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."
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.
