It Was Real Exciting: Adults and Children Studying Literature Together

Abstract

It Was Real Exciting:Adults and Children Studying Literature Together Norma Bagnall (bio) At a Children's Literature Association conference several years ago, Natalie Babbitt had finished a talk to an audience of college students and children's literature specialists and was answering questions. A young woman asked why Winnie in Tuck Everlasting didn't drink the magic water that would have allowed her to live forever. The question surprised me. I had just finished a four-week study with fifth graders in St. Joseph, Missouri, with Tuck Everlasting. We had read the book, planned and presented a play, produced colored slides and a script to go with them, and celebrated our accomplishment with a party with parents and siblings invited. In all of the reading, questioning, dramatizing, and discussing, not one child asked why Winnie didn't drink the water. It was almost as if the children knew that because of [End Page 144] the way Babbitt had structured the story such an ending was impossible. Since that time I have been interested in learning more about the differences between child response and adult response to children's literature. Do children respond differently to literature than adults? Do they take it more seriously? Are they more aware than we thought possible of literary elements within a story? Are they capable of making critical judgments about literature? To find the answer to these and other questions, I decided to invite adults and children together to read and study children's literature. With the blessing of the Department of English of Missouri Western State College, I designed a six week course through our college's continuing education department that would include both adults and children as students. Class size was limited to twenty, and children had to be at least eight years old. To encourage adults to bring children, a tuition break was arranged for parent/child or teacher/child combinations. Adults could get continuing education credit upon completion of the course, and they also had the option of taking it for college credit. The fact that parents and teachers in St. Joseph were interested in children's reading was evidenced when a local elementary school PTA sponsored a "Parents as Reading Partners" program. Over two hundred parents and teachers gathered to hear librarians and a college professor talk about the importance of literature in elementary school curriculum. Parents asked numerous questions about the kind of reading the children were doing; they looked over the new children's books brought by local booksellers,and they participated in discussion of books. It was the largest attendance for any program the PTA had hosted, strong indication that parents were eager to help promote good reading habits. It was this interest in their children's reading that I hoped would encourage people to give up Midwest fall Saturday mornings to sit in a classroom and discuss books—and then go home and read, with their children, another book for the coming Saturday. It worked. The class reached the enrollment limit before the first meeting, and we had an almost even ratio of adults to children. We began with an in-depth look at a well known folk tale, Snow White. It was important to begin discussion of books the first day, yet students did not have a syllabus until they walked into class; thus, we needed to work with a reasonably brief story, one all of them knew. But it is Disney's Snow White which they knew, and their introduction to Grimm's Snowdrop was a surprise to all. I read it aloud; then each class member wrote his or her initial reaction to the story. Next we discussed elements of the traditional tale: stock characters—such as the wicked stepmother; faceless evil; progressive plots with a climax at the very end; backdrop setting; flat characters; repetition—frequently of the number three; and the idea that justice prevails. We then read the Disney version. Again students commented in writing: this time they concentrated on the differences between the two stories. (The purpose of written answers was so no one would feel imitated nor be swayed by other's opinions.) The repetition of the...