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.