Lectures

12/10

Concept Book
- The Bi, Bigger, Biggest Book – size relation
- What is red? A strawberry is red – color
- On fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish – numbers and colors
- 3 – numbers
- Round is a mooncake – shapes

2 definitions
- Teach children to use abstractions to make grouping
- Help children to acquire and clarify abstract ideas about their world

Learning categorization and social concepts

- Color, shapes
- Numbers
- Letters
- Size relation
- Directions, distance
- Opposite
- Time
- Family relations
- Sibling roles
- Self-image
- Interpersonal conflicts
- Social codes, fairness, politeness
- Awareness of & tolerance for difference
- Accommodation and negotiation strategies

Socialization concepts
- Growing-up problems (nightmare, darkness, overcoming their fears…)
- Modern family concepts (divorce, dingle parent, step parents…)
- More contemporary issues (2 mothers, 2 fathers…)

Diversity Issues
Global Issues

- Unfamiliar concepts
o Adoption – “Just add one Chinese sister”, “you are not my real mother!”

- Culturally-determined concepts
o “speak English for us Marisol”

- Adressing Race
o “Am I a color too?”
o “Skin again”
“Emily: The Shortest Kid”
- Name calling: Shrimp, Peevee, Munchkin, Peanut
- Private agony
- Loving parental input
- Natural solutions
- Surprise ending

“The Franklin Phenomenon”

19/10

Alphabet books
- Early illustrated Alphabets
- The 26-letter English alphabet. Illustrated with a concept to relate (f.e zebra with a Z)
- Book related variants (games, cards, booklets, etc.)
- Each letter presented in capitals – sometimes in lower case printing or script.
- Example of a word beginning with that letter.
- Entire page with multiple images of objects beginning with the key letter.
- Applied alphabets (alphabet represented with images that relate with the letters)
- Rhyming and Rhythmical ABC’s
- Specialized Alphabets (one topic and the alphabet is made by this topic, f.e:
Dinosaurs alphabet, using different names of dinosaurs).
o Modern Specialized Alphabets (names of counties, vegetables, concepts like
recycling…)
- Alphabet Learning Software

Alphabeasts – Wallace Edwards, 2002

Rhyming Alphabets
- Couplets
- End-rhymed
- Initial trochaic or dactylic foot
Rhyming couplets
- Couplet: 2 lines of verse with end-rhyme: “K is for kitten, with black and white mitts,
Lis for Llama – watch out – he spits!”
Regular Meter – Dactylic
- K if for kitten, with black and with mitts (_uu_uu_uu_)

Edward Gorey: The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963; 1998) (mock alphabet, not for children)

26/10
Patterns in Children’s Literature

→Example: I Am The Song by Charles Causey

Pattern: I am the NOUN + that + VERB + the NOUN
Meter: U-/U-/U-/U-/
Iambic tetrameter
Monosyllabic words
i.e I am the hair that combs the brush
I am the ground that wets the rain
I am the wood that burns the fire

→Example: My Heart Soars by Chief Dan George

Pattern: Describe aspects of nature & ends with speaks to me.
3 stanzas and then a variation in the fourth stanza
Last line counts as an additional verse

→Example: Three Little Pigs

Pattern: The first little pig built his house out of straw…
The second little pig built his house out of sticks…
The third little pig built his house of bricks…

FOLK AND FAIRY TALES - Traditional to Postmodern

Folk Tales
 Oral origins, communal telling
 No fixed form, ongoing evolution
 Distilled community understanding of the world
 Pared-down plot and characters (pared-down means simplify)
 Moral optional, wisdom required
 Anonymous author(s)
 Later written down by famous collectors

Folk Tales Today

 Few genuine ones
 Most written down, fossilized at their last transmission point, thus no longer evolving
 Urban legends

Fairy Tales - 2 meanings

1. The folk tales collected and written down during the 18th and the 19th centuries in
Europe and their written descendants
1.1 Literary tales
2. Any children’s story containing magical or non-realistic elements

EXAMPLE OF COLLECTORS
 Charles Perrault (1628-1703) collected folk tales in France.
 Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm (Brothers Grimm) collected folk tales in Germany.
 Andrew Lang (1844-1912) collected folk tales in Great Britain.

