—_ Reading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature When I was a child, I was a continual reader and dreamer. I read about Pocahontas and then role played her life, using the tall com rows in our garden as her forest; I read about Robin Hood and his merry men and I became a part of his merry band, wandering the forest land behind my Wisconsin farm home; I heard of Dorothy’s trip in a cyclone to a magical land and imagined I was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, spreading newspaper across the living-room and dining-room floors to make my yellow brick road. My parents were understanding people. They never discouraged my reading or my childhood play. Because our farm was isolated from the day- to-day programmed activities of the nearby city, and because my parents were both too busy to be able to drive me to Little League games or the city’s swimming pool, I was forced to depend on myself for fun. During the day, I helped with the housework. I did not have time to watch television or walk into town. Once a week, however, my parents would take me to the public library to get new books. There I found a world of friends. No one bothered me about my literary choices. I was on my own to browse the shelves and pick any books I wanted. My reading habits became an eclectic mix of old and new titles, fiction and nonfiction. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I had lived with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, I was in love with Laurie and was outraged when Jo married her stodgy old professor. I also was en- amored with Booker T. Washington’s autobiographical account of his life. Pm not sure now what made me so attracted to Washington’s retelling of4 Children’s Literature and Critical Theory his life, but I do know that the book was important to me since I lived in a town without an African-American population. Up From Slavery was a book that I often checked out. Re-reading favorite books was part of my routine. Titles probably drew me to certain books more than anything else, However, I did know the differences between reading fiction and nonfic- tion, and I chose purposely to read one kind of literature over another at different times. No one was selecting my books or telling me how to read. I was learning to find materials on my own. I probably enjoyed reading because I wasn’t censored by well-meaning adults. If I picked a book out, I could take it home. And my terrible habit of reading long into the night was never discouraged. I was allowed to leave my light on until I “finished the last few pages in the chapter.” Since no one came back to remind me that I prom- ised to stop at the end of the chapter, I suspect that my parents knew I would stay awake until I read the last page in the book. Often, I would run out of books before the week was over. We could not afford to have a large family library, so once the end of the week's library reading came about, I was forced to reread or to wait. I remember once, in frustration, deciding that I would write a book to read. Since I had lots of cats as pets, I thought I could write a cat story. My efforts lasted only a short time, however. Aware of stories with good plots and well-developed characters, my newly created tale seemed lifeless and boring. I wanted others to create reading materials that I could fashion into pretend, could place into my life’s experiences. Thave often wondered about the process of becoming a writer, and have concluded that reading and writing go hand-in-hand. Authors are often readers first, creators second. Nineteenth-century author Charles Dickens wrote of his carly literary experiences, saying, “Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could marry Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.” His childhood was full of literary fancies, and as an adult he wrote stories that filled his readers with imaginary adventures and realities. Dickens never suspected that his writing would be used to teach anyone how to read, any more than he might have believed that Little Red Riding Hood taught him how to fall in love. As a writer, Dickens knew the importance of a reader’s response in reading, and he sought to create good stories that could evoke an emotional response from his audience. Today’s youngsters seem less able to take time for reading, and they view literature in different ways. Often when you are discussing a particular book with a group of children, they will say, “Oh, yes. Pve read that story.” What many of them really mean, however, is that they have seen a visual representation of it. For many contemporary children, pleasure comes on 2 screen. They view reading as part of school work. A recent undergraduate elementary education student at Purdue University is typical of many 1 have taught during my twenty years there. Her childhood placed reading outside her daily pastimes. She could not name a single favorite children’s |Reading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature 5 book that she had read as a child when she entered the children’s literature class. She viewed reading as an activity meaningful only if it answered immediate questions. When I asked the class members to describe why children’s books were important, this young woman wrote, “Books are designed to teach reading.” She went on to explain that “illustrations add to the story, thus giving interest to a book while a child learns to read.” Her definition has very little to do with pleasure reading or with formed literary habits. Unfortunately, unless colleges begin to teach children’s literature in dif- ferent ways, the next generation of elementary students are likely to have teachers who have looked at reading in similar ways. Most of my under- graduate students confess that they themselves were not readers as youths and declare that they want to be teachers because they “love children.” Rarely docs a student say that she has entered the field of elementary education because she wants to help children learn new ways of thinking or consider new concepts that will help them as adults. Rarer still is the student who declares that he is entering teaching because he loves to read, to spend solitary time exploring the lives of others, or wants to mentor children as they