WEEK 03 兒童文學筆記

1. Information  

a. Course Description

It is designed for college classroom audience of mature students who expect to work with children. Children, like adults, read to explore the world, to escape the confining present, to discover themselves, to become someone else. Only by reading thoughtfully a variety of stories, poems, biographies, and informational books for children does a student come to be acquainted with children’ s literature. And by applying critical criteria to these works, the student comes to evaluate them. Being steeped in the literature, written for children, however, reminds us of their natures and their concerns, and helps us direct them toward pleasurable literary experiences, even to make of them lifetime readers. Setting standards for literature addressed to children and applying these standards to each selection sharpens students’ critical skills at the same time as it familiarizes them with what’s out there.

b. Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together specialized in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th century. They were among the best-known storytellers of folk tales, and popularized stories such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "The Goose-Girl", "Hansel and Gretel", "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ,"Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White". Their first collection of folk tales, Children' s and Household Tales, was published in 1812.

b. Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale popularly associated with German.

→ The king calls for the girl, shuts her in a tower room filled with straw and a spinning wheel, and demands she spin the straw into gold by morning or he will cut off her head (other versions have the king threatening to lock her up in a dungeon forever). When she has given up all hope, an imp-like creature appears in the room and spins the straw into gold in return for her necklace. 

c. Eeyore

Eeyore is a character in the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. He is generally characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, anhedonic, old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of the title character, Winnie-the-Pooh.
His name is an onomatopoeic representation of the braying sound made by a normal donkey, usually represented as "hee haw" in American English: the spelling with an "r" is explained by the fact that Milne and most of his intended audience spoke a non-rhotic variety of English in which the "r" in "Eeyore" is not pronounced as /r/.

d. The Tortoise and the Hare 

"The Tortoise and the Hare" is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 226 in the Perry Index. The account of a race between unequal partners has attracted conflicting interpretations. It is itself a variant of a common folktale theme in which ingenuity and trickery (rather than doggedness) are employed to overcome a stronger opponent.
The story concerns a Hare who ridicules a slow-moving Tortoise. Tired of the Hare's boastful behavior, the Tortoise challenges him to a race. The hare soon leaves the tortoise behind and, confident of winning, takes a nap midway through the race. When the Hare awakes however, he finds that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, has arrived before him.

e. A.A. Milne

 
Alan Alexander Milne  was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and was a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.

f. E.H. Shepard

Ernest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator. He is known especially for illustrations of the anthropomorphic soft toy and animal characters in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne.

g. The Ass Eating Thistles 

An Ass was loaded with good provisions of several sorts, which, in time of harvest, he was carrying into the field for his master and the reapers to dine upon. By the way he met with a fine large Thistle, and, being very hungry, began to mumble it; and while he was doing so he entered into this reflection: "How many greedy epicures would think themselves happy, amidst such a variety of delicate viands as I now carry! But to me this bitter, prickly Thistle is more savory and relishing than the most exquisite and sumptuous banquet. Let others choose what they may for food, but give me, above everything, a fine juicy thistle like this and I will be content."
Every one to his taste: one man's meat is another man's poison, and one man's poison is another man's meat; what is rejected by one person may be valued very highly by another.

2. extra information

a. teletubbies

Teletubbies is a British pre-school children' s television series created by Ragdoll Productions' Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport. The program focuses on four multi-coloured toddlers of a mythological species known as "Teletubbies," named for the television screens implanted in their abdomens. Recognized throughout popular culture for the uniquely-shaped antenna protruding from the head of each character, the Teletubbies communicate through gibberish and were designed to bear resemblance to young children. 

b.  onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. As an uncountable noun, onomatopoeia refers to the property of such words. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as "oink", "miaow" (or "meow"), "roar" or "chirp". Onomatopoeias are not the same across all languages; they conform to some extent to the broader linguistic system they are part of; hence the sound of a clock may be tick tock in English, dī dā in Mandarin, or katchin katchin in Japanese, or "tik-tik" (टिक-टिक) in Hindi.


c. March Hare
 

The March Hare is a character most famous for appearing in the tea party scene in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The main character, Alice, hypothesizes,

"The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad – at least not so mad as it was in March."

"Mad as a March hare" is a common British English phrase, both now and in Carroll's time, and appears in John Heywood' s collection of proverbs published in 1546. It is reported in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner that this proverb is based on popular belief about hares' behavior at the beginning of the long breeding season, which lasts from February to September in Britain. Early in the season, unreceptive females often use their forelegs to repel overenthusiastic males. It used to be incorrectly believed that these bouts were between males fighting for breeding supremacy.
Like the character's friend, the Hatter, the March Hare feels compelled to always behave as though it is tea-time because the Hatter supposedly "murdered the time" whilst singing for the Queen of Hearts. Sir John Tenniel' s illustration also shows him with straw on his head, a common way to depict madness in Victorian times.
 
d. Peter Pan

Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up or Peter and Wendy is J. M. Barrie's most famous work, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel. Both versions tell the story of Peter Pan, a mischievous yet innocent little boy who can fly, and has many adventures on the island of Neverland that is inhabited by mermaids, fairies, Native Americans and pirates. Peter has many stories involving Wendy Darling and her two brothers, his fairy Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys, and the pirate Captain Hook. The play and novel were inspired by Barrie's friendship with the Llewellyn Davies family. Barrie continued to revise the play for years after its debut until publication of the play script in 1928.

e. Murder, She Wrote

Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons with 264 episodes from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films and an unsuccessful spin-off series, which was produced in 1987, The Law & Harry McGraw. It is one of the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, averaging close to 26 million viewers per week in its prime, and was a staple of the CBS Sunday night lineup for a decade. In syndication, the series is still highly successful throughout the world.

