MA Advanced Text Production howard@anglistik.uni-kiel.

de

Basics of children’s stories

There are different types of children’s stories that are available. In simplified form, these stories can be broken down
into two types:

1) Language acquisition stories

2) Thematic stories

Excluding the very early stages of language acquisition stories described in the next section, both types of stories
maintain standard creative writing aspects (narrative, character development, protagonist/ antagonist, plot
development, etc.). However, the language acquisition types often don’t include explanations of settings, or at least
only minimal descriptions of settings.

1) Language acquisition stories

These types of stories focus on elements of the language [examples include the Mr Men and Little Miss series by Roger
and Adam Hargreaves]. There is a range of developmental stages that vary from:

a) a simple word-per-page structure for very young children being read to by a teacher/parent or for children
learning to read to themselves, [These stories are usually accompanied by pictures that help understand the
word]
a. simple lexical sets of words [numbers, letters, days of the week, etc.]
b. nouns based on themes [types of transport, animals, etc.]
c. adjectives [colours, sizes, emotions, etc.]

through to

b) stories emphasizing and demonstrating grammatical forms and phrases, which are usually for older children
being read to by a teacher/parent, or eventually children reading to themselves. The language elements can
include:
a. tenses [including irregular verb forms]
b. comparative and superlative forms [-er, -est, more/less (adj) than, as (adj) as, The (adj)…, the (adj)…]
c. word forms [same word as verb, noun, adjective or as used in idioms]
d. assonance / consonance [e.g. the Little Mates series]

2) Thematic stories
Thematic stories involve the development of concepts in children’s heads. They are intended to teach either moral
and ethical decisions, and/or develop the understanding of vocabulary related to a theme, so that children can form
their own opinions about an issue. In more recent times, stories also have begun to tackle previously taboo topics, in
order to allow children to think over

a) morals
a. fairytales [e.g. Grimm’s fairytales]
b. new societal problems [divorce, death, incest, etc.]
b) vocabulary development
a. uses as many of the words, terms, and phrases related to a topic in context, so that children are able
to express the cnocepts in different forms within the language
b. uses the words in as many different forms as possible