explore their literature and take part in classroom discus- sions about their reading. Few mention the need to teach children how to find information on their own. Fewer still mention the public library as a favorite haunt. On the whole, my undergraduate students view the elemen- tary school as a place where adults teach children “how to act and live.” Because they have never developed reading habits, have never allowed themselves time to reflect on ideas, and have never explored divergent points of view, they lack a philosophy about the role of lifelong learn- ing, and they consider children’s literature a teaching tool to use in skills ‘units. I don’t fault the young people who enter my classes. They are the prod- ucts of their environment. While they attended elementary school, they were not introduced to children’s literature in a meaningful way, and they cannot see a purpose for sharing literature in the elementary classroom. other than to use it to teach the current curriculum. Unless my class makes an impact on them, they will continue to degrade literature. Their current curriculum portfolio does not encourage them to explore children’s litera- ture and the world of the child more than once, and when they return to literature, it is to learn how to use it as a teaching tool in the traditional subject areas of school. So they will probably remember more about using good books to teach other things than the literature itself. Throughout their lives they have been bombarded with visual media and textbook- related tests, and they view learning as something that happens by mem- orizing, pleasure as something besides reading. What do experts who determine our children’s future learning say about learning to read? How important is the literature we share? How can we begin to learn where stories fit into our lives? A quick glance at several university catalogs establishes one point: children’s literature—or for that6 Children’s Literature and Critical Theory matter children’s culture—is not an area of study. Indirectly, this has q potent effect on our views of childhood and children. Often the study of children’s literature within colleges and universities serves a strange purpose. It takes the place of serious literature study, children’s literature course will usually include both undergraduates in teacher education and other fields. Those students who hope to teach take the course because it is required. They hope to discover how literature can be shared across the curriculum. They want to use “real books” while teaching about things other than pleasure reading. They don’t believe that pleasure reading and literary patterns are relevant to their training. Those who are not in education hope to take an enjoyable but easy literature class, The students who come from areas like English, communications, and theater often were readers as children and want to take a trip through some of their past favorites, to see if children’s literature can somehow fit into their adult lives. Neither group expects a course that will concentrate on critical thinking, individual analysis, and divergent literary interpretations of one story. One group hopes to learn relevant modes of teaching that most often meet with success, while the other wants time “to read like a child.” Neither group is looking for difficult reading, and neither expects to face much realism in their literature. Future teachers are aware that parents do not always view trade books as acceptable learning tools, that adults tend to censor more trade literature than textbook reading in the schools, and this makes them cautious. Former children who developed into readers and want to take a course that will let them relive their earlier childhood experiences view children’s literature as an eclectic field full of pleasurable stories. As children they were allowed to develop their own reading tastes. They remember picking their own books, reading aloud with their fami- lies, hearing a teacher read a story to them. They do not view children’s books as “serious stuff” or as informational books. And they have little interest in textbooks as children’s literature. Actually, adult readers who are not studying in a classroom are not textbook readers. They read materials that help them function better, that allow them vicarious experiences. Once out of school, they turn to the literature that offers them a pleasurable experience; they read magazines describing conditions in their world; they refer to the local newspaper to see what’s happening in their community; they consult product manuals to determine how the product works. Textbooks are only found in the aver- age home when someone is studying a narrow body of knowledge. A study of Australian five to twelve year olds suggests that students whose teachers rely on teaching them to read through basals recognize the primary purposes of basal instruction as teaching decoding/word recogni- tion skills and practicing fluency in reading. The corresponding work- sheets, these children said, were designed to enable teachers to test them (Cairney 421-28). Today, the practice of teaching with textbooks is losing its appeal. Australia’s Garth Boomer states that the best elementaryReading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature 7. teachers in his country “have a sharp apprehension of the political, social, educational structures which contain, shape, and, in many ways, determine the behaviours of their students.” Those teachers, he goes on to say, will dare to discuss radical texts with their students so that the students can Jearn to “question and respond with a purpose” (2-3). Their emphasis is primarily on using children’s literature in the classroom, but their goal in sharing divergent books is to teach children to determine for themselves what a text means. New Zealand, on the other hand, has placed its reading and language arts attention on the child’s developing attitudes. As one of the most literate countries in the world, New Zealand has stressed student-centered reading instruction, It has encouraged studies that concentrate on individ- ual successes rather than carefully defined statistical studies that prove that children as a whole can acquire testable knowledge. Instead of specifying how