Categorization of literary fairy tales (next class)

2/11

Categorization of literary fairy tales

1. Loss of Innocence – Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood / Grimm’s Little Red
Cap
2. Sleeping Beauty – Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty in the Wood / Grimm’s Briar
Rose
3. Damsel in Distress – Perrault’s Cinderella / Grimm’s Ashputtel; Grimm’s
Snow White; Rapunzel – Sexual stereotype
4. Brain over Brawn (intelligence over power/strength) – Perrault’s Puss in
Boots; Grimm’s The Brave Little Tailor – hope for society: if I’m not strong, I
can achieve success through knowledge
5. The Child as Hero – Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel; Joseph Jacobs’ Jack and the
Beanstalk – shows that the relationship at that time between children and
parents were rough, also bad conditions economically
6. Villain – Perrault’s Bluebeard; Grimm’s Rumpelstiltskin
7. Animal Bridegroom – Grimm’s The Frog King or Iron Heinrich; Madam Le
Prince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast – female character as the center.
Kind of transformation lore, virginity
 Not obligatory a moral, but a wisdom
 Beauty = good
 Ugly = bad

Postmodern variants of classic fairy tales

- Gender-corrective tales – Clever Gretchen
- Multicultural Cinderellas
o Sootface, An Ojibway Cinderella Story – Author: Robert D. San Souci, 1994
o Cendrillon, A Caribbean Cinderella Story – same autor
o The Way Meat Loves Salt, A Cinderella Tale from the Jewish Tradition –
author: Nina Jaffe, 1998
o The Persian Cinderella – author: Shirley Climo, illustrator: Robert Florczak,
2001
o Adelita, A Mexican Cinderella Story – Author: Tomie dePaola, 2002

Goldilocks
- One of the most popular fairy tales in the English language
- The Story of the Three Bears / The Three Bears
o Cca. 80 publications of the tale between the late 1800’s and 1972
o 1837 – first published by Robert Southey (1774-1843)
o Earlier anonymous versions
o Based on a folk tale – oral version
o Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
o Russian version of the story
o Not a typical fairy tale story
o Contains non-realistic elements
o Written down in the “Golden Age”
 Hans Christian Andersen
  The Grimm brothers
o A timeless story of all generations. Still very popular
Literary elements
- Beginning
o “once upon a time…”
o Fairy tales set in “no-particular-time”
- Rule of three

9/11/2023

MODERN FAIRY TALES

 Children’s stories containing magical or non-realistic elements

 Robert Munsch (1947-)

American Canadian
Canada’s most famous children’s author
Published nearly 100 books for children
i.e Mud puddle; Love you forever ; Alligator Baby

The Paper Bag Princess, 1980

A revolutionary book
A “game changer” for children’s literature
Un “upside-down” fairytale
“A fairytale worth of our daughters”
In 1980s banned for a short time for being anti-family

Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack (Published in 2018)

“Thank you” he told his parents.
“I appreciate that you tried, but I’m looking for something special in a partner by my side”
In this modern fairy tale, a noble prince and a brave knight came together to defeat a terrible
monster and in the process find true love in a most unexpected place.

ASTRID LINDGREN, PIPPI LONGSTOCKING SERIES

 Published in 1940s
 Set the example of progressive children’s stories that promote diversity, tolerance,
inclusion.
 Pippi as one of the world's favorite children’s characters: mismatched stockings,
carrot-colored hair, freckly face, superhuman strength and resilience, self-sufficiency,
quick-witted, generous, doesn’t want to grow up…
 Cultural Icon
 Symbol of female strength

Pippi Longstocking’s appeal for children

 Timeless children’s heroine

 Ideal role model (sense of justice and sympathy for the weak)
 Embodies everything children want for their own lives: self-determination, adventure,
superpowers.
 The ability to strengthen insecure children and help them overcome difficulties: “Pippi
has a recipe for life. She is just as strong as an adult, amd even dares to make fun of
teachers and police officers “
  The attraction of Pipi stories is their reversal of the relationship between adults and
children.

Contemporary critique
 Storie contains colonial racial stereotypes (Pippi in the South Seas)
 Some scenes were removed from TV/ DVD series (Pippi’s reference to her father as
“king of the Negroes”)

In what ways does it differ from a classic fairy tale?

