Children as Readers in Children's Literature

The power of texts and the importance of reading

Evelyn Arizpe, Vivienne Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317615460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

We are fascinated by text and we are fascinated by reading. Is this because we are in a time of textual change? Given that young people always seem to be in the vanguard of technological change, questions about what and how they read are the subject of intense debate. Children as Readers in Children's Literature explores these questions by looking at the literature that is written for children and young people to see what it tells us about them as readers. The contributors to this book are a group of distinguished children's literature scholars, literacy and media specialists who contemplate the multiple images of children as readers and how they reflect the power and purpose of texts and literacy.

Contributors to this wide-ranging text consider:

• How books shape the readers we become
• Cognitive and affective responses to representation of books and reading
• The relationship between love-stories and reading as a cultural activity
• Reading as 'Protection and Enlightenment'
• Picturebooks as stage sets for acts of reading
• Readers' perceptions of a writer

This portrayal of books and reading also reveals adults' beliefs about childhood and literacy and how they are changing. It is a theme of crucial significance in the shaping of future generations of readers given these beliefs influence not only ideas about the teaching of literature but also about the role of digital technologies. This text is a must-read for any individual interested in the importance of keeping literature alive through reading.

PART I

Reading for life

How do books shape the readers
we become?

1

‘EVERYBODY KNEW THAT BOOKS
WERE DANGEROUS’

Cognitive and affective responses to
representation of books and reading

Maria Nikolajeva

This chapter explores representation of books, literacy, reading and readers through the lens of cognitive literary criticism. This relatively new area of inquiry investigates readers’ engagement with fictional texts, including such aspects as understanding of fictionality and literary conventions; extraction of factual, social, ethical and metaphysical knowledge; and not least empathy. Although cognitive literary scholarship is rapidly expanding (see, e.g., Vermeule 2010; Hogan 2011), there is still very little research focused on young readers, whose cognitive and emotional development is different from that of adults (note: different rather than inferior); and on children’s and Young Adult literature that ostensibly addresses in a deliberate manner the young audience with this distinct cognitive capacity. Recent scientific experiments that show convincingly that reading fiction enhances theory of mind (e.g., Kidd and Castano 2013) have been conducted with adults.

In the following I consider what kinds of cognitive and emotional responses are evoked by images of books, reading and literacy that we meet in texts targeting a young audience. The inclusion of these representations is obviously intentional, and they have educational as well as aesthetic purpose. Following cognitive criticism, the texts invite readers to engage with the representations, using their life experience, memories and previous literary encounters. The real readers’ involvement with the fictional readers’ reading affords vicarious pleasure; recognising the concrete books mentioned in the text evokes memories of reading them, hopefully enjoyable memories, but equally memories of grief or fear that reading once may have triggered. In this way readers share with literary characters the experience of having read certain texts. If readers have not read the books relished by characters, the titles may serve as an invitation to read and enjoy them alongside the character. If no concrete titles are mentioned, but characters generally find reading pleasurable, real readers are still expected to engage with this experience cognitively and emotionally; recognising the pleasure that fictional characters find in reading. With the understanding of cognitive and affective engagement with fiction provided by cognitive criticism, this proxy experience is not merely a romantic idea. Through mirror neurons our brains engage with fictional characters’ emotions as if they were our own. Reading about reading is just as valuable as reading itself.

The advocates of ethical criticism, particularly Wayne Booth (1988; 2001) and Martha Nussbaum (1995), claim that reading has ethical implications. Nussbaum suggests that readers are given a possibility to act as judges of fictional characters, transferable to real-world situations; she goes as far as to say that reading makes us better people and citizens. While I do not fully share this claim, the educational project of children’s literature makes the appearance of books, readers and reading an ethical statement. If we accept the claim that access to literacy and reading is a matter of social justice, then certainly fictional readers can potentially provide excellent role models for real young readers. The problem with employing Nussbaum’s ideas of readers as judges is that young readers may not yet have developed the necessary cognitive skills. The positive examples work perfectly if fiction clearly shows that reading has made the fictional character a better person, as Nussbaum would suggest. However, if reading is presented in children’s and Young Adult books as having no consequence for the fictional readers or affecting them negatively, as educators and book promoters we are facing a dilemma. We can maintain that the negative representation of reading is a deliberate and ironic device. We can also point out that such representation reflects the view on literacy and reading within a certain historical period and within a particular culture. Children, however, may lack factual knowledge to recognise the socio-historical context, and as they, arguably, are unable to appreciate irony, they can easily miss it. Not least, because the learning brain has difficulty synthesising information provided by different sources and reconciling contradictory statements, young people can simply get confused by the messages they receive from books and from real-life experience. If, as their teachers insist, reading is valuable, why is it so often presented in such an unfavourable light in fiction?

Significant absence

Naturally, to offer readers something to engage with in the first place, there must be representations of books and reading in the texts. Though the present volume offers a wide range of texts featuring books, these texts are not in the majority within children’s and Young Adult fiction, classic or modern. One would assume that children’s authors might wish to encourage their real readers to read by portraying fictional readers and thus offering the vicarious pleasures of reading suggested above. However, the conspicuous absence of any mention of books, reading or literacy is illuminating. This is true about any genre and mode, and there may be many reasons for such a significant omission. Choosing randomly a number of texts frequently described as classics we hardly find any character with prominent reading habits. What use can Alice make of the poems she knows by heart in a world where all normal rules are cancelled and where words mean whatever someone intends them to mean? The only book featured in the text is boring because it has no pictures or conversations. Why would Jim take a book on his perilous voyage to Treasure Island? What is the value of reading in the land of Oz where the foremost virtues are wit, love and courage? Mary Lennox isn’t much of a reader. She receives a gift of books from her uncle, but is only interested in them insofar as they are about gardens and have pictures. Outdoor activities are explicitly presented as healthier and more desirable than poring over books. The Little Prince has no room for books on his tiny planet, and, surprisingly, reading does not feature in the wisdom he gains during his journey. The only reader in the Moomin valley is portrayed as odd: Muskrat who, in the illustrations, is seen to be reading Spengler, which will most likely go unnoticed by young readers. What consolation can reading Aunt Gwen’s schoolgirl stories offer to Tom that would prove stronger than his involvement with the midnight garden? Charlie Bucket will not need books in his gastronomic utopia, not even cook books. Lyra who can read signs on her truth machine loses this ability as she learns to read other people’s minds instead; yet the text does not suggest that books may provide good guidance for her affective development.

