The Lack of Children's Literature Study in College

Children’s literature has suffered prejudice for a long period. Due to the different conceptions of “children” and “childhood” over time, its correspondent literature has been also modified. Children today are more and more seen as “less capable” than adults regarding comprehension of the world[1], and this view can be seen in modern children’s literature, as Ilan Brenman’s Brazilian book A Tiara da Clara, or in modern children’s television shows (an example would be the transformation of content in the Sponge Bob Square Pants series, or even the modern series Uncle Grandpa and Clarence, which episodes are utterly nonsense[2]). This transition from “little adult” to “child” to “person less capable than an adult”, reflected in children’s literature, made the study of this genre less validated, even ridiculed by academia, sometimes considered “not literature”[3]. The impacts of this mockery in the graduate courses of Literature and Languages[4] are problematic, but they are even more in the Licentiate courses of such graduation.

Graduate courses of Literature and Languages in Brazil do not differ in attitude from what Laina Ho presents in her essay Children’s Literature in Adult Education:

 “The traditional attitude that children’s literature is just for children is very much upheld in Asian countries regardless of whether it is written in English or ethnic languages, and normally children’s literature is not integrated in the language curriculum of secondary or tertiary education. In tertiary institutions in East Asia, Literature Studies means the ancient and modern classics in Asian languages”.

Thus, most graduate courses do not even consider the study of children’s literature (and when they do so, the classes are rarely classified as mandatory). Given the “superiority” that is attributed to graduate courses, most of them will only work with what is considered “canon”. But even in the canon there is a hierarchy, for the few children’s literature and authors that manage to enter the canon are given less value in the academic space than other types of literature. Lewis Carrol and his Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, worldly famous, are left behind to give space to Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens or other “more canonical” and “more serious” writers. When J. R. R. Tolkien’s works manage to be studied in the academia, the ones that are studied are his “more adult, serious and canonical” works, and his children’s book, The Hobbit, is mostly ignored, even though it narrates the past of characters that reappear in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The lack and neglect of children’s literature in the academic environment, therefore, is a problem by itself, for it ignores important works of literature that should not be ignored or put aside. The attitude towards this genre by academics is mostly that of the New Criticism[5]: because its language is so simple, because it does not offer great literary devices, because it is not meaningful – so it does not provide great text value by itself -, therefore it is not worth of study, nor even reading. The problem with this view is that academics close their minds to the importance of children’s literature in the society and fail to observe its huge literary value within its genre. Although universities now are more open-minded and take in consideration the historical, social, cultural atmosphere in which the works were created, as well as studying (at least partially) the work’s author, still they are focused on the text itself, on how the text represent the society/culture/history/world of its time and not on why it does so or why it is considered important. Here is where the problem begins with the Licentiate courses[6].

Due to the lack of knowledge of children’s literature, as well as the knowledge of studying a work of art mainly by the New Critics approach, teachers mostly fall in the error of adopting the works they have seen in the university to study in classroom or studying the works the school suggests by the bias of the college course. The disaster is set: students, who are in the school to learn how to read, how to appreciate and how to understand literature are presented with books that have complex, difficult language, plots that do not speak to them or are required to interpret texts they might enjoy in a simplified way of the universities courses interpretation, destroying the excitement and enjoyment they would develop (and that is essential to learning, specially to younger learners).

The teacher fails in introducing the universe of literature to the students, for they will find it boring and difficult, and will not want to continue reading and studying it because of the obstacles imposed. Irma-Kaarina Ghosn points out: “Instructional materials, as an integral part of the learning environment, shape the learners’ perception about the subject, learning and themselves as learners”[7]. In Portuguese, when a 13-year-old is given Machado de Assis’ Dom Casmurro[8], for example, he or she will find that Brazilian literature is difficult, boring and, even though there is the discussion of “did Capitu cheated on Bentinho?”, the study of the plot stops there, and the other things studied concern the form of the writing and/or the use of Portuguese language and grammar in the novel. So, what will that 13-year-old will think of studying literature? He or she will find it anything else than attractive, intriguing or even fun.