 The beginning
 Rule of three (?) → “The dragon took a huge breath… (x3)
 The ending → no marriage. Happy ending?
 Reversed gender roles

Elements of a classic fairy tale

 Dragon
 Beautiful princess
 Castle
 The question of marriage

Repetition, parallelism
Knocking on the door (Twice) not following the classic fairy tale because it usually follows a
rule of 3

16.11

Illustrated Children’s Books

Two Cinderellas
- Walter Crane, Cinderella. London 1875. English.
- Gustave Doré, Les Contes de Perrault. Paris 1867. French.

Compare the two Godmothers

Cinderella Styles
- Crane: color, line/flat areas of color, uniform lighting, clarity, diagonal tension,
openness
- Doré: black and white, lightened centered/concentric, mystery, claustrophobia,
shading/texture, high contrast of dark and light.

What aspects?
- Color
- Light/darkness, contrast
- Line
- Texture
- Shape and space (symmetry/asymmetry)
- Perspective
 - Styles in illustration

Color in Picture Books

- Nº of colors: single- double., triple-, full color scale.
- Bright, primary colors: younger children.
- Pastel: children of medium age, sub-teen.
- Muted earth tones: medium age to teenage.
- Psychedelic, fluorescent colors: teenage.

Color in Red Riding Hood

- Continuous outline… solid, reassuring, boring
- Broken lines… nervous, energetic
- Sharp edges vs. soft curvy lines… danger vs. safety/comport
- Horizontal lines… stable, peaceful
- Diagonal lines… motion, action, conflict
- Vertical lines… stable, anchoring (background); threatening, imprisoning
(foreground)

The Frog Prince

Cinderella

Shape and Space

- Simple shapes, clear outlines
- Complex shapes, cluttered outlines
- Clashing shapes, symmetrical shapes
- Shape-dominant pages
- Space-dominant pages
- Space interesting or uninteresting

Shapes in Red Riding Hood

Circle and Diagonal: Ugly Ducking
Circle: safety
Diagonal: movement

Symmetry and Asymmetry: Goldilocks

Perspective
- The angle from which one is viewing the image
- Eye-level
- Ground level – low angle
- From above – bird’s eye
- Child’s eye level
 - Changing perspectives – disturbing for children

Perspective in Thumbelina

23/11

Textile in children’s Illustrations

Tactile image of the picture: what does the picture “feel like”?
- Where the wild things are
- Grandpa green – some greenish shape that seems like a texture
Textile books/ cloth books

Styles in Illustration (and examples)

- Representational, realistic – Shirley Hughes (children represented realistically)
- Stylized (proportions not realistic) – No Such Things (thin arms, big head)
- Expressionist – Hiroshima no pika (emotions)
- Romantic – The Water Babies (romanticized babies’ death)
- Cartoon (Disney) – Michael Martchenko (seems a tv cartoon)
- Primitive (imitates style of aboriginal people)
o Folk tales: African, South America, north American, Native Canadian
- Naïve/Childlike – Maisy the Mouse (imitates children’s drawing)

Illustrated Children’s Books/Picture Books

- Synergy of art and writing
- An iconotext (text and images complement each other)
- The coupling of text and image can contain any level of sophistication or simplicity

Simple picture book

- Short simple sentences
- Repetitive structure
- Unambiguous meaning
- Clear and uncluttered pictures
- Text and image tell the same story

Draw Me a Star – appears a simple picture, enables multiple interpretations.

Grandpa Green – “but the important stuff, the garden remembers for him”

The interplay of text and illustration

- Text and image tell the same story, but they provide different kinds of information.
- Text: naming, generalization, telling what characters are saying or thinking.
 - Pictures: show what characters are like, body language shows how characters are
feeling, the setting in which they move.

14/12

Visual Literacy – reading visuals.

Why is this task with Wright easier than with Rothko?

Blocks of color
- Evoke strong feeling
- Inspire them
- Better for art class than for teaching lieracy

Metaphor: a Brief revision

- Various models (Aristotle, Richards)
- 3 layers
o L1: what he say
o L2: what he mean
o TC: why this works