Representation of reading as a pastime does not, of course, provide a good story. Reading is a quiet, lonely occupation, mostly without surprises or conflicts. In adventure stories, both those set in alternative worlds and in quasi-realistic environments, the characters are too busy saving the world, exposing criminals or finding treasures. These activities may involve reading a secret message, so literacy is occasionally presented as an asset, but reading as a pastime is too slow and peaceful to fit into adventure plots, and preparing for adventures, few characters pack books to keep them company, although they may occasionally need a book or a map for guidance in their quest. Not even in many school stories, where books might be expected to be prominent, is reading in any way presented as pleasurable. If anything, reading in school is boring and joyless. Yet many adventure and school-stories characters who we do not remember as passionate readers do in fact read for pleasure, including William and the Famous Five.

In dystopias, children and young people are frequently illiterate, as literacy is a threat to the depicted establishment. The totalitarian regimes featured in dystopias know very well how to manipulate their subjects through denying them literacy or banning books. In Frances Hardinge’s Fly by Night (2011 [2005]), books are viewed as dangerous by authorities, and rumours are deliberately spread to discourage people from reading. During the ‘bad times’, books are burned, and people who possessed books were prosecuted and killed. From the point of view of reader engagement, this representation of books and literacy is ambivalent. An expert reader is expected to see through the narrator’s irony as well as the character’s ignorance. The free indirect discourse employed in the recurrent statements such as ‘Everybody knew that books were dangerous’ reflects the main character’s understanding of the situation, and her attitude is confirmed by the fact that her father was indeed prosecuted for his writing. Mosca has been brought up to love words, including complicated words that she does not understand; she savours words as spices. Reading has equipped her with knowledge that helps her survive (see Smith, this volume).

In contrast, Katniss in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008) has no use for literacy in her struggle for survival. (Ironically, if Katniss and her creator had read some cognitive criticism they would know that reading is essential for survival.) As readers we have privilege over Katniss because we know that, based on genre conventions, she will win the games. This metacritical knowledge is easy to miss in our assessment of reader engagement. On the other hand, the characters’ as well as the readers’ genre expectation prove hardly helpful in China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun (2008 [2007]), while the characters’ literacy is of little use. Even the animated, sentient book of the novel admits its own uselessness.

In contemporary Young Adult novels, the protagonists are too preoccupied with their personal concerns and relationships to have spare time for reading. Although some adolescent characters find support and consolation in reading and writing, they are in the minority. A typical adolescent character, boy and girl alike, is a non-reader. They may be consumers of other kinds of texts, including films, comics, song lyrics, blogs and twitter; yet they seldom read what is habitually called quality fiction. Moreover, they find classroom-assigned reading tedious. Paradoxically, and not particularly credibly, these non-readers are frequently skilful writers: diary writers, letter writers, memoir writers, confessions writers – one may wonder where their eloquence comes from if they have never read a book. Naturally, this is a legitimate poetic licence; yet I much prefer the gradual change of the narrator in Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983), by Beverly Cleary, whose amazing linguistic and existential development is inspired by his favourite author.

Characters who are allegedly high-performers in school are not necessarily readers. Dante, the protagonist of Malorie Blackman’s Boys Don’t Cry (2010), who receives four A-stars for his A levels, is not shown reading anything except anonymous picturebooks, which are presented as pacifiers to make his baby go to sleep rather than an enjoyment shared by parent and child. True, Dante is far too busy with the unexpected burden of single teenage fatherhood, as well as his younger brother’s coming out, to have time or energy to read. If Dante had been narratively constructed as a mathematical genius or a computer nerd, the absence of books in his life might be explicable. However, Dante intends to go to university to study history; he envisions a career in humanities, possibly journalism; he says he wants to investigate the truth. In other words, I find it implausible that a character like Dante is not surrounded by books. At the very least, he might be likely to use the lonely hours when his baby daughter takes her naps to find solace in a book. When Dante’s father buys books for the baby, the plot offers an excellent opportunity for the character/narrator to express the joy of recognition in encountering his own childhood favourites that he will now be able to share with his daughter. Yet reading is intentionally omitted from the wide palette of characterisation devices, which I cannot but view as an artistic flaw.

Going further through genres and kinds of children’s and Young Adult fiction, animal stories do not feature books unless the characters are fully anthropomorphic and not necessarily then either. In picturebooks for very young readers, whether they have human or anthropomorphic characters, reading may simply be irrelevant as picturebooks tend to focus on a particular and limited episode in which reading has no function. (There are, of course, scores of picturebooks fe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: The Fictional Portrayal of Reading Paradox and change
• Part I Reading for life How do books shape the readers we become?
• Part II Reading and its consequences How dangerous is reading?
• Part III Reading in new ways Who is in control?
• Authors And Book Titles Index
• Subject Index