In English teaching, the similar occurs. There are two major problems in literature study in English as a Second Language (ESL) learning environments: the adaptations of classical, canonical books and the usage of books written specifically for the learning of ESL. The problem with the latter is that because it is written with the purpose of teaching English rules of language (grammar, sintax and other specificities the course aims to teach at that moment), it lacks the naturality and fluidity real speakers of English have and show in their writing and speech. Ghosn states that “while educational aims expressed in many English Language Teaching (ELT) curricula today include references to developing cultural awareness and appreciation for diversity, these stated aims are not significantly reflected in the internationally marketed textbooks for young learners”[9]; if we take for example a marketed textbook that aims to teach greeting expressions, probably there will be a oversimplified plot, language structure and dialogues that do not develop much further on that topic. Three books that represent this fact are Macmillan Reader’s This is London and MM Publications’ Lisa Goes to London and Paul and Pierre in Paris. In the back cover of This is London, we can read:

“This series provides a wide variety of enjoyable reading material for all learners of English. Macmillan Readers are retold versions of popular classic and contemporary titles as well as specially written stories, published at six levels”.

The book is targeted at beginner level students and, also in the back cover, the main points of the book are highlighted:

“… the history of London…

… places to visit…

…travelling and shopping…

… London at night…

… information and advice…

• Extra grammar and vocabulary exercises
• Free resources including worksheets, tests and author data sheets at macmillanenglish.com/readers
• Audio CD/download available for this title”

There is no summary of the story told and the bullet points make clear that what is important about the reading of the book is the grammar and vocabulary knowledge, which is reinforced in the internet page for selling it[10], in which the Key Features that are pointed concern the vocabulary and grammar understanding. The story itself, what will catch the reader’s attention, is put aside, is not seen as important.

Both MM Publications’ books have a similar problem. Although they show, in the back cover, a summary of the story (“A young girl goes on a trip to London in order to take part in the final of a competition. Join her and her fellow finalists on their exciting sightseeing tour of the British capital” (Lisa Goes to London); “Paul, a young English boy travels through the Chunnel to Paris. There, he meets his pen friend Pierre Dupont, Monsieur and Madame Dupont and Pierre’s cousin Sylvie. Paul visits the famous sights of Paris and helps Pierre and Sylvie with a school project with truly exciting results. Enjoy a majestic tour in the city of light and share their adventures” (Paul and Pierre in Paris)), in the catalogue in MM Publications’ website what is highlighted is the structures that will be learned in the books. There is also the statement, in the catalogue, that the readers are enjoyable, with delightful characters and exciting adventures, however the concern falls once again in the grammar and vocabulary that will be learned (“The stories have been carefully graded for each level according to vocabulary, grammatical structures, sentence length and plot complexity […]”).

All those examples have a minimal concern with the plot (“The stories have been carefully graded […] according to […] plot complexity”; “This series provides a wide variety of enjoyable reading material for all learners of English”), however, clearly showing the primary concern is with grammar and vocabulary, they show they are more driven by the cultural materialism[11]: “a form of analysis which examined culture less as a set of isolated artistic monuments than as a material formation, complete with its own modes of production, power-effects, social relations, identifiable audiences, historically conditioned thought-forms”. By following this trend alongside the New Criticism philosophy, they lack a theory that is essential to literature learning: The Reader-Response theory[12].

This theory is necessary for the study of literature in order not to fall, once again, in the New Criticism approach. Most marketed books do not consider with proper attention the response of their readers to their plots. If we consider the reader to be a child, he or she might find the stories interesting, however all the three books shown here have the characters’ story to be secondary, making the tourist part the primary element, and children will probably not identify with it because they probably will not have travelled or will be frustrated because they can not travel due to their dependence on their parents or guardians. If we consider a group of adolescent starter/beginner English learners to be the readers, they might find interesting the tourism element, but might find boring the characters’ stories, and may find the whole book boring and pointless because they are learning English as a mandatory subject, not because they want to[13]. Finally, if we consider the readers to be adults, they might find interesting to learn about London or Paris, however the stories’ plot will be a failure, for they will not identify with the characters and the action that takes place will be so shallow it can not intrigue the reader to read further. Ghosn quotes Bruno Bettelheim: “He argues that if reading material is ‘so shallow in substance that little of significance can be gained’, reading becomes devalued because ‘what one has learned to read adds nothing of importance to one’s life’”[14]. This applies to readers of every age, in fact.

Those books, as many others, fall in the problematic category of specific settings. As Ghosn points out: “Globally marketed young learner courses are typically set in North-American or British school context, reflecting classroom realities in these countries, which is, of course, very useful to learners within the target language culture, but may not be quite so meaningful to young learners elsewhere in the world”[15]. Although they are literature and not textbooks, they still have this obstacle of meaningfulness, as explained above.

