Understanding Children's Literature - (11 Understanding Reading and Literacy)

11 Understanding reading
and literacy
Sally Yates
Editor’s Introduction
The development of literacy may seem to be the most obvious application of children’s litera-
ture. However, there have been recurrent debates on the most effective techniques for
achieving literacy, and especially on the relative merits of using ‘children’s literature’ and of
using specially developed ‘reading schemes’. Even the definition of literacy is far from stable.
Sally Yates considers technical and cultural aspects of this topic.
P. H.
The reading process has always to be described in terms of texts and contexts as well as in
terms of what we think readers actually do.
(Meek 1988: 6)
Defining literacy
In defining literacy, it is now common to go beyond simply describing the decoding of
written text and to include reference to creation of meaning from print, as decoding without
making sense has no purpose. UNESCO, for example, which has a mission to achieve a 50
per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, and has declared 2003–12 the
United Nations literacy decade (UNESCO 2003), defines literacy broadly as referring to
‘the skills used in everyday life or those that allow one to function competently in society’.
That is, a recognition of the purposes for fostering literacy is essential. What counts as
literacy, then, is dependent on the literacy demands of a particular society, and can be seen to
be dynamic, reflecting changing expectations of society. It makes a distinction between
Copyright © 2005. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
literacy in time and place, and recognises cultural and social influences on literacy. In her
biography of Samuel Pepys, for example, Claire Tomalin describes the literacy learning of his
grammar-school education as being the translation of texts from English into Latin and back
again to English, a literacy curriculum well suited to prepare him for his future role as a civil
servant in seventeenth-century England (Tomalin 2003). This would not, of course, be a
literacy that would prepare someone for literate life in the twenty-first century, and it would
not have been a useful form of literacy for many others in the seventeenth century.
In a rapidly changing world, definitions of literacy need to reflect the multiple literacies
that might be encountered in engaging with the literate world. UNESCO goes further,
though, recognising that a mere functional literacy is inadequate and that access to
complex literary texts is also essential if equality of knowledge and experience is to be
achieved. It encourages books and reading through a call for national book policies.
Understanding Children's Literature, edited by Peter Hunt, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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160 Sally Yates
Books are one of the most interactive means of communication and are still a haven
for recent and distant memory, a source of recreation for the present and a richer plat-
form from which to envisage the future.
(UNESCO 2003)
Fischer claims that ‘transformations’ are occurring in every realm of literacy, occupational,
informational, recreational, and devotional and ritualistic reading, ‘as societies everywhere
exploit the written word for commercial gain’ (Fischer 2003: 311). He goes on to say:
Of course, only those societies will best succeed that encourage and support a legiti-
mate ‘culture of reading’, in particular the respect and love of books. In the past these
have been especially East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese), Indians and Jews (also
Moslems in the Middle Ages), followed by Europeans and, later, North Americans.
(Fischer 2003: 311)
So the place of literature in defining and developing literacy remains paramount despite
developing technologies and literacy practices, and the growth of interest in children’s
literature for supporting literacy is evident in the work of the IBBY (International Board
on Books for Young People) World Congresses which showcase both texts and issues.
Even partial illiteracy will cause people to be excluded and perhaps alienated from a
good deal of their own culture. Although there has been a steady fall in the number of
adult illiterates, 20.3 per cent of the world’s population was illiterate in 2000; this figure is
expected to drop to 16.5 per cent by 2010. This average, though, includes figures of 45
per cent illiterate in Ethiopia in 2000, 55.4 per cent in Iraq, 77 per cent in Niger, and
includes a high proportion of female illiterates in some societies. A disturbing number of
children globally are either not receiving education or failing to achieve literacy by the end
of their schooling, and there are clear links between poverty and illiteracy or low standards
of literacy even in countries with good literacy rates.
