Teaching Children

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Teaching Childrens Literature

• Can Pleasure Be Taught?
• 10/1

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Reading as a Multifaceted Activity

• Not linear as decoding, but more as a complex
  interactive process resulting from interactive
  variables that operate simultaneously rather than
  sequentially (McLaughlin, 1987 59).
• Learn to read v.s. Read to learn
• Strategies the readers use to decode and link
  what they know to a book are making connections,
  predicting, questioning, and painting mental
  pictures.

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Schemata

• The cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser, Not
  only reading, but also listening, feeling, and
  looking are skillful activities that occur over
  time. All of them depend upon pre-existing
  structurescalled schemata, which direct
  perceptual activity and are modified as it
  occurs (14).
• Schemata are
• anticipations
• the medium by which the past affects the future
• information already acquired determines what will
  be picked up next.
• Therefore, our previous experience of
  literature provides schemata that determine our
  response to the new texts we encounter.

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Exploration

• Reflect on your own learning experience. Did you
  learn literary strategies that help you to enjoy
  literature by yourself?
• What are literary strategies? How did you learn
  the strategies, consciously or unconsciously? Are
  you aware of having been taught them? If so,
  when and by whom?

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Types Childrens Literature

• Genres
• Realism
• Fiction
• Fantasy
• Traditional Literature
• Poetry
• Format
• Toy books
• Board books
• Wordless picture books
• Picture books
• Illustrated books
• Junior novels

• Folktales
• Fast-moving stories of magic involve flat
  characters. Fairy tales belongs to this
  category.
• Fables
• Stories, usually about animals, teach a moral
  lesson.
• Myths
• Longer stories that explain how the universe and
  its contents came into being, focusing on god,
  ancient heroes, ancestors and natural phenomena.

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Questions to start with

• What are fairy tales? Stories about fairies?
• Actually no, but the unbelievable presence of
  magic, the supernatural.
• Why do we accept such ridiculously unreal
  situation?
• Because unreal ? untrue.
• Also, a fantasy situation add spices in life.
• Who created these fairy tales?
• Fairy tales, which werent originally written to
  be questioned or criticized as it is today, were
  stories told in families merely for
  entertainment.

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Suitable for Little Ears?

• Talking point
• If you had children, what would worry you most
  about the fairy tales they read?
• Violence
• Poverty
• Evil
• Cruelty
• Sexism

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Analyzing Fairy Tales as Types

• Strong oral traditionidentified as types
• similar plots but could be told in different
  ways.
• Analyzing the elements of literature
• Character, plot, theme, setting, point of view,
  style, tone
• Approaches to Literary Criticism
• Text-focused Approach
• Context-focused Approach
• Response-focus Approach
• The wide range of response
• The value of response activities
• The teachers role in response

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Ingredients of a true fairy tale

• The call for everyone who hears or reads them,
  call to an adventure of the imagination.
• Magic spells, enchantments and the supernatural
  are all vital elements.
• Honesty, devotion and the keeping of a promise
  are always rewarded.
• True love features, whether between prince and
  princess, parent and child or brother and sister.
• There is always a battle between good and evil,
  and good ultimately wins.
• There is always help, an extra inspiration of
  cleverness, a helpful friend, a dream that hints
  at the answer, a fairy godmother, a lucky chance.

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The Development of Fairy Tales

• Perraults Versions
• The Grimm Versions
• Fairy tales after Grimm
• Literary Fairy Tales
• Hans Christian Andersen, George MacDonald, Oscar
  Wilde
• Liberated Fairy Tales
• Robert Munsch, Richard A. Gardner

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Writer and Artist
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Characteristics

• Setting Once Upon A Time
• Reality v.s. Fantasy A mix of real time and
  fantasy
• Express nostalgia for a simper past time
• Characters
• A king with or without a queen
• A prince and princess, who usually fall in love
  and marry
• A wicked stepmother, who is always cruel and evil
  in contrast to the natural mother
• Country people, such as woodcutters and millers
• Talking Animals
• Supernatural powers, including witches, fairies,
  ogres
• Plot
• Sequence of events
• The arrangement of ending They live happily ever
  after.
• Snow White

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Top 10 Reasons for adults to read childrens
literature

• 10. To provide a way to look back at childhood.
• 9. To find out how adults view (and try to
  influence) children.
• 8. To remind us of the value of a good story,
  regardless of the age of the reader.
• 7. For professional knowledge and development.
• 6. For ethical reasons because children's books
  are more positive than adult books.
• 5. For aesthetic reasons to remember (or
  appreciate) what is beautiful.
• 4. Because children's books are objects of love
  for both children and adults.
• 3. Because children's books are as good or
  better than adult literature.
• 2. Because children's literature is an essential
  part of the common culture, and the source of
  images and references by which we make sense of
  the world.
• 1. Why not?

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Extended Reading
The Uses of Enchantment The Meaning and
Importance of Fairy Tales
The Witch Must Die How Fairy Tales Shape Our
Lives
Boys and Girls FOREVER Childrens Classics
from Cinderella to Harry Potter
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• "It often seems that the most gifted authors of
  books for children are not like other writers
  instead, in some essential way, they are children
  themselves. There may be outward signs of this
  condition these people may prefer the company of
  girls and boys to that of adults they read
  children's books and play children's games and
  like to dress up and pretend to be someone else.
  They are impulsive, dreamy, imaginative,
  unpredictable.
• from the Forward of Boys and Girls Forever
  Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry
  Potter (Lurie, 2003)

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The Uses of Enchantment

• Books of the Century by New York Public Library
• May 20, 1995 July 13, 1996
• To celebrate its 100th
• A list of 159 books under 11 categories
• The Uses of Enchantment is listed under Mind and
  Spirit

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Assignment Mini Research

• Exploration on pp 322. Read feminist fairy tales
• Exploration on pp 320. Choose one fairy tale and
  read several different versions