IMPORTANCE OF
CHILDREN’S
LITERATURE.
Importance of CL?
• Gives students opportunities to respond to literature.
• Students will appreciate their own cultural heritage and also others’
• Helps students in developing emotional intelligence and creativity.
• It nurtures growth and development of the students’ personality and
social skills.
• Transfer important literature and themes from one generation to the
next.
1. Opportunity to respond to literature.
• Norton= for children “wordless picture books are excellent stimuli for oral
and written language” (2010).
• Wordless books like ‘A Ball for Daisy’ (Raschka, 2011), ‘The Yellow
Umbrella’ (Liu, 1987), or ‘The Red Book’ (Lehmann, 2004) will make
students able to analyze the illustrations and they will develop their own
dialogue or understanding for the story.
2. Appreciate about their own cultural
heritage as well as others’.
• “Eric” from Tales from Outer Suburbia (Tan, 2009) is a touching story
about a family who takes in a foreign exchange student and they must
learn about their guest and accept the difference between their cultures.
• It has positive message about encouraging acceptance of the cultural
differences between people, which is something we want to nurture in
our students.
3. Develop emotional intelligence and
creativity.
• CL “contains numerous moments of crisis. When characters make moral
decisions and think about the reasons for their decisions, an important skill for
children to see is created.” (Norton, 2010).
• Ex: Guji Guji (Chen, 2004). A story about a crocodile who is adopted by a family
of ducks. He must choose between betraying his adopted family and going back to
his own “species”. However he decides to remain true to his beliefs and not betray
his adopted family.
3. Develop emotional intelligence and
creativity.
• The Big Box (Morrison, 1999) is a story about children who
their freedom is taken away by being put into a box.
• The deeper problems exist by not being given one’s freedom.
• CL encourages students to think deeper about their own
feelings and how to find their own happiness.
4.Nurture growth and development of the
students’ personality and social skills.
• Jean Piaget said, when students move from pre-operational to the
operational stage of cognitive development, they will become less
egocentric.
• Preschools and kindergarten students tend to focus on themselves,
but as they grow older they begin to care about the feelings and
opinions of others.
4.Nurture growth and development of the
students’ personality and social skills.
• Can understand others’ opinions and to not be selfish are important skills that
adult must nurture in children. (like sharing is caring.)
• “Tango Makes Three” (Parnell & Richardson, 2005), ”Molly’s Family” (Garden,
2004), “Heather has two mommies” (Newman & Souza, 1989) and “Daddy’s
roommate” (Wilhoite, 2000) present situations that might encourage students to
be more open-minded to different types of families and understand that love is
the most important thing in a family.
5. Transfer important literature and themes
from one generation to others
•Classic stories like Dr. Seuss’s And to think that I heard it on Mulberry
Street (Giesel, 1989) and The Cat in the hat (Giesel, 1957) are important
for its literary heritage. It needs to be transfer to every generation
•For younger audience, they could build their cognitive and language
skills through Mother Goose rhymes. Ex: Hey Diddle Diddle.
Examples of Mother Goose
• Humpty Dumpty
• Three blind Mice
• Mary, mary
• Miss Muffet
• Jack and Jill
Experiencing literature as a transitional process.
(relating to or characteristic of a process or period of
transition.)
• Transition is a movement and adaptation to change, rather that return to pre-
existing state.
• “every transition begins with an ending”– people have to let go of familiar ways
being in the world that defines who they are (comfort zone).
• Students change their interest in different genres when their language skills are
more developed. (change to more complex structure.)
Experiencing literature as a transactional process.
(relating to exchange or interaction between people.)
• The shaping of the reader’s experience, ideas,
thoughts of the text by limiting, selecting and
ordering the ideas to match the text is known as
transactional experience.
• According to Louise Rosenblatt, transaction will happen
when the text is read as aesthetic (read for pleasure
purpose and full with emotions) rather than efferent
(focus on the info. Written by the authors.)
• Transaction happen when the reading is based on
pleasure purposes not informational purposes.
Experiencing literature as a transactional
process.
• When someone reads a text, it will stimulate the reader’s mind to extract past
experiences, thoughts and ideas.
• The text serves as a rough idea to select the thoughts or ideas gained by the
reader to match with the text itself.
• The overall event where the readers’ mind is being stimulated by the text to
get ideas, thoughts or experience is called transactional process.
Personal and academic value of literature
to children
• Learn how the characters’ personalities deal with various situations and
mingle with each other.
• Widen our understanding of human nature and human condition.
• Encourages open-minded and flexible thinking.
• Stimulates one’s mind, imagination and creativity.
• Increases one’s vocabulary and language skills.