Throughout history, cultures of childhood and access to printed material have been
fundamental to expectations for literacy and access to education for learning to read and
write. In a society where few had access to books, universal literacy was not required and
education was restricted to those needing to use literacy in their work, and with access to
the written text. In this there were class and gender inequalities, some still mirrored in
access to education and literacy. The extension of schooling in Europe in the sixteenth
century to ‘the lower classes’ for religious education (Cunningham 1995) was an impetus
continued in England during later centuries through Sunday Schools, which allowed for
working children access to literacy. Cunningham makes a distinction, though, between the
motives of society in promoting education, and those of the individual, where
a basic level of literacy was valued for two reasons. First, it enabled people to make
some sense of the demands made on them by the printed rules and ordinances which
flowed in copious abundance from the state. And secondly, it gave them access to the
popular literature of ballads, chapbooks and almanacks which flourished in this period.
(Cunningham 1995: 102)
Thus the desire for functional literacy and for reading for pleasure has proven to be a
strong motivator. Literacy was also valued as an aid to ‘social advancement’. Interestingly,
once education was made compulsory in Europe, there was greater opposition to schooling.
Understanding reading and literacy 161
Although the move to universal literacy in Europe and the USA was linked to the need
for the population to read the Bible for religious purposes, of course, once literate, the
empowered masses could choose what they read, and thus two major issues at the heart of
literacy arise. First, a consideration of the means by which we can most effectively create
universal literacy, and second, control of what the literate population read. This second
issue has always been, and continues to be, a focus for debate in relation to children’s
reading matter, as the recent debates on the content and suitability of the Harry Potter
books has illustrated. J. K. Rowling’s books have been the most banned books of recent
years, heading the list of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual
Freedom’s ‘most challenged books’ for three years running, with the primary claims
against them being that they were ‘ungodly’.
One of the contributory factors to low literacy levels in some parts of the world is the
language of literacy instruction. As we saw, Samuel Pepys’s grammar-school education was
in Latin, lack of access to which was a barrier to education beyond elementary level for the
lower classes in England until the early twentieth century. Calls to educate children in the
‘vernacular’ were instrumental in broadening access to education to a wider constituency.
In Botswana there has been a call for Yoruba rather than English to be used as the
medium for learning for the first six years of schooling, and Zambia and Malaysia too are
calling for teaching in the ‘national language’ or ‘mother-tongue’.
The National Curriculum in England has been criticised for failing to recognise children’s
linguistic and literacy experience in languages other than English, with the result that children
could be excluded from the ‘literacy club’. This is despite evidence that children operating in
more than one language have increased levels of meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic aware-
ness. The social and cultural variations in literacy practices in the home and community are
further evidence of the diversity identified in the seminal ethnographic study by Shirley Brice
Heath, who has also raised awareness of these issues (Heath 1983). In studying the literacy
practices of three contrasting communities in the USA, one middle class, one black working
class and one white working class, she found profound divergence in the text-types read and
the behaviours engaged in while reading them. Concepts of childhood and the roles of adults
in supporting children’s literacy were fundamentally different in terms of expectations and
social contexts for reading. The implications of the study for education and literacy teaching
in schools are that the approaches to literacy in school advantaged the white middle-class chil-
dren, but failed to recognise the different knowledge, experience and concepts of literacy in
either the white or black working-class communities. Heath used her findings to inform her
work with teachers in ‘bridging language and cultural differences and discovering how to
recognise and use language as power’ (Heath 1983: 266).
There is strong evidence that, while books can extend and challenge children’s knowl-
edge and experience, children learn literacy better from texts with some cultural familiarity,
with traditional tales and folk tales being particularly useful. The dominance of books
written in English being translated into other languages leads to situations where, for
example, children in Mexico are often reading books depicting life in the USA or Europe.
Fischer suggests that the possibility of a future ‘global monoculture’, with English-
language ‘supersellers’ dominating the publishing world, means that ‘Chilean children
grow up knowing more about the US’s Wild West than their own Atacama Desert;
Indian children identify more with Harry Potter than the Vedas; and Mickey Mouse is
more familiar to Chinese children than Chairman Mao’ (Fischer 2003: 316).
Also, cultural assumptions in texts available internationally have an influence on
comprehension and may reinforce feelings of exclusion.
