E Nesbit

Author Study Activities for Key Stage 2

Helen Bromley

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134151578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This innovative series is designed to help primary teachers plan focused sessions on the work of popular, well-loved and valued authors, both classic and contemporary. Each book contains a range of activities for use directly in the classroom, covering biographical information about the author; a review of the author's work and a summary of major themes in his/her key texts; key language features of the author; frameworks to help children analyze, evaluate and compare texts, and to develop personal opinions of authors' works; ideas for writing modeled on or developed from key texts; speaking and listening opportunities; drama and role play ideas; and references to video, CD-ROM, websites and ICT activities.

Inside each book is a full-color pullout poster illustrating the work of the author, which also has a set of challenges for children on the back.

First published in the 1900s, Edith Nesbit's classic stories - including tales about the Bastable family, Five Children and It, The Treasure Seekers and The Railway Children - are still very popular indeed. This book presents activities on which to build a study of E. Nesbit's work, including: developing philosophical discussions on a variety of topics; ideas for writing - both narrative and non-narrative; ways of encouraging children to analyze text through devising games for others to play; promoting research skills - including critical reflection on internet use; investigating changes in language; comparing televisual and written versions of text; and work on cross-curricular themes, including history and geography.

1  Biographical information

E. Nesbit was a fascinating character and there are numerous sources of information about her to be found. She is the subject of a myriad number of websites, for example:

www.imagix.dial.pipex.com

www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/nesbit/nesbithtml

and much has been written about her for adults, although it is more difficult to find biographical details published about her with children in mind. She even has a society dedicated to keeping her works in print and promoting the production of film and television adaptations.

Edith Nesbit was not only a children’s author, but also a poet and a member of the Fabian Society. This society, which began as a debating group, believed that capitalism had created an unjust society and worked hard to promote debate about important social issues. Other members of the society included George Bernard Shaw and Emmeline Pankhurst. Nesbit produced many texts, only a proportion of which are well known today. Although she is known mainly for her books written for children, it was Edith’s ambition to be recognised as a serious poet.

She was born in London and her father died when she was only four years old. He had been a teacher at the agricultural school owned by Nesbit’s family. She attended boarding schools, where she was quite unhappy, until the age of nine, when she moved with her mother and her sisters to France. The family returned from the continent in 1872, when Edith was fourteen, living in Kent for a while and then settling in London. By her late teens, Edith had already published poetry in a variety of magazines.

In 1880 Edith married Hubert Bland, with whom she collaborated in numerous writing projects. They were involved in the Fabian Society at its very beginnings and this society offered Edith a supportive framework for her rather unconventional (for the time) role as main breadwinner for her family. Throughout the 1880s Nesbit was a regular lecturer and writer on socialism.

Writing by herself, she published about 40 books for children. These were either novels or collections of short stories. She also published about as many again in collaboration with other people. The stories appeared in a variety of publications, including the Pall Mall Gazette, Girls’ Own Paper and The Illustrated London News. Her most famous works for children are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), The New Treasure Seekers (1904), The Railway Children and The Enchanted Castle (1907). A collection of her political poetry was published in 1908.

Julia Briggs, her biographer, credits Edith Nesbit with having invented the children’s adventure story. The stories of the Bastable family and the family known simply as ‘The Five Children’ (from the Psammead series) who have become well known through serialisation by the BBC, are likely to have been based on her own childhood family, while The Railway Children again features absentee parents and children overcoming adversity without much recourse to the help or support of adults.

After the death of her husband Hubert Bland in 1914, Edith married again, to Thomas Tucker, an engineer. She continued writing until her death from lung cancer in 1924.

Biographical activities

Objectives

•  To examine a contemporary source of information about E. Nesbit.

•  To conduct an independent search for further biographical information about E. Nesbit.

•  To read Nesbit’s autobiographical work, in the form of her childhood diary.

Using biographical information such as that included below gives children valuable opportunities to work in groups to not only look at the character of E. Nesbit, but also at how the use of language has changed over time.

The activities described here could be used as part of a whole class session at the beginning of the literacy hour, or as part of a group reading session. It could also be possible for children to pursue some of the investigations independently.

Photocopy the extract on page 4 so that each child in the group can have a copy.

What kind of picture is painted of E. Nesbit by Ada Chesterton?

Talk about it with a friend. Can you imagine E. Nesbit from this description? Share your images with friends. What similarities/differences are there?