to teach, the emphasis is on what to teach. The majority of twentieth- century language arts research in New Zealand has focused on discovering, how different children develop ideas and on the teacher’s role in helping children devise personal strategies for learning (Hammonds 20-22). But if youngsters are going to develop personal strategies, they need to under- stand how those strategies work. They need to begin to look at children’s literature as literature. Today there are courses at certain universities that look at the literary aspect of children’s stories. The professors of these courses maintain that although children’s literature has, by the very uniqueness of its intended audience, some stylistic and aesthetic differences from literature as a whole, it has commonalities shared by all literature that affect reader response. Knowledgeable in ficlds of literary studies as divergent as Marxist, histori- cal, archetypal, feminist, minority, rhetorical, reader response, structural- ist, poststructuralist and postmodernist criticism, they wish to focus their attention on the literature itself. In his introduction to the first Touchstones volume, Perry Nodelman, one of the acknowledged scholars of children’s literature among those teaching in English departments, wrote about liter- ary explorations, explaining that he is most interested in the literature itself. He argues, T can think about the books I admire in order to understand why they might be admirable, what they might have in common with each other, why they are indeed excellent children’s books. And in doing that, I keep getting closer to an understanding of what is special about children’s literature. (6) ‘Aware that reader response theory suggests that several levels of readers can all be reading the same text at the same time, literary critics hope to show students several ways of approaching stories based on current literary theory. They want their students to discover what is involved in textual interpretation. These scholars demand that students demonstrate the dif- ferences between precritical readings and the critical ones that follow study8 Children’s Literature and Critical Theory ii ‘heir different reactions and contemplations about nals that can be referred to as they write critical papers discussing literary theory and arguing for or against points they have read in professional journal articles. They expect their students to concentrate on literary crit ‘ism and children’s literature. These courses continually ask students to evaluate materials based on literary standards, to compare one text to another, to consider disparate arguments about one book or idea. Ulti- mately, these professors hope to create an “enlightened imagination” (to coin the words of the noted critic Northrop Frye) within their under- graduates. Their courses explore ideas about language and literature while they expand the typical undergraduate’s repertoire of children’s literature and understanding of literary criticism. All professionals involved in English/language arts programs share this goal. In fact, the National Council of Teachers of English’s 1986 Guidelines {or the Preparation of Teachers of English Language Arts declares that lan- ‘guage arts education must create an enlightened body of professionals who “respect and nurture students? intellects and imaginations, as well as help them find significant places in society” (6). The guidelines further state, teachers must develop strategies which include the use of diverse mate- rials, various types of classroom organization, and activities which allow a variety of responses and behaviors. (11) The last decade’s distress over textbook learning has suggested that something more than decoding and retelling is needed in children’s lives, Professional organizations have responded by establishing national study groups. During 1987 the National Council of Teachers of English ap- pointed a new committee to explore the possibilities of changing from a traditional textbook method of language arts instruction to a literature- based curriculum. At their first session, held at NCTE’s annual fall meet- ing, the committee endorsed the formation of a program in language arts that makes literature its focal point. Members stressed that the current language arts programs, with their emphasis on the rudiments of reading, grammar, and identification, were failing to encourage youngsters to main- tain a continual interest in literature. They argued that the textbook ap- proach to language arts should be replaced with one that shares literature in an enlightened way, that allows children to discuss, analyze, and critique the materials they read. In 1989 the Children’s Literature Assembly formed a similar group, and they too advocated a dynamic approach to sharing children’s literature. Today’s children’s literature professors in both schools of education and English departments are concerned with the imperative need to stress diversity; they are not content with one textbook. They often seek several approaches. Many now refer to the scholarly articles published in profes- sional journals such as The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, the The Journal of Children’s Literature (formerly CLA Bulletin), The Lion andReading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature 9 the Unicorn, and Children’s Literature in Education when they are teaching. ‘Their students are encouraged to read one of the leading textbooks in the field so that they can gain a different perspective, and they are expected to read critical theory. Furthermore, students are encouraged to join each other in informal discussions over coffee, to talk about what has happened in the classroom, and to openly disagree with an interpretation when they have a different experience or philosophy from the one proposed by a critic. All these professors role model diverse teaching strategies; many would not advocate a particular teaching stance for sharing a particular book with children. Furthermore, they stress the aesthetic values of read- ing over the pragmatic implementation of “teaching with literature.” Today’s students at all levels must learn to write in several ways if they are going to become literary readers and writers. Whether