First off, let me apologize for my rambling, maybe a bit off-kilter blog last week. After two 10-11 hour works days in a row and balancing the rest of the week, occasionally add up to really late night and spaced out blogging. Tonight might not be too much better: I've been fighting a migraine since last night and can't seem to shake this throbbing in my head. However, at least it won't be 3 AM, and baby, I'm not lonely.
Alright, enough with the 90s song references.
Like most of the literature we've read so far in my Senior Seminar course, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor is not the stereotypical children's book. When we think children's literature, we think Dr. Seuss and See Spot Run and The Bernstein Bears collections, but in reality, those aren't
really what children read and if we think about it, we know that. We all read books like Little House on the Prairie and The American Girl book Collections. So why do these come to mind and not books like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry which is focused on the racism in a small town?
Maybe it's because we see childhood as a world of innocence that we would rather not tarnish. All we want to see is Spot chasing after his ball, but children are looking for more in their literature. People writing for children understand this. Kelly McDowell states early on in her article ("Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Culturally Specific, Subversive Concept of Child Agency"), that an "adult writer" instructs "the child how the adult world desires her to be" (Pg. 214) through their works. We discussed the same thing when it came to faery tales and it still rings true in modern works. We've seen it in Little House when Laura questions the world and is considered the bad one and Mary, who is subservient and quiet, is considered the good one.
I could point out in everything we've read that could children learn (including disembowelment and thievery), but in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry I think children learn a much harsher lesson than in the other books. They learn the terror of racism in a descriptive and powerful manner. Men get burned to death and lynchings are barely avoided let alone the fact that children on the end of ugly teasing (harassment?) dig a ditch to trap a bus full of children in it. Through out this book violence and vulgarity seem to breed the same. The characters on either side of the race argument are tearing at one another in any way the kind in a small town civil war of sorts. These are hard things for children to handle and a part of me wonders what they take out of this book. Is it violence as an answer? Or do they see the destruction in the hate and seek out ways to handle society in a productive manner? I like to think the author is pointing out how the world shouldn't be, but will children take it that way?
Showing posts with label little house on the prairie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label little house on the prairie. Show all posts
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Rewriting Our Past [Or maybe just a rabbling notion about historical children's literature] (Week 7)
As much as I've enjoyed our last two weeks of class reading, which included Laura Ingalls's Little House on the Prairie and Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House, I can't help, but wonder about how rewriting history (in this case, their families' past in a fictional format) does to our understanding of the events. Do they actually help children learn about the times and question them? Or rather, do they mask the issues children need to learn? More importantly: Are they really a child's story? Or just grown-ups playing make believe?
Roni Natov seems to cover this as she can in her article Child Power in Louise Erdrich's Fiction for Children. She very fittingly points out that children can understand more than we give them credit for, saying, "Children are aware of much that goes on outside their ability to articulate and evaluate complex problems". Natov also points out that in Little House, Laura does ask the hard questions about the territory they live in (if it's Native American land, if the government will make the Native Americans move, etc). However, Ingalls was an infant at the time this actually happen, meaning when she "rewrote" her past, she added these adult questions. Erdrich's situation in writing isn't much different, but she makes a much different decision in how she portrays a childhood knowledge of the world, the "child's power" as Roni points it out to be.
Erdrich shows how children do comprehend: not through the same words adults would, but by instinct and feeling. Omakayas, our main character, doesn't necessarily know what adults are talking about or what really is happening, but she does know when it's important or not. Once she notes it's importance, she holds onto it and finds herself referring back to it. While both are children's actions, this one seems much more childlike than Ingalls's version of herself in her series of books.
It is difficult, understandably so, to write from a child's perspective. It seems especially hard to do so while telling a historical tale that gives all the information of the time. It's much easier when one is writing from a child's perspective for adults, like John Connelly seems to do on a regular basis, or when one writes purely for children, like most children's books.
For those interested in writing from a child's perspective, here are a few links to help:
Child Narrator's in Adult Fiction
Take note of the suggestions of where to pull the ideas and look at the long list of recommended reading (which even includes the child narrator's age). The format is a bit messy, but worth the long read.
How to View the World from your Child's Perspective
Not necessarily a traditional writing tips article, but think about it: if you can learn how to see through a child's eye than that's about as helpful as any writing tip when it comes to writing from a child's perspective.
Roni Natov seems to cover this as she can in her article Child Power in Louise Erdrich's Fiction for Children. She very fittingly points out that children can understand more than we give them credit for, saying, "Children are aware of much that goes on outside their ability to articulate and evaluate complex problems". Natov also points out that in Little House, Laura does ask the hard questions about the territory they live in (if it's Native American land, if the government will make the Native Americans move, etc). However, Ingalls was an infant at the time this actually happen, meaning when she "rewrote" her past, she added these adult questions. Erdrich's situation in writing isn't much different, but she makes a much different decision in how she portrays a childhood knowledge of the world, the "child's power" as Roni points it out to be.
Erdrich shows how children do comprehend: not through the same words adults would, but by instinct and feeling. Omakayas, our main character, doesn't necessarily know what adults are talking about or what really is happening, but she does know when it's important or not. Once she notes it's importance, she holds onto it and finds herself referring back to it. While both are children's actions, this one seems much more childlike than Ingalls's version of herself in her series of books.
It is difficult, understandably so, to write from a child's perspective. It seems especially hard to do so while telling a historical tale that gives all the information of the time. It's much easier when one is writing from a child's perspective for adults, like John Connelly seems to do on a regular basis, or when one writes purely for children, like most children's books.
For those interested in writing from a child's perspective, here are a few links to help:
Best Line:
"Furthermore even if the writer does a very, very fine job of imitating a
child, there will almost inevitably come a point where something rings
false; a word or a phrase or a thought will be wrong or very difficult
to attribute to a child. "
Child Narrator's in Adult Fiction
Take note of the suggestions of where to pull the ideas and look at the long list of recommended reading (which even includes the child narrator's age). The format is a bit messy, but worth the long read.
How to View the World from your Child's Perspective
Not necessarily a traditional writing tips article, but think about it: if you can learn how to see through a child's eye than that's about as helpful as any writing tip when it comes to writing from a child's perspective.
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