Are there any parts of this description where the words seem old-fashioned or unfamiliar? Make a collection of them. Can you find them in a dictionary or thesaurus? How do you think she would be described today?

Work with a partner or in a small group, to think what interests you most about E. Nesbit and her life. What would you like to know more about?

Look for specific information together

Useful places to begin might include the following websites:

www.Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUNesbit.htm

www.nybooks.com/articles/13132

www.modjourn.brown.edu/mjp/Bios/Nesbit.html

How many books have been written by E. Nesbit - alone or with a co-author?

Which was the first book published?

The last book published?

Which are still in print?

Find some reviews on book-related sites.

You might look in:

www.amazon.co.uk

www.achuka.co.uk

www.bbc.co.uk/education

Look for reviews which were written when the books were first published (the early 1900s).

What kinds of things did the reviewers like about Nesbit’s books. Was it the setting? The characters?

This is how E. Nesbit was described by Ada Elizabeth Jones Chesterton:

Mrs Bland - E. Nesbit - the popular author of The Wouldbegoods, was always surrounded by adoring young men, dazzled by her vitality, amazing talent and the sheer magnificence of her appearance. She was a very tall woman, built on the grand scale, and on festive occasions wore a trailing gown of peacock blue satin with strings of beads and Indian bangles from wrist to elbow. Madame as she was always called, smoked incessantly, and her long cigarette holder became an indissoluble part of the picture she suggested …. with a long full throat, and dark luxuriant hair, smoothly parted. She was an amazing woman, large hearted, amazingly unconventional, but with sudden reversions to ultra respectable standards. Her children’s stories had an immense vogue, and she could write unconcernedly in the midst of the crowd, smoking like a chimney all the while.

2 Text detectives: the diary of E. Nesbit

The diary extract on pages 7–9 could be used with the children as a whole class, small group guided session or they could work on it independently. There are other pages of Nesbit’s diary available at the website, some not painting such a happy picture of her childhood, that would be useful for comparison. All offer an invaluable and fascinating insight into her writing.

Source: www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/nesbit/nesbithtml

This diary was first serialised in The Girl’s Own Paper from October 1896 to September 1897, and later reprinted after E. Nesbit had died as Long Ago When I Was Young (1966). Some of the articles began with decorative letters or a subsidiary title, others omitted them, some sections omitted To be continued at the end. This reflects the diary-like nature of the pieces and adds authenticity to them. In Part III a ‘guimpe’ is a variant spelling of ‘wimple’. The word ‘asseverated’ used in Part XII is not a misprint, it is a now-obsolete expression meaning ‘to assert or aver’.

It is possible to detect inspirations for both The Phoenix and the Carpet and Five Children and It in these extracts, most notably in Part IV and Part VIII.

When discussing this piece with the children you might begin with some of the questions taken from Aidan Chambers’ Tell Me:

• Have you read any other texts like this?

• How many stories can you find within this piece?

• Was there anything that puzzled you? (In this instance, this question could develop into work on word investigation.)

• While you were reading, or now when you think about it, were there words or phrases or other things to do with the language that you liked, or didn’t like?

• You know how, when people speak, they often use some words or phrases or talk in a way that you recognise as theirs; are there any words or phrases like that in this book?

• Have you noticed anything special about the way language is used in this book?

• Has anything in this piece ever happened to you – or anything like it?

• How long do you think it took this piece to happen?

There is much else to discuss in the diary piece that would have useful cross-curricular links, both with history and geography.

• What has changed for children nowadays?

• What do you think has stayed the same?

• Can you identify a setting for this story?

• How would you justify your answer?

It is vital that all children have the opportunity to engage in these discussions, whether or not they are readily able to decode the text for themselves. It offers such an insight into the childhood of an author, and gives many clues to the provenance of some of her ideas, that every child should hear it read out loud as well as read it for themselves.

MY SCHOOL-DAYS

By E. Nesbit

PART X

PIRATES AND EXPLORERS

That summer was an ideally happy one. My mother, with a wisdom for which I shall thank her all my days, allowed us to run wild; we were expected to appear at meals with some approach to punctuality, and with hands and faces moderately clean. Sometimes when visitors were expected, we were seized and scrubbed, and clothed, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Map of contents
• 1 Biographical information
• 2 Text detectives: the diary of E. Nesbit
• 3 Narrative structure
• 4 Characters
• 5 Settings
• 6 Themes
• 7 In close: a teaching sequence based on Five Children and It
• 8 Comparing the video to the written text
• 9 Poster challenges