 

WEEK 02 兒童文學筆記

1. Information

a.  Children' s literature

Children' s literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are enjoyed by children. Modern children' s literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.
Children' s literature can be traced to stories and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children' s literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children' s" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the 15th century, a large quantity of literature, often with a moral or religious message, has been aimed specifically at children. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became known as the "Golden Age of Children' s Literature" as this period included the publication of many books acknowledged today as classics.
(a.) picture books 

A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil, among others. Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now were Heinrich Hoffmann' s Struwwelpeter from 1845 and Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit from 1902. Some of the best-known picture books are Robert McCloskey' s Make Way for Ducklings, Dr. Seuss' The Cat In The Hat, and Maurice Sendak' s Where the Wild Things Are. The Caldecott Medal (established 1938) and Kate Greenaway Medal (established 1955) are awarded annually for illustrations in children' s literature. From the mid-1960s several children' s literature awards include a category for picture books.

(b.) fairy tales

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarves, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, mermaids, trolls, unicorns, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables. The term is mainly used for stories with origins in European tradition and, at least in recent centuries, mostly relates to children' s literature.
In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy tale romance" (though not all fairy tales end happily).

(c.) fables

Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized (given human qualities, such as the ability to speak human language) and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim.
A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech or other powers of humankind.

(d.) nursery rhyme

 

A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century. In North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.

(e.) fantasy

Fantasy is a fiction genre that uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three, all of which are subgenres of speculative fiction.

(f.) literary realism

Literary realism is part of the realist art movement beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal), and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin) and extending to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Literary realism, in contrast to idealism, attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of using a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

b. plot

2. extra information

a. How to Take Great Notes

Three-step Method

Step 1

Understand the information. Write it down as a question and an answer, so each question has the most important answer under it.

Step 2

This will help your notes visually. For example, write question in red; definition in blue; answer in green.

Step 3

Ten minutes organize your notes after class.Try teaching materials to the classmates is a way to know the comprehension.

b. Taking Better Lecture notes

Review the notes. Preview the text. Use abbreviation. Leave out unimportant words.

WEEK 01 兒童文學筆記

9/15 Moon Festival (9/16彈性放假)

WEEK 18 文導筆記

Hand in Response Paper

WEEK 17 文導筆記

1. Information

a. Willy Loman

William "Willy" Loman is a fictional character and the protagonist of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which debuted on Broadway with Lee J. Cobb playing Loman at the Morosco Theatre on February 10, 1949. Loman is a 63-year-old travelling salesman from Brooklyn with 34 years of experience with the same company who endures a pay cut and a firing during the play. He has difficulty dealing with his current state and has created a fantasy world to cope with his situation. This does not keep him from multiple suicide attempts.  

b.  Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances, and has been revived on Broadway four times, winning three Tony Awards for Best Revival. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century.

c. Arthur Miller

 
Arthur Asher Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theatre. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955, revised 1956). He also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is often numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century alongside Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and was married to Marilyn Monroe. He received the Prince of Asturias Award and the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2002 and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003, as well as the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Lifetime Achievement Award.

2. extra information

a. Catch me if you can

Catch Me If You Can is a 2002 American biographical crime film, based on the life of Frank Abagnale, who, before his 19th birthday, successfully performed cons worth millions of dollars by posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His primary crime was check fraud; he became so experienced that the FBI eventually turned to him for help in catching other check forgers.

b. Two Little Mice

 
Christopher Walken
Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse. 

c. Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many interpretations since the play's 1953 premiere. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French version, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts". The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. The première was on 5 January 1953 in the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. The English language version was premiered in London in 1955; this version was voted "the most significant English language play of the 20th century".

d. A Psalm of Life

The poem, written in an ABAB pattern, is meant to inspire its readers to live actively, and neither to lament the past nor to take the future for granted. The didactic message is underscored by a vigorous trochaic meter and frequent exclamation. Answering a reader's question about the poem in 1879, Longfellow himself summarized that the poem was "a transcript of my thoughts and feelings at the time I wrote, and of the conviction therein expressed, that Life is something more than an idle dream." Richard Henry Stoddard referred to the theme of the poem as a "lesson of endurance". 
Part of poem :

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and wait.

e. Divergent

The story takes place in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic Chicago where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Beatrice Prior is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions. She soon learns that a sinister plot is brewing in her seemingly perfect society. 
 

3.  prefix, root and suffix  

mend :  fix; repair                                eg. amendment
amendment (n.) a change made to a law or agreement