162 Sally Yates
Literacy teaching
Common practice in countries with an alphabetically based writing system is to start with
learning the relationship between sound and symbol through recognising and naming the
letters of the alphabet and, through use of a syllabary, combining the sounds into word
segments. This has been a method common in the UK and USA for centuries, with chil-
dren learning from the seventeenth century by means of a hornbook or its successor, the
battledore, containing the alphabet and lists of syllables for learning, such as ab, eb, ib, ob,
ub, preparatory to reading. But in addition, these early ‘books’ included some whole text
to be read and learned alongside the letters. Extracts from the Bible, the catechism, short
moral rules and verse were designed to improve the mind, but functioned also to contex-
tualise the word parts. They introduced a literary form of written language and
encouraged the learning of text through repetition, which could then support the learner
in applying the phonic knowledge gained in the drill and exercise. This combination of
use of grapho-phonic knowledge combined to make words used alongside whole texts is
still the foundation of literacy teaching in much of the world.
Our knowledge of the ways in which children may have been supported into literacy in the
home in the early eighteenth century has been enhanced by the discovery of sets of cards and
home-made books produced by Jane Johnson, the wife of a Lincolnshire vicar in England.
These were designed to teach her four children to read and include alphabet cards and verses,
moral statements and ‘A Very Pretty Story’. It is clear that the intention here was to structure
literacy learning within a moral climate, using phonic methods and appreciation of whole
literary texts (Hilton et al. 1997). This marriage of structured learning and pleasure in reading,
use of whole texts and word parts, has been a continuing feature of developments in literacy.
Mary Hilton is critical of the concept of the ‘young literacy learner’ from the late nine-
teenth century in England. She claims that the child was treated as ‘empty vessel’ with no
previous knowledge, and offered ‘graded, decontextualised exercises in reading and
writing skills, which gradually increase in difficulty and complexity, under conditions of
surveillance and control’ (Hilton 1996: 3). This education failed to take account of the
child’s interests and experience or to ‘make literate sense of their experience’, which raises
wider questions about how children learn to read at home and at school, what approaches
are used in schools and what texts are read in the learning process.
Languages vary in their sound–symbol correspondence, with English orthography about
75 per cent regular (Brookes 2003). Brookes claims that this degree of regularity means
that phonics is the obvious first approach for teaching reading, but in comparison with
many other alphabetic languages, the orthography of English can pose many problems for
the reader. The introduction of whole-word recognition approaches to the learning process
‘look and say’ has been seen by some as a challenge to the traditional phonic approach.
There are many irregular words in children’s early vocabularies, though, which can only be
learnt by sight recognition, and most children will develop a sight vocabulary of words
alongside their phonics learning. Ferreiro and Teberosky, researching the reading of chil-
dren in Buenos Aires, claimed that ‘No collection of words, no matter how vast, in itself
constitutes a language; without precise rules for combining those elements to produce
acceptable phrases, there is no language’ (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1979: 7).
Children have already become proficient language users orally by the time they start
schooling, and a number of studies have demonstrated how children’s spoken-language
errors, such as the application of rules to irregular past tenses or plurals (for example,
‘runned’ instead of ‘ran’, ‘eated’ instead of ‘ate’, or ‘sheeps’ instead of the plural ‘sheep’)
demonstrate an understanding of the rules of grammar within their language. If they are to
transfer this knowledge into the very particular written genres of literature, children must tell
and have stories told or read to them from an early stage. Certainly, linguistic knowledge and
understanding of morphemes is perhaps a more helpful strategy than simple syllabaries in
breaking down words (for example: un/help/ful/ness).