One other difficulty posed with the marketed textbooks is the language. Although the MM Publications’ books state that

“The stories have been carefully graded for each level according to vocabulary, grammatical structures, sentence length and plot complexity so as to ensure that the students’ understanding of the story is not impeded. […]” and that “Wonderful full-colour illustrations, closely integrated with the text, stimulate learners and facilitate understanding” (italics mine),

as Ghosn comments, “The simplified language not only limits learners’ access to natural language but poses also a problem regarding learners’ reading comprehension”[16]. She complements:

“Yano, Long, and Ross (1994), who investigated the reading comprehension of nearly 500 Japanese English language learners, came to the conclusion that simplification may actually limit language learning by not presenting items that learners need to learn, and because the choppy, unnatural discourse does not aid comprehension. Their study suggests that, although literal comprehension is improved by linguistic simplification, it does not improve overall comprehension, quite the contrary”[17].

The usage of children’s literature, in this case, is much preferable than the marketed textbooks. Of course, it is not every children’s book that can be used in classrooms, however, with proper research, it is possible to create a list of children’s book that fit the purpose of teaching while also entertain the learners, providing a more enjoyable learning environment and, consequentially, more meaningful learning. For beginners, one possibility of choice is Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. He wrote the book initially for his five-year-old daughter, Holly (although he finished it for his other daughter Maddy[18]), and the book is classified as for “ages 8 up”; the plot is intriguing (so much so that an animated movie based on the novel was made[19]), so it can entertain readers of any age, and the language is simple enough for beginners English language learners can understand and comprehend while also learning new vocabulary and grammatic structures from inference[20], without being “choppy” and “unnatural”.

The problem with the simplified language can also be seen in adapted versions of classical, “canonical” books. Although for more advanced English language learners the adaptations are a good choice to teach literature, the issue here is somewhat the opposite of marketed textbooks: instead of following the New Criticism theory, they follow mainly the Reader-Response theory, caring more about the response of the readers than the formal aspects of the novel. This inversion is a problem because, even if some adaptations manage to adapt the stories in a proper way, many adapt them by simplifying the language and removing parts of the story in order to fit in a English as a Second Language course period, showing the same “choppy” and “unnatural” language issues seen in the marketed textbooks.

Famous novels are adapted by many publishers, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but those “canonical” works are considered canon, as discussed before, mainly for their formal aspects, not only for their plots. When simplifying the language of those novels it is important to consider more than the plot and remember that what makes the novel great is not only the story, but the writing skills of the author as well. The latter is disregarded by many adaptations, who either oversimplify the language in order to make it easier for readers to enjoy the plot, following the Reader-Response theory in its core, or, following again the New Criticism theory, simplify the writing in order for it to fit the language skills that are to be thought with the book. Some adaptations manage to do so without worsening the plot or making it boring or incomprehensible due to the “choppy” and “unnatural” language (take for example EFLShorts’[21] adaptation of W. W. Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw[22]), however several fail to do so (As the Macmillan Readers’ adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which, as seen in the first page, adds unnecessary information – such as the physical appearance of Mr. Utterson – and changes the order of description, something that changes the reader’s understanding of the characters and the story – in this case it shows that the physical appearance is more important than the way of being of Mr. Utterson; this adaptation also simplifies the story so much that much of the development of it is lost – one has only to look at the difference of the chapter’s lengths from the original to the adaptation – and so the reading skills of the student becomes only a translation and decoding of the words, losing the essential “inference” present in any literary work[23]).

Children’s literature once again proves to be a better choice of literature to work with in classroom, for, as asserted by Laina Ho, “children’s literature, compared to adult literature, has arguably simpler language, fewer lengthy stories, fewer abstract ideas, less complicated themes, and offers just as wide a variety of stories[24]”, thus there is no need to worry if it is a good adaptation or not - risking the use of a bad adaptation that will be a problem, in any way, with the students – for the text will be simple enough for the learners to understand, the story will be interesting for it was written with such purpose, and it will have the appropriate length to work within the timeframe of the course. The lack of knowledge of children’s literature by the teacher also has a negative effect in this case, for the choice of the book must be made within the knowledge of the teacher. Of course, the teacher may search for the best books to use in class, however it is much easier to have and use your previous knowledge in order to decide it; since the information of children’s literature possessed by the teachers is prejudiced due to its treatment in the academia, most teachers neglect this genre for more advanced reader because “children’s literature is for children”. This however can be changed if one considers that children’s literature has as a target reading group readers from 6 to 14&up years old. Within children’s literature there is a classification of sub-genres, and Young Adult books (more acceptable as a genre between teachers) are within the major genre of children’s literature. Because there is “children” in the name of the genre, most people ignore anything that is within it, thus not considering the variety of stories it possesses, as well as the variety of its target group.

