Children Literature

Introduction

Children literature has many purposes as it can be either didactic so as to teach and educate children about life or entertaining so as to provide children with fun and entertainment and some literary works of children literature can be both didactic and entertaining.

Children literature has become very important today as it presents stories that can attract children as well as adults with this kind of topics about life of children and all concerns about them. Today this kind of literature can arouse the attention of educational institutions to make studies about it and movie production companies so as to make movies based on novels and plays from that kind of literature. Children literature purposes are numerous and they could be classified into the didactic ones and the entertaining ones, this essay is going to present some discussions and analysis about the purposes of writing this kind of literature based on real books and stories written as children books in addition to provide some views of some critics about children literature and the way they provide their criticism of the works of some authors written as children literature with a personal opinion of the views of such critics to show how far they were fair in their criticism.

Body

Children literature is not a kind of literature which is written with no purposes but it used to be written for specific purposes since early ages. The purposes of children literature can be classified to two main purposes which are instruction purposes and delight ones, the instructions that children books could contain such as education, warnings, hints, lessons and advice turn the work to be a didactic one which could be enjoyable or boring. When the children book is funny and interesting it is an entertaining book which is written for the purposes of enjoying, entertaining and providing children with funny and delightful time while reading. All such purposes or some can be found in one work of children literature and the best works are written for both main purposes; instruction and delight. The ways instruction and delight are presented into the children books could be very simple and direct or they could be complicated and indirect and this what gives the work its value according to how it is written. Mostly, the authors of children literature are adults and this adds to the children book some sort of adult policies and power with presenting the story of the book to children through the adults own ideologies and this happens in most works of children literature yet today's children literature gives children a wider space of thinking, deciding and reacting with the books' events. (Hunt, 1991)

Didacticism always serves purposes of instruction and this is obvious in earlier children literature which used to present some lessons and advice through didactic technique which clearly appear through the themes, the language and the character. One type of the very early children books is the chapbooks which were cheap and popular and were simply bought from any pedlar. Such books were not in fact written specifically for children but the way they were written in was as if it is addressing an inexperienced audience and they usually attracted children. An example of this is a copy which was cut down from " A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" which was a chapbook written in 1787 and contained some different scenarios such as " Letter to Sir" and " Letter to Madam" that provided a clear example for direct didacticism through a direct advice that tells that rewards are only given to the good people and to be good is to obey, do duties and follow elder instructions and you will get what you wish of materialistic things. The children in those scenarios are classified according to their genders as what is asked from girls to follow is different from what girls should do, for example the good girls should be good at sewing and needle works but boys are thanked for being good at learning their lessons. Didacticism here is serving differentiation according to gender which could lead to other kinds of differentiation between people in societies. Yet through time, there were many tries to improve the children literature and written specifically for children and this lead to presenting didacticism that serves more elevated purposes and presented in a better way; "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone" which was written in 1997 by J. K. Rowling is a good example that didacticism has been more elaborated and providing better chances for developing children's minds. In that novel didacticism serves indirectly purposes of elevating virtue over vice through the Character of Harry against that of Volde Mort in spite of the religious controversy it made in America. (Hunt, 2009)

From the story of Harry's parents' death, the reader is told that Harry is  representing the power of good against evil which is clear from Hagrid's words:

"‘You-Know-Who killed ’em. An’ then – an’ this is the real

myst’ry of the thing – he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin’ by then. But he couldn’t do it. Never wondered how you got that mark on

yer forehead? That was no ordinary cut. That’s what yeh get when a powerful, evil curse touches yeh – took care of yer mum an’ dad an’ yer house, even – but it didn’t work on you, an’ that’s why yer famous, Harry. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill ’em, no one except you, " (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, p45)

The previous words said by Hagrid to Harry to tell him that no one could beat the evil Voldemort but the good powers of Harry which he got since he was born as his parents were good witch and wizard and were killed by Voldemort. Didacticism here in that novel serves deeper purposes such as justice, God, faith and fighting against evil but the writer chose a wide world of characters and events as readers can judge by themselves what is right and what is wrong as perhaps some children se that magic is not a virtue. This shows that the didacticism approach was well elaborated within a magical fantasy world  in order to provide children with the needed fun and entertainment.(Gradesaver team, 2014)