Oral competence is one aspect of the knowledge children bring with them to school: but
children in the developed world may also be drawing on years of interactive engagement with
a literate and print-rich world by the time they enter school, and whatever their diversity of
social and cultural experience, this is knowledge on which teachers should draw in their early
teaching of literacy. Evidence from the work of Harste et al. (1984) in Canada, Ferreiro and
Teberosky in South America and Clay (1979) in New Zealand has demonstrated the concepts
of print which children bring to school. Children’s experience of books may be variable, and
Clay’s methods of observing children’s behaviour with picture books provides a wealth of
evidence for the teacher in understanding the scope of that familiarity (Clay 1979). But children
watch television, they accompany their carers to the shops, to the post office and bank, to
clinics. They see print on packages and hoardings, titles of films and television programmes,
greetings cards and junk mail. The children in Ferreiro and Teberosky’s study ‘knew’, even
when they could not actually read, that, to be ‘readable’, print had to have at least three letters,
and they could not all be the same (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1979: 28). They understood that
printed marks conveyed meaning, even before they could distinguish between numbers and
letters. Some letters could be named, with Z for Zorro being easily recognisable owing to the
high interest engendered by the popular character at the time, and they could, when asked,
explain that text and pictures were needed to read their picture books. Ferreiro and Teberosky
challenge the expectation that children should learn mechanistically in the early stages: ‘Not
yet knowing how to read does not prevent children from having precise ideas about the char-
acteristics a written text must have for reading to take place’ (1979: 27). Children know that
the print on the cartons and tins in shops conveys some message about what is inside (Harste
et al. 1984: 24), and global marketing ensures that many children can recognise the Coca-
Cola sign (so good for alliterative phonics), and the large yellow M of McDonald’s.
Even with new technologies allowing us to monitor eye- and brain-activity during the
reading process, we cannot know exactly what goes on in the mind of the reader. But the
work of psycholinguists such as Ken Goodman has made apparent the complexity of learning
to read: that is, to read and understand and not simply to decode print (Goodman 1982).
Goodman claims that effective, experienced readers bring everything they know to the
reading process: graphic and phonic knowledge, semantic and syntactic knowledge, knowl-
edge and understanding of books and story, and knowledge and experience of the world.
Good readers make use of all this knowledge when reading. They predict, check by looking at
the grapho-phonic cues, read on, read back, and draw on knowledge of story conventions
‘Once upon a time …’, ‘A long, long time ago …’, ‘Meanwhile …’, to create a meaningful
reading experience. The search for meaning and full comprehension of written texts requires
the reader’s critical engagement with the text and consideration of the author’s style and
purpose in creating the text (Bearne 1996: 311). Bearne stresses too the need for teachers to
be critical readers and to be knowledgeable and analytical in approaching texts.
Literature for literacy

The selection of texts for developing literacy has long been a site for controversy. Since the early
use of the hornbook and primers produced for teaching reading, texts have been developed
164 Sally Yates
with the aim of supporting children’s paths to literacy. The debate about style and content
continues at both emotive and academic levels. What needs to be considered here is the
balance between texts with supportive language which will, in Vygotskyan terms, ‘scaffold’
the child’s learning, and texts which will motivate and encourage reading. Criticisms levelled
at some basal readers include the banal and restricted language and the encouragement of
unnatural reading behaviours. Children will read Blue Book Two because they have read
Blue Book One, without developing their ability to choose by preference of author or
content. The need for good books to read so that children could be ‘cozened into a knowl-
edge of their books’ was expressed by John Locke in the seventeenth century (Townsend
1990: 12). Margaret Meek has written persuasively on the nature of texts that teach children
how to read through their patterned language and layers of meaning. ‘Children who
encounter such books learn many lessons that are hidden for ever from those who move
directly from the reading scheme to the worksheet’ (Meek 1988: 19).
The pedagogic world tends to divide into those who believe children need structured
texts, Barthes’s ‘lisible’ or readerly texts for the passive reader, and those who believe that,
to be fully literate, we need also to engage with ‘scriptible’ or ‘writerly’ texts, that demand
the reader’s active engagement in the search for meaning. Indeed, such texts may not have
one interpretation, but will be open to discussion. The ability to fill in the ‘gaps’ in the
text, to draw on the semiotic codes provided in texts and pictures in books, is an essential
skill (Iser 1978).
