Children and Adolescent

Literature
 Personal and Academic Values of Literature to Children

 Learning Outcomes:
 expound on children and adolescent literature and its
historical development, in relation to today’s rich
repertoire; and
 recognize how language development can be achieved
through the use of children and adolescent literature.
 Definition of Children’s Literature
 Children’s literature is a term generally used to cover all literature for children and
adolescent, including oral literature, such as fairy tales and nursery rhymes, graphic
narratives and young adult literature (Bland, 2013).
 It is the body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain
or instruct young people.
 The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world
literature, picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy
tales, lullabies, fables, folk songs, and other primarily orally transmitted materials.
 It is good-quality trade books for children from birth to adolescence, covering topics of
relevance and interest to children of those ages, through prose and poetry, fiction and
nonfiction.
 Content
Children’s books are about the experiences of childhood, both good and bad. Whether
these experiences are set in the past, present, or future, they should still be relevant to
the child of today. The content of children’s books includes amazingly diverse topics that
are of interest to children, such as dinosaurs, Egyptian mummies, world records, and
fighter planes.

 Quality
The best children’s books offer readers enjoyment as well as memorable characters and
situations and valuable insights into the human condition. These books have permanent
value.
The Personal Values

 Enjoyment
 Imagination and Inspiration
 Knowledge and Insights
 Understanding and Empathy
 Heritage and Cultural Identity
 Moral Reasoning
 Literary and Artistic Preferences
1. Enjoyment

 The most important personal gain that good books offer to children is the most
obvious one—enjoyment.

 Those of you who read widely as children will never forget the stories that were so
funny that you laughed out loud, the poem that was so lilting that you never forgot
it, or the mystery that was so scary that your heart thumped with apprehension.
Such positive early experiences often lead to a lifetime of reading enjoyment
2. Imagination and Inspiration

By seeing the world around them in new ways and by considering ways of living other
than their own, children increase their ability to think divergently.

Stories often map the divergent paths that our ancestors might have taken or that our
descendants might someday take.
Through the vicarious experience of entering a world different from the present one,
children develop their imaginations.

Stories about people, both real and imaginary, can inspire children to overcome
obstacles, accept different perspectives, and formulate personal goals.
 3. Knowledge and Insights

 Good books offer both information and wisdom.

 Informational books provide factual knowledge, whereas realistic fiction, fantasy, and
poetry offer insights into life, and historical fiction and biography offer both. When a
story is so convincingly written that readers feel as though they have lived through an
experience or have actually been in the place and time where the story is set, the
book has given them a valuable personal experience.
 Experiences such as these are broadening for children because they, as readers, are
taken to places and times that they could never actually visit—and might not want to!
Such experiences can also be good mental exercises for children, because they are
asked to view situations from perspectives other than their own.
 4. Understanding and Empathy

 Literature helps young people gain an appreciation of the universality of human

needs across history, which makes it possible for them to understand that all humans
are, to some degree, alike.
 Walking in someone else’s shoes often helps children develop a sense of social justice
and a greater capacity to empathize with others.
 All children can benefit from stories that explain what life is like for people who are
restricted by disabilities, politics, or circumstance or whose lives are different from
theirs because of culture or geography.
 Young people can relate on a more personal level with the events and people of
history when reading works of historical fiction told from the point of view of a
person their own age.
5. Heritage and Cultural Identity

Stories that are handed down from one generation to the next connect us to our past, to
the roots of our specific cultures, national heritage, and general human condition.

Stories are the repositories of culture.

Knowing the tales, characters, expressions, and adages that are part of our cultural
heritage is part of being culturally literate.

Stories based on actual events in the past help young people gain a greater appreciation
for what history is and for the people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who made history.
6. Moral Reasoning

Often, story characters are placed in situations that require them to make moral decisions.
Young readers naturally consider what they themselves would do in such a situation. As the
story unfolds and the character’s decision and the consequences of that choice are
disclosed, readers discover whether their own decisions would have had positive
outcomes. Regular experience with these types of stories can help young people formulate
their own concepts of right and wrong.

Moral reasoning is an integral part of character education, a strand in the social studies
curricula of many elementary schools today that deals with the principles by which one
lives. Character education programs such as “Character Counts” are available for purchase,
but reading and discussing well-selected works of literature can serve the same purpose.
7. Literary and Artistic Preferences

Another valuable result of children’s interacting with literature is that they quickly come to
recognize the literary and artistic styles of many authors and illustrators.

Children who read regularly from a wide variety of children’s books soon develop their own
personal preferences for types of books and select favorite authors and illustrators.

Personal preference and interest as expressed through self-selection of reading materials are
powerful reading motivators.

The more children know about their world, the more they discover about themselves—who
they are, what they value, and what they stand for. These personal insights alone are sufficient
to warrant making good books an essential part of any child’s home and school experiences. But
literature is also valuable for its academic benefits, as will be discussed in the following section
Academic Value
 Reading
 Writing
 Content-Area Subjects
 Art Appreciation
1. Reading

 Many of you already may have reached the common sense deduction that reading ability,
like any other skill, improves with practice. Many teachers and librarians believe that
regular involvement with excellent and appropriate literature can foster language
development in young children and can help them learn to read and value reading

 Reading aloud to children by parents and caregivers and sharing literature with students
in the classroom greatly benefit children’s acquisition of reading skills and their attitudes
toward reading
2. Writing

By listening to and reading excellent literature, children are exposed to rich
vocabulary and excellent writing styles, which serve as good models for
their own speaking and writing voices.

The acquisition of a larger vocabulary through reading offers young writers

better word choices for their own stories. Devices found in books such as
the use of dialect, dialogue, and precise description are often assimilated
into students’ own writing.
3. Content-Area Subjects

In reading about and discussing children’s literature, you will often hear the phrase literature across
the curriculum. This means using works of literature as teaching materials in the content areas of
social studies and history, science, health, and mathematics. Good teachers have always used
literature across the curriculum. The logic for this practice is sound. Many trade books contain
information that is relevant to the topics studied in school.

Moreover, this information is often presented through captivating, sometimes beautifully

illustrated, narratives that are interesting to students and therefore are more comprehensible and
memorable. When using literature across the curriculum, teachers and students are not confined to
the textbook as the sole resource. Using several sources of information has always been considered
prudent both in and out of school, because doing so usually provides fuller factual coverage of
topics and leads to wiser, more informed decisions on issues. Using literature across the curriculum
is particularly appropriate today, given the abundance of masterfully written, information-relevant
children’s trade books available to teachers and librarians.
4. Art Appreciation

Illustration in children’s picture books can be appreciated for its ability to help tell the story (cognitive
value) and for its value as art (aesthetic value). If you appreciate art for its own sake, there is much
that you can do in your classroom to instill in your students a similar appreciation. For example, call to
your students’ attention particularly striking and unusual picture book illustrations. By doing so, you
show them that you value art. Discuss the artist’s style, the medium used (watercolor, oils, pastels,
etc.), the palette (range of colors), and how the artist’s style compares to the styles of other artists.
Suggest using picture book art as a model for applied art lessons. By encouraging your students to use
media, techniques, and topics suggested by picture book illustrations in their own artwork, you make
good use of a handy, valuable resource and in yet another way show that you value this art.

From the foregoing discussion, it should be clear that students are not the only ones in schools who
can benefit from children’s literature. As a teacher or librarian, you will find that excellent literature is
rich in social, historical, and scientific information about the world and its people and that it has great
potential for developing the entire elementary and middle-school curriculum.