they are children or college students, they need to keep personal response journals, work together through dialogue journals and group activities, and take formal critical stances about specific children’s books or genres. They need to explore schools of literary criticism until they can finally choose an ap- proach they feel meets their needs. Children will find articles that they can read and appreciate in Cobblestone, Cricket, and Horn Book Magazine. ‘Adults will need to read literary criticism that addresses literary strategies for reading children’s literature. At a minimum, both need to use such standard children’s literature sources as Something about the Author, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and the Junior Book volumes. In the end, they should better understand how children’s literature and criticism fit together. Tf return to the individual comments of my undergraduate students about books and reading, I can find young people who have come to view children’s books as literature worthy of serious attention. For instance, one education student wrote, A course in children’s literature does several things: 1. Exposes you to good literature and shows the difference between good and bad literature. 2. Teaches you to read children’s literature critically and to use books for a purpose, . Exposes you to goo: and explains what makes them good. . Exposes you to children’s literature critics and teaches you not to believe everything you read, but to read and form your own opinion. Makes you interested enough in children’s books so that every time you go into a bookstore you head straight for the children’s sec- tion. Teaches you how to teach literatu justify what you are teaching. The study of children’s literature in all college course is designed for undergraduates or graduates, d authors and illustrators in children’s literature Rw n re to children and shows how to a courses, whether the must deal with the10 Children’s Literature and Critical Theory content of children’s literature and with contemporary literary criticism. That course should meet the needs of a student who wrote, Inever realized how complicated as well as important children’s literature is. I now understand why children enjoy the “baby” books they read. I realize the importance of illustrations in children’s books, especially non- fiction, The different scholarly articles contained information that is valu- able to an elementary teacher. For example, Nodelman’s article “Some Heroes Have Freckles” has really enlightened me about the different types of characters that exist in books and showed me why some fade away, others remain popular. In the past I assumed that any book would seem interesting to a child and would entertain when shared. Now I know that is not so. All approaches to childrens literature are important because they help beginning readers pick out ways to read and explore literature that will work for them. Reading and appreciating children’s literature demands that the reader understand generic criticism and be able to identify the typical literary elements found in effective writing, so that she can pick out books that have meaning for her. The reader who does not understand the basic patterns of literature, who cannot evaluate a wide variety of writing styles, and who is not able to determine the difference between reading to learn and reading to relax will not inspire children or encourage them to become literate adults. The adult who has not experienced how criticism works in children’s literature will continually look at children’s literature as a romanticized picture of reality. Youngsters who are grow- ing up in a visual world of nightly news and horror films will find chil- dren’s literature less engrossing than other media if they are continu- aly, introduced to simplistic stories, and they will not become lifelong readers. In 1984, The Children’s Literature Association held a Symposium on Teaching Literary Criticism K-6. As the Chair of that symposium, I advo- cated that the divergent fields consider how they might work together. At the end of the symposium, the group submitted a stance on teaching children’s literature. That stance was supported by the ChLA Board, and it became the organization’s official standpoint. The group maintains that children’s literature is the stepping-stone for the child. Literature enables the child to enter junior high with the necessary reading skills for all his classes. If he is taught about literature’s various functions, he will under- stand the difference between the pleasures of reading for personal enjoy- ment and the process of gaining new understandings through reading. He will be able to determine the differences among literary experiences and seek new information from traditional sources such’ as encyclopedias and magazines without believing that these experiences are the same as those gained from reading a good book or watching a well-crafted movie. As proponents of literature, elementary school teachers can initiate a K-6 program that fits their school’s population. No matter what booksReading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature 1 are used, they will design a literature program that stresses the fol- lowing: * A wide variety of materials. Teachers should choose to share those stories that develop an understanding and appreciation of literary form, purpose, style. Children need to see how writing style patterns develop and change. They should learn that literature docs not need to be relevant to be pleasurable, that everything read will not have great and deep mean- ings. They need to be given the opportunity to compare and contrast different works, authors, and genres of literature. + Reader discernment. Students should develop the ability to evaluate and understand the differences between distinctive literature and mediocre literature, Tf children are allowed to look carefully at cach piece of writing and consider how it is unique from others, they will be able to understand what makes that author’s writing style noteworthy. When children learn to evaluate how the author writes and why he or she writes in that way, they will begin to understand how political, religious, and cultural values are placed within a text. If