The National Literacy Strategy in England and the First Steps approach in Australia
encourage use of good literary texts for developing reading. In Nigeria, development of
daily story-reading and -telling, despite a shortage of resources, ensures literacy learning is
contextualised in narrative storying and that children are motivated to learn. However, the
skill of the teacher in selecting and analysing appropriate texts as preparation for effective
learning is variable. Lack of training for teachers has been a major setback in acquiring
literacy in some parts of the world. Even in the USA and the UK, lack of knowledge by
teachers can prevent adequate engagement with texts and fully developed literacy. The
analysis of test results and inspection reports on the teaching of literacy in the UK several
years into the National Literacy Strategy in England, for example, has revealed some
concerns at lack of measured progress in some aspects of literacy (Brookes 2003). The
early training for the introduction of the strategy was on processes of organisation and
particular practices with the support of prepared plans. What was not offered to many
teachers was the systematic study of the way texts are constructed, and the linguistic and
literary knowledge necessary to analyse and work creatively with children was an assumed,
rather than an actual, reality. As a result, some children are still learning to read on struc-
tured basal readers accompanied by decontextualised exercises. There are, however,

articles by enlightened and well-informed teachers, published in teachers’ journals at
national and international level, revealing some outstanding practice in challenging chil-
dren and extending reading, developing sophisticated responses to texts while valuing the
contexts in which children are learning.
In considering the debate about reading schemes or basal readers as a foundation for
literacy teaching rather than a range of good ‘real books’, Hunt points out that reading
children’s literature is not always seen as ‘work’, and this dichotomy between learning as
work and reading for pleasure as ‘play’ is perhaps at the heart of much of the affective
response to this debate (Hunt 1994: 175).
One other aspect of text choice is the encouragement of children’s own reading
patterns and preferences in order for them to take ownership of reading for themselves
and to fit in with the social groups in which they operate, for example by taking a partic-
ular comic regularly, or collecting series books which may not be of intrinsic literary merit.
Peter Dickinson has defended this reading behaviour in his article ‘A Defence of Rubbish’
(Dickinson 1976): few adults would not admit to reading some texts which are of dubious
literary worth, and Dickinson’s point is that, as long as the overall reading diet is varied,
reading some less worthy texts can be beneficial to developing as a reader.
Multiliteracies
The definition of literacy at the start of this chapter reflected the broad literacy contexts
which children have now to manage if they are to succeed. This requires an ability to read
for a range of purposes from a wide range of texts. Computer literacy requires a range of
behaviours developed from the linear reading of books and other printed texts, but new
vocabularies are developing to reflect the different reading behaviours expected. The use
of mobile phones and text-messaging has developed a language of its own, which children
are both decoding and inventing with zest.
The understanding of semiotic codes used to create meaning in picture books (see
Moebius 1992) applies equally to reading other texts which mix graphics and writing, and
multi-modal texts make even further demands, as moving image and sound are incorpo-
rated. The quality of the texts emerging is varied. Some of those writing so enthusiastically
about the need to embrace the new literacies demonstrate a blindness to one of the most
crucial factors. As Eve Bearne says:
The sudden and proliferated range of texts and ‘representations of the world’ mean
that it is even more critical for children to be able to exert discrimination and choice
over the literacies and literacy practices which they encounter daily … it becomes
imperative to be able to read and write with the eyes of a critic.
(Bearne 1996: 318)
The work of Jackie Marsh and Elaine Millard (2000) has highlighted the importance of
addressing popular culture in bridging the gap between home and school. They recognise
the rich experience many children have at home of watching television and video and
playing computer games, and have developed literacy practices in school which recognise,
value and build on the out-of-school experience (Marsh and Millard 2000: 95). In
defending their focus on popular culture from accusations of debasing the curriculum,
Marsh and Millard argue that ‘if schools focus on increasingly outmoded forms of literacy,
then children’s motivation toward the literacy diet offered in the classroom will be
affected further’ (2000: 186). They also argue that the critical literacies developed
through studying popular culture are transferable skills, able to be applied to ‘a wide range
of texts, for popular culture does not hold the monopoly on manipulation’ (188).
