English Literature A '07

CHILDREN’S AND ADOLESCENT LITERATURE

There are many ways of describing literature. The area of literature is the human condition. We think of literature as the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language, in other words, it illuminates life by shaping our insight. The experience of literature always involves both the book and the reader.

As a child dwells in and wonders the lives lived in the story, a child begins to know the world. Through the stories from the books, the child begins to explore the world, which helps her/him to confirm, to illuminate, and to extend her/his life experiences. Literature develops children’s imagination and helps them to consider nature, people, experiences, or ideas in new ways. Children’s literature is one of the ways to understand and appreciate children world and one way to define literature for children is to describe the books that children continue to read and enjoy.

While adolescent literature or young adult literature deals with the possibilities and the problems as experienced by a young group who spanning the ages of 10 to 21. Social changes and mass media have forced young people to an earlier maturity. Young reader needs a time to understand the maturity because Nicole St. John wrote that teenagers as “inexperienced adults”, so that literature provides a safe haven to accrue experience of the real world, helps them discover their unique places in the world and find out who they are, they face problems everyday and through literature they can solve their own problem.

It might say that child’s book is the book a child is reading and an adult book is a book consists of the attention of an adult. Before the nineteenth century there were only a few books written for children so that children read books written for adult and take what they could understand. Today, children still read books intended for adults, for instance All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, the work of Stephen King and they also read some books written for children, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne and The Hobbit by J. R. R Tolkiens. Books about children may not necessarily be for them. Obviously, the line between children’s literature and adult literature is blurred. Holly Hobbie books that portray children as “sweet” which romanticize childhood, add with cards and gift products have more appeal for adults than for children. Dr. Seuss (Theodor S. Geisel) took an adult perspective in books, like Oh, the Places You’ll Go. His enduring place in children’s literature rests on earlier titles such as And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and The Cat in the Hat, books are filled with childlike imagination and joyful exuberance. Children need to discover delight in books before they are asked to maser the skills of reading. Children books are books that have child’s eye at the center. Cynicism and despair are not childlike emotions and should not figure prominently in a child’s book. Judi Barrett’s funny book, Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, The Three Billy Goats Gruff by P. C. Asbjørnsen and Jorsen Moe, and the distinctive rhythm of the poem “Dream Mouse” by Marilyn Singer or the sound of David McCord’s “The Pickety Fence”. They laugh of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books. There also great books such as The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown by Betsy Byars, Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, Stone Fox by John Gardiner, Joanna Galdone’s The Tailypo, Something Upstairs by Avi or Balyet by Patricia Wrightson. While books written for young adults are Ironman by Chris Crutcher, I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This and The House You Pass on The Way by Jacqueline Woodson, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park, Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantol, Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples, M. T. Anderson’s Feed, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Hachet by Gary Paulsen, Dragon’s Gate by Laurence Yep, Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan and many more.

Children’s literature deals with the limitation of experiences and understanding of children. Literature helps children to entertain ideas they never considered before. Children seldom look back on their childhood, but always forward. As children experienced with books, they are also learning about literature. Mostly children books or storybook always added by illustrations and pictures by artist because the illustration play important role for communicating the mood and the message of the story. The font type for children should be large enough for easy reading, space between the lines (leading) should be sufficient to make text clear. Most children do not enjoy a story that is too descriptive, but they can appreciate figurative language, especially when the comparisons are within their background of understanding. Young adult books are focus on developing their skills of reading and deepen understanding of the element of the stories. So that, most books or novels for older reader have no illustrations. The using of language in children books is usually using everyday language to make it easy to read but this sort of writing does not stretch the reader’s vocabulary or imagination, while older books is usually using wider language. Most plots in children’s literature are presented in a linear fashion. Frequently children find it confusing to follow several plot lines or to deal with flashbacks in time and place and the ending of the story for children is usually happy ending but there are richer and more developing plots for older reader, and the ending of the story is not always happy ending. There are animal characters that have human personalities in children’s books, while in young adult books there are only a few books which have animal characters.

Through story a reader can confirm one's own life experiences, illuminate and gain insight into those experiences, and vicariously expand and extend them. Learning literature can improve a critical vocabulary of children’s and adolescent literature, knowing the utility, limitations or deepen understanding in children’s and adolescent literature. However, literature is an important thing to be learnt and enjoyed for both children and adolescent.