Taken that in consideration, it is much easier to find books within children’s literature that can be used in classroom for any level of language learners. For more advanced-level students, it is common, for example, to use audio-visual media to teach grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. One of the most common movies used in classrooms is the Harry Potter saga. But when it comes to the literature study, the Harry Potter saga books are mostly ignored, and instead are used adaptations of “canonical” books, as mentioned before. Why not use the same content in literature as you are using in audio-visual media? Not only it will facilitate comprehension of the story (as the movies would work the same way pictures in children’s book for younger/beginner readers do) but it will also help the readers to feel more involved and learn new vocabulary and other English structures by inference, because once the story is known, they will spend less time worrying if they understood the story and more time, even if not being aware of it, learning the use of English and improving their lexical repertoire. The Harry Potter saga books have a wide range of difficulty concerning language, and of plot development, therefore if these children’s books are considered as an option to teach literature, the teacher in question will have already seven options to select from according to the course and level of the learners he or she will teach. The two first ones are short in length and have simpler language, more useful in beginner courses; the third and fourth books are bigger, but still can be used in elementary and intermediate courses, for they have simpler language, but that is more complex than the first two; the fifth to the seventh books are bigger than the previous ones and have even more complex language, plot and literary language, so it would be more indicated to use them in upper-intermediate to proficiency courses, if it can fit in its timeframe.

There are also other children’s books that can be used in more advanced English language learning courses, such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (because it is written in first-person narrator, it is easier to understand the language and it is another way to learn first-person speech; also, the plot is intriguing for readers of any age), and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. All of them, and other choices, can be worked with in classroom and the length of the story to be worked with can be chosen by the teacher accordingly to the course timeframe. By considering working with full books, the obstacle of the choppy language and poor overall comprehension is eliminated – it only needs to be chosen a book which plot the teacher thinks it will be enjoyable by most students. Even if there is not the possibility to work with full books, there are two possibilities that are rarely considered by the teachers: working with just some chapters with the book or working with short stories.

Working only with some chapters may prove useful because it may intrigue the students to continue reading on their own, therefore expanding the impacts literature can make in someone’s life. As for working with short stories, again there are many children’s short stories that can be shown in class without the writing problems mentioned before, for there is much more variety, thus being easier to choose a short story that fits in the level of the learners. For beginners, a great way to introduce English literature is to show the learners stories they already know and like, so they can be intrigued by the differences between languages and learn more easily English structures, vocabulary and more, even if they do not realize it. Fairy tales are great to work with in class, for they have been adapted over and over for many languages, thus giving the teachers a wide range of options to choose from when selecting the literary materials. The classical fairy tales can be shown to learners of any age, for children are learning about them in their mother tongue, so they still are interested in the simplified version of the stories, and teenagers and adults can work with the more close to the original versions, that are not simplified in terms of plot and have some terrible and grotesque passages that most may not even know about, so the fairy tales become interesting for them because the “additions” to the stories they already knew.

Aly Anwar Amer, in his essay Using Literature in Reading English as Second/Foreign Language, by quoting other authors comments that “in many language classrooms, the story is not being read as literature but as a piece of information (Carlisle 2000, p. 13). Hence, the teaching of literature is seen as an information gathering exercise rather than an aesthetic experience in which the reader has a response to the event, which involves the free expression of his thoughts and feelings about the text (Rosenblatt, 1985, p. 40)”. This is another reason why the Reader-Response theory must be applied when teaching literature, not only in the learners mother-tongue courses, but also in second-language teaching courses; children’s literature is often left out of classrooms because of the New Criticism approach permanent in universities, as said before, but also because the exercises – also influenced by the New Critics – concerning literature study ignore, most of the times, the response of the reader, and because children’s literature have “poor formal structure” there is fewer information to gather in order to study it.

As Maria Nikolajeva points out in her book Reading for Learning: Cognitive approaches to children's literature¸ “the purpose of reading fiction is not primarily knowledge acquisition; yet any fictional text contains a substantial amount of information that can potentially be beneficial for our knowledge of the actual world” (italics mine). Education’s main purpose is to teach the students how to be a citizen of the world by showing them what constitutes the world they are to live in, so why use marketed textbooks, which vaguely correspond to the real world, when there are plenty of possibilities within the genre of children’s literature to choose from? Why risk using an adaptation that can have language and writing issues when there are many stories, complete and just as good, available to you? There is a growing need to break the prejudice and study children’s literature in universities, especially in licentiate courses, for that will be a step forward in realizing that what makes a story good is not only its well-structured sentences or amazing use of literary language but is also the plot itself and the construction of everything related to it, including the response of the reader.