they look closely at the author's ideas, they will see that authors write with a particular point of view and that their ideas shape their text. + Teachers should not teach one point of view. Students should be taught to question and analyze. Tests should not force a way of reading onto the student. Literature analysis cannot be passive. Students should be encouraged to actively question the text and the teacher’s interpretation of it. Children should be encouraged to discover how their past literature experiences help them interpret a new book or film. Teachers should emphasize that authors use conventional devices to evoke understand- ing or create a sense of familiarity for the reader. + Ideal readers. The goal of the program should be to teach children to be independent readers who can discover the author’s meaning for themselves. ‘Although literary terms make discussions easier, they are not the es- sence of meaning, Learning how to approach a reading or viewing experience, learning the process of finding and evaluating knowledge, learning to share information in conversations and written reports are far better goals. + Teachers who are mentors, Teachers must be trained to teach critical analysis. They must be familiar with children’s and young adult liter- ature, They must know how critical theory is used to interpret books and films. . Teachers should be expected to take courses in children’s and young adult literature while they are in college. They should take classes on film and literary criticism. Teachers should be expected to continue to12 Children’s Literature and Critical Theory professionalize their classroom techniques by attending workshops and classes that stress new ideas and approaches to reading and com- municating. They must be effective learners and communicators if they are to successfully teach others, * School-supported programs of literary criticism. Curriculum mod- els should be developed by teachers within the local school system. There should not be a national canon of books that is solely taught throughout the country. Curriculum plans should not become standardized as new “textbooks” for teaching language arts and reading. Each elementary school faculty should create a program that relies on the concept of building knowi- edge, and each program should reflect the expertise of the faculty, the needs of the students, and the overall goals of the school’s administra- tion and community. There cannot be a universal canon of books because new materials and interpretations need to be shared. Reading lists should be developed that represent the diversity in literature. Programs should be designed to pinpoint student needs. Children should be encouraged to choose the critical approaches they feel are most valuable. Their learning should emphasize growth in understand- ing as demonstrated in their written and oral communication skills. + Literature worth sharing for its own values. The program should emphasize a theory of literature, not one of cultural, political, reli- gious, or social indoctrination. ‘Major issues in the program should concern the structure of literature, the way it causes the reader to think and demands that the reader have knowledge of literary genres and conventions. Books and films should not be used to simply promote other subjects in the curriculum. They need to be shared for their own worth so that children can see the pleasures of reading and viewing in an intelligent way. When children’s literature is studied as a discipline, those involved will see that reading can help to create knowledgeable adults who want to be lifelong learners, and they can propose changes in the way we as a society approach children’s reading and children’s learning. ‘Those who specialize in children’s literature view the sharing of litera- ture as a very important process. They know that children’s literature has been designed by authors who have varying motives for writing but who adhere to certain literary patterns and archetypes. Although scholars in children’s literature acknowledge that it is unique, they recognize that it not unlike all other literature in terms of genres, story form, and thematic approaches. They realize that reader response theory expects readers to approach their reading in different ways, and they do not seek consensus of thought. They hope that the study of literature can show children several ways of approaching texts, can suggest that an ideal reader is one who interprets with understanding, and that all readers can understand how precritical readings are different from critical readings. No book worthReading, Discussing, and Interpreting Children’s Literature 13 studying should be relegated to one reading. Important books should be read, discussed, and revisited. Diverse opinions about all literature should be encouraged. Literary critic Perry Nodelman once wrote, The willingness to disagree and to enjoy the discussion of what one disagrees about, is the basic assumption. . . . We don’t want to proclaim the law: we want to open a dialogue. (11) In 1988, as editor of The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Professor Roderick McGillis suggested that the question “What makes a reader?” has not yet been answered. He concluded that what is known is that childhood reading, properly pursued, does create questioning adults. Thus, the process of questioning is being stressed by today’s scholars, and the ability to communicate about books and about ideas is favored over the ability to score high on achievement tests. Children’s literature experts share interests with others in adjoining areas. For instance, philosopher Roger Trigg once advocated individual interpretations of experience, say- ing, “‘Reality’ is only reality for a particular society and what is real and hence true for one set of people may not be for another? (ix). McGillis similarly argued that our understanding of reading is tainted by our own experiences, and he concluded, “More often than Not, we find what we set out to look for simply because we have a model to start from” (107). We must begin to expand our model for children’s literature and its study to include new ways of reading, discussing, and interpreting if we hope to have every reader develop’a critical voice.