child mostly has contact to adults. The adults are very religious and educate the child in their own way. This novel is for adults and also for older children. The writer used a lot of complex words in the novel which does not every teenager understand. The child in the novel was mostly introduced to religious books. Because of her way of life the mother bought her up she had difficulty with in making friends in her own age group. The mother never had mixed feelings and asked her adopted child at home about religious matters. If she answered wrongly she got smacked on her face. In the time that Jeannette grew up it was a time parents still used to hit their children on a daily basis for doing wrong things. Jeannette’s mother did not like to bring her child to school and taught her daughter that the school is a place were enemies were and called it a’ Breeding Ground full of Unnatural passion’. The mother wanted her to become a missionary. Jeannette did not have a good childhood. She had been adopted and had no contact with her real mother. She did not have child related activities and no child friends. Friends for her were God, dog, Aunty Madge, a Novel of Charlotte Bronte and slug pellets (p.3). The mum as her role model filled her mind with horror. (p.5). The writer uses a lot of negative connotations in the text to give the reader a negative image which affects the content of children’s literature and shapes the innocence in this novel. A parent should be a companion, facilitator, Empowerer, Enabler, a partner in conversation, a safety officer, mediator and a model for the child development. Many parents have a lack of understanding of this role and use children for their own selfishness and interests. Jeannette was getting the wrong impression and messages in play and life from her mother during childhood. Whiting& Whiting (class handout, 2010) implies that ‘Play is affected by cultural influences & acts as an expression of culture.’ Exodus is the Old Testament, Leviticus the Jewish law and both were in practice in her family and around her family’s friends. This culture had influences on her play and behaviour. Adults try often to use children’s innocence for their own interests. Literatures for children or poems show often the child as innocent. On the National Association for the Teaching of English web site I found that Alan Richardson (1994) said The Romantic idea of the innocent child affected not only the content of children's literature but also shaped what Alan Richardson has called 'the poetics of innocence'—the assumption that narrative technique, plot structure, figurative language, and so on should match the assumed reading competence of the innocent child reader. In ‘Oranges is not the only fruit’ I found the statement by Winterson (1985, p.9) She would get a child, train it, build it, dedicate it to the Lord: a missionary child, a servant of God, a blessing. … She said, ‘This child is mine from the Lord.’ The childhood of Jeannette retains a special place in a reader’s heart and imagination. The mother of Jeannette expresses particular views about her childhood. It shows how much can be a child can be influenced from an adults way of living. Because a child is innocent; the child does not have a choice and has to follow the adult’s wishes and expectation. One poem we had analyzed in class is called ‘Death of a Naturalist’ by Seamus Heaney (1966) The poem represents the past of Seamus Heaney and is written in 2 irregular stanzas. This poems looks at Heaney’s childhood, exploring innocence and pleasure of childhood activities and comparing it to the seriousness of growing up. His aim is to explorer his pat, thinking about his family, environment and childhood. He achieves this through analysing events through memories, personal feelings, imagery, use of senses and many literacy devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration and rhyme patterns. The audience is children. The speaker speaks in the first person which means that the person in the poem is the poet him self. Simple, childish words are used in line sixteen and seventeen ‘The daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mummy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn.’ Four clauses joined by ‘and’ in this sentence let the lines of the poems look like as it is written by a child. The lines are broken using commas or full stops and sometimes without anything. The sentences are long. Heaney’s poem (line14) has a grammatical pause. The first part of the poem has many positive connotations and a positive tone; the second stanza has a negative connotation and a very different tone and feelings. The spring, bubbles, green, heart, butterflies, frog and frog eggs, daddy and mummy, spring symbolizes life, growing and love. Colours were used (Line 20) yellow and brown to symbolize the end of a period of innocence and a change is forthcoming. We do not live in an age of innocence and though it may be hard to acknowledge, childhood is not an age of innocence either. When author Jacqueline Wilson was asked whether her books are concerned with the loss of childhood innocence, she observed that society has lost its innocence and that children are simply party to this state of being (Esther BBC2 7/3/00 quoted in ite English [online]). The second stanza is much shorter. Hot weather has caused the decay (line 4).The poem uses words like hot, angry, thick, down, and loose, treats, poised, sickened to contrast the positive part in part one. The Narrator tries to show that there are in life always two sides in life. He uses in the second stanza to give special attention to the negative side of life experience in his childhood. The final line shows the imagination and how far as a child can take it. It is a warning and alert in a child’s life that bad things can happen to anyone. On an educational level the poet tries to teach children in childish language that out there in life they can find the good sides in life and also that you watch the bad sides of life. Active words verbs were been used and strong adjectives. Death imagery was used in the title to demonstrate the danger of the nature. The Title is a metaphor and means in nature. Nature symbolize the life and death and how both work together. In part one and two there is an inconsistency with affects the two parts within the poem. The form of the poem correspond the main idea of the poem. The poet follows a style which is made for children’s reading and education. The poet used colours, animals and senses in the poem. The poem starts with death and ends with a warning. Both are negative and alarming for children. The poem is focusing on experiences of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child and his reaction as the spawn turned into frogs. The eggs of the frogs symbolize new life. The reader uses a warm and friendly tone if reading the first stanza. The tone at the second stanza changed to a deeper and louder tone as if reading to alarm the audience. The thesis is: ‘Life can not always be good it has also bad sides’. The images combine different senses. Line seven shows the beauty of the scene ‘dragonflies’/ ‘spotted butterflies’. In line eight is a Metaphor ‘warm thick slopper’. Line nine uses a smile ‘grow like clotted water’ to describe his impression. Line eleven uses imagery ‘jampotful of the jellied/specks’ which is an alliteration and assonance. The word frog is repeated over the poem. The first ten lines used vivid imagery to describe the setting and its sights, smell and sounds. ‘Flax-dam’ combines assonance and alliteration. It is creating an atmosphere. ‘Heavyheaded’ end of second line and uses an assonance and alliteration to describe the flax that had rotted. At the third line ‘weighted down by huge sods the heaviness is emphasised. A personification of the oppressiveness of the sun is shown at ‘Daily it sweltered in punishing sun’. At line five ‘bubbles gargled delicately’ is the image focusing on the sound. The movement of flies is a metaphor. Bluebottles are strong gauze of sound around the images combining different senses. At line nine is a simile ‘grew like clotted water’ to describe his impression. At line fifteen to twenty one on the end of the first stanza is a child like account about what the teacher taught the class about frogs and frogspawn. Nightmares are images were spawn becomes powerful and grabs the child. Children’s literature of childhood retains a special place in a reader’s heart and imagination. Children differ in the way they read books. The children’s literature influences children through their lines. It is important that books are age related and has the right educational needs included for the children. The literature is related to the time of publishing and the life circumstances at this time. Both literatures are childhood literature for different age group but have similar messages. Bibliography Alan Richardson, Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780-1832 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 1994), pp.142-53. Esther BBC2 7/3/00 quoted in ite English ‘Teaching Literature at KS 1-2’. Ite English. http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/litks12/005.html [20 May 2010] Professor Maria Nikolajeva, (2010 issue 12) ‘Children’s literature comes of age’ a close looks at research across the University. http://www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk/features/-p-children-rsquo-s-literature-comes-of-age--p-.aspx [15 May 2010] University of Bolton (2010) Play and Culture. Class handout. Bolton: School of Arts, Media &Education, University of Bolton Winterson, J. (1985) Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. London: Vintage