In the words of Eowyn Brown: “Turning to the last page of a well-read book is a pleasure, and students feel a sense of accomplishment when they have mastered a piece of literature written in English, regardless of whether it is The Cat in the Hat or Ulysses”[25].

[1] SILVA, A. L. da. Trajetória da Literatura Infantil: Da Origem Histórica e do Conceito Mercadológico ao Caráter Pedagógico na Atualidade. REGRAD – Revista Eletrônica de Graduação do UNIVEM, v.2 – n.2 – jul/dez – 2009, p. 136-7.

[2] Of course the nonsense is part of children’s world, however modern media for children are mainly that, lacking the content of cultural, social and literary education, needed in this part of life for the good development of the child as a person in the globalized world.

[3] SILVA, A. L. da. Trajetória da Literatura Infantil: Da Origem Histórica e do Conceito Mercadológico ao Caráter Pedagógico na Atualidade. REGRAD – Revista Eletrônica de Graduação do UNIVEM, v.2 – n.2 – jul/dez – 2009, p. 138

[4] I will base this argument on the course of Literature and Languages of the University of São Paulo (USP)

[5] For more information, see: https://www.britannica.com/art/New-Criticism ; in the words of Terry Eagleton: “The New Critics broke boldly with the Great Man theory of literature, insisting that the author's intentions in writing, even if they could be recovered, were of no relevance to the interpretation of his or her text. Neither were the emotional responses of particular readers to be confused with the poem's meaning: the poem meant what it meant, regardless of the poet's intentions or the subjective feelings the reader derived from it” (EAGLETON, 1983 : 41-2).

[6] I will write mainly about the licentiate course for teaching English as a second language, given my personal experience and the purpose of this paper.

[7] GHOSN, I. “Significance of Literature for Children”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. 10.

[8] As seen in my internship for Didactics in the licentiate course of USP, in the Deputado Augusto do Amaral state school, in the year of 2019.

[9] GHOSN, I. “Preface”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. xvii

[10] https://www.macmillanenglish.com/catalogue/graded-readers/macmillan-readers/macmillan-readers-this-is-london-pack

[11] EAGLETON, T. Literary Theory: An introduction. 1983, p. 198.

[12] For more information, see: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/reader-response-theory

[13] In the words of Ghosn: “In order for children [or every foreign-language learner, really] to expend their full effort on learning a new language, they must perceive that they are gaining something from the endeavor, whether pleasure, information, new understandings, or skills of some value. This is particularly important where children learn English as a subject but do not need it for their daily communication.” (Italics mine) (GHOSN, I. “Significance of Literature for Children”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. 11.

[14] GHOSN, I. “Significance of Literature for Children”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. 10-1.

[15] GHOSN, I. “Literature as Appropriate Content and Context”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. 24.

[16] GHOSN, I. “Significance of Literature for Children”, in: Storybridge to Second Language Literacy: The Theory, research, and practice of teaching English with children’s literature. Information Age Publishing: Charlotte, NC, 2013, p. 17.

[17] Ibid.

[18] GAIMAN, Neil. “Foreword”, in: Coraline. New York: Harper Collins, 2012.

[19] CORALINE. Henry Selick. Universal Pictures, 2009.

[20] The following passage can be used to teach past-tense verbs, for example: “Coraline let herself down into the hole, looking nervously at the trapdoor. It was so heavy that if it fell she was sure she would be trapped down in the darkness forever. She put up a hand and touched it, but it stayed in position. And then she turned toward the darkness below, and she walked down the steps” (GAIMAN, Neil. Coraline. New York: Harper Collins, 2012, p. 107).

[21] https://eflshorts.com/

[22] Available at: https://eflshorts.com/the-monkeys-paw/

[23] The adaptation also simplifies dialogues and inferential information that had no need to be simplified, as the discovery of the friendship of Mr. Utterson and Henry Jekyll. In the adaptation it was written as “Utterson had been a friend of Henry Jekyll for a long time. He did not like this document” whereas in the original the discovery is by Mr. Utterson’s dialogue with Dr. Lanyon: “‘I suppose, Lanyon,’ said he ‘you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?’”. The phrase is simple enough to be understood by elementary-level learners, as is indicated in the back-cover of the book, so the adaptation fails in being good, for it transformed a fluid narrative and dialogues in a “choppy” and “unnatural” language.

[24] HO, Laina. Children’s Literature in Adult Education. Human Science Press Inc., Children’s Literature in Education, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2000, p. 262.

[25] Brown, E. Using Children's Literature with Young Learners. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. X, No. 2, 2004, p. 1.