Instruction is related to delight in children literature. Delight is an important element in literature specially when it is written for children. Most the fairytale stories we used to read have the delight element as well as that instructional one such as "Snowhite", "Cinderella" and all the stories about ogres as there is always a lesson to learn about rewarding the good at last but with all the imaginative actions and long journeys which are full of adventures. Sinbad's story is a story which has delighting elements such as all the fun accompanying his travels with a lesson to learn in each travel such as courage and co operation but here in that example instruction was not meant while writing and the excitement took more space than it should take. "Robinson Crusoe", for example included too much religious lessons which made it hard to enjoy the adventure. Critics as Jack Zipes found that the fairytales are not meant to be didactic but were just written for entertainment purposes with the intention to attract children through the imagination element and to have a wide audience. (Zipes, 2005, Jack)

Being respectable is not a condition for a literary work to be popular and vice versa. Chapbooks, for example were popular but they did not receive the respect appreciated as they used to have random parts of everything such as poetry, verse, novels and fairytales. "Children’s literature: birth, infancy, maturity" is an essay for Mathew Grenby affirmed this by talking about the popular book in the 18th century and the respectable books and that they both were different in everything such as the respectable books being well made of good materials, organized and written for specific didactic purposes but most popular books are not having the quality characteristics such as they lack to the good arrangement, preparation, good print and clear fonts and that some books could be both popular and respectable if they could carry all the advantages of both kinds of books for children as to write for children is a main reason to try to be respect in language, words, lessons or ideas presented to children who are ready to receive and apply such lessons. To be respectable also does not mean not to be funny, imaginative and creative as children themselves do not read for didactic reasons or for receiving lessons, they mainly read for pleasure that's why they should be pleased while and after reading. "Alice in Wonderland is a vivid work full of images and adventures with many messages to be sent to children such as having ambition, being brave, helping others and many other didactic lessons.(Grenby, 2009)

The stories we used to read when as children such as the princesses stories which used to provide the ideal girl or boy as beautiful, neat, polite, weak, dependent and almost a complete person, some of them should not receive great respect while others such as :" The Ugly Duckling" presented models that are not that perfect but deserving rights of life, I see that such kinds of children works are respectable and delightful. The stories we read in childhood seemed to be didactic to the degree they were direct enough to make us disobey them  such as the story of " The Girl in red and the Wolf", I remember that I wished to go out to the jungle wasting my time collecting flowers and eating apples, I never felt afraid of the wolf, this is because presenting the lesson was such a kind of forcing a child to be obedient without taking into account the stubborn nature of children or their intelligence and understanding. Yet as they held the intention to be instructive and delightful, we were attracted just for the entertaining scenes and adventures in such books and stories. (Arab Open University, Block1, Children Literature)

There is no literature without criticism which enriches it and gives the literary works such as children literary works, deep dimensions and let the student of children literature understand new things about the work. Critics like Hunt helped me understand the power of the adults I usually felt when I was a child reading a book as sometimes I felt hatred for a story due to the amount of advice and control of the adult held in it. Grenby was good in his presentation for the respectable and popular works but I think that he was not accurate about the difficulty of putting measurements to judge a book as I think this needs deep reading and studying for the book to judge it with clear measurements such as not having the good language or the moral to be not respectable and when the book is well known and read and famous, it is popular so what is the problem? I like Zipes opinions regarding the fairytales as I see that they were written with no intention to be didactic or authors of them should have been more careful as I see that most characters were either rich or get marry at last to the rich handsome prince and live in palaces which is not a lesson to teach as it is not suitable to teach girls to think of rich princes as an ambition in life.

Conclusion

Children literature is a great fun although it was written as didactic as both children and adults enjoy reading it. Instruction and delight are two related elements that construct a good work of children literature and the book written for children should be both respectable and enjoyable in order to be popular and attractive. Children literature can affect people's lives since they are children and when they are grown up adults.

References

• http://www.gradesaver.com/harry-potter-and-the-philosophers-stone/study-guide/about/

• Arab Open University, Block1, Children Literature.
• Hunt, 2009, Peter. ‘Instruction and delight.
• Grenby,2009, Matthew. ‘Children’s literature: birth, infancy, maturity’
• Zipes,2005, Jack, ‘Origins: fairy tales and folk tales’