As it is increasingly likely that children will be familiar with many of the works of litera-
ture on the shelf through having watched the video in advance, it is senseless to work
against the flow, and there is every incentive to explore new ways of working that can
exploit such knowledge. For older generations, the analogy may be made with The Wizard
of Oz. For many of us, the film starring Judy Garland is the ‘definitive text’, yet it was
made only owing to the immense popularity of the books by L. Frank Baum: it was the
Harry Potter of its day. Reading the text following an extensive acquaintance with the film
provides a glimpse of what coming to many books is like for the child of the twenty-first
166 Sally Yates
century. Evidence from book sales of film and television tie-ins is evidence that, far from
multi-media experience killing book reading, the two can co-exist. Studies of children’s
reading choices also demonstrate that a range of fiction is being read (Collins et al. 1997;
Millard 1997; Hall and Coles 1999), with one in seven of the most popular titles in Hall
and Coles’s study linked to media productions. The range and diversity of what children
read increases with age, and there is evidence of reading from popular culture as well as
classics such as The Secret Garden. It is clear that children are still tuned into and turned
on by books and able to justify their choices and rejections.
We have reached the position, as Unsworth suggests, that
in the twenty-first century the notion of literacy needs to be reconceived as a plurality

of literacies and being literate must be seen as anachronistic. As emerging literacies
continue to impact on the social construction of these multiple literacies, becoming
literate is the more apposite description.
(Unsworth 2001: 8)
References
Bearne, E. (1996) ‘Mind the Gap: Critical Literacy as a Dangerous Underground Movement’, in
Styles, M., Bearne, E. and Watson, V. (eds) Voices Off: Texts, Contexts and Readers, London:
Cassell.
Brookes, G. (2003) Sound Sense: The Phonics Element of the National Literacy Strategy: A Report to
the Department for Education and Skills, July 2003, www.standards.dfes.gov.uk (accessed 12
November 2003).
Clay, M. (1979) The Early Detection of Reading Difficulties, London: Heinemann.
Collins, F. M., Hunt, P. and Nunn, J. (1997) Reading Voices: Young People Discuss Their Reading
Choices, Plymouth: Northcote House.
Cunningham, H. (1995) Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, London: Longman.
Dickinson, P. (1976) ‘A Defence of Rubbish’, in Fox, G., Hammond, G. and Jones, T. (eds) (1976)
Writers, Critics and Children, London: Heinemann.
Ferreiro, E. and Teberosky, A. (1979) Literacy before Schooling, London: Heinemann.
Fischer, S. (2003) A History of Reading, London: Reaktion.
Goodman, K. (1982) ‘The Reading Process’, in Gollasch, F. (ed.) Language and Literacy: The
Selected Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman, vol. 1, Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hall, C. and Coles, M. (1999) Children’s Reading Choices, London: Routledge.
Harste, J., Woodward, V. and Burke, C. (1984) Language Stories and Literacy Lesson, Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
Heath, S. B. (1983) Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hilton, M. (ed.) (1996) Potent Fictions: Children’s Literacy and the Challenge of Popular Culture,
London: Routledge.
Hilton, M., Styles, M. and Watson, V. (eds) (1997) Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, Writing and
Childhood 1600–1900, London: Routledge.
Hunt, P. (1994) An Introduction to Children’s Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Iser, W. (1978) The Art of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (2000) Literacy and Popular Culture: Using Children’s Culture in the
Classroom, London: Paul Chapman.
Meek, M. (1988) How Texts Teach What Readers Learn, South Woodchester: Thimble Press.
Millard, E. (1997) Differently Literate: Boys, Girls and the Schooling of Literacy, London: Routledge-
Falmer.
Moebius, W. (1992) ‘Introduction to Picture Book Codes’, in Hunt, P. (ed.) Children’s Literature:
The Development of Criticism, London: Routledge.
Tomalin, C. (2003) Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, London: Viking.
Townsend, J. R. (1990) Written for Children, London: The Bodley Head.
UNESCO (2003) http://portal.unesco.org/education/ev.php (accessed 19 December 2003).
Unsworth, L. (2001) Teaching Multiliteracies across the Curriculum: Changing Contexts of Text and
Image in Classroom Practice, Buckingham: Open University Press.

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11 Understanding reading

Literature for literacy

tured basal readers accompanied by decontextualised exercises. There are, however,

in the twenty-first century the notion of literacy needs to be reconceived as a plurality

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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