CHILDREN LITERATURE : READER RESPONSE

Literature is a luxury, fiction is a necessity (Kayman, 2003). Teaching the children by using children literature is one of the fun ways that can be used by teachers to deliver message to them. In this world, there are no uninteresting things, there is only exists the uninterested people. So, as teachers we play important role to create interesting learning environment for the kids. Not only that, children literature is also indirect teaching method that we apply at school. According to (Court & Rosental, 2007), children literature is a written text that use simpler vocabulary and storyline that suits the young readers. In this writing, there are two books with a common genre which is fable and the title of the stories is Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick by Mdu Ntuli, Nahida Esmail, Samantha Rice and The Stinky Little Kitten by Jim Peterson. There will be three things discussed regarding these books which are the elements of children literature, the suitability of the books and how the stories help in the children’s personal development.

Firstly, when reading these two stories there are few elements of children’s literature that can be analyse. The elements are the storylines and the themes. According to (Torraco, 2005), the storyline of a story is the root that can be considers as the main part of the story that have big impact towards the reader. There are three types of story line which is linear story, linear circular and branching plot. In the story Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick and The Stinky Little Kitten, both stories shares the same type of storyline which is linear story. Due to this type of storyline, it is easier for the kids to understand the story and the message from the writer itself. Young children are able to develop better understanding when using simple linear story as a stimulus (Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2014). Not only that, the storyline in both stories are light and simple. It is also interesting that made the kids wants to read more. A captivating storyline not only entertain the children but manage to make the children wanted to know more on what happen next (Danby, Ewing, & Thorpe, 2011).  The next element is theme. According to (Francis & Holloway, 2007), theme can be defined as the idea that hold the story together. The themes of these two stories are different with each other. In the story Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick, the theme of this story is honesty meanwhile in the story The Stinky Little Kitten, the theme is friendship. Although the themes are not the same, the storyline used managed to convey the theme clearly and can be understood by the children.

Other than that, the component that should be considered in children literature is the suitability of the stories for children. As teachers, we should consider many factors when choosing a story. This is because literature with suitable language and level will attract the kids attention (Hirsch, 2008). The genre of these two books are fable. It is one of good book genre that can use at school with the kids. Basically, fable is stories that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, or forces of nature that aims to convey a moral lesson (Neuman, 1999). This explains why the character of animals in the stories have their own dialogs. In addition, fable is one of suitable genre because children naturally love animals due to the uniqueness of those species (Mukherji & Albon, 2010). In Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick, we can see that Foxy Joxy is a bad character but creative at the same time. The kids will be attracted to know what happen next and indirectly they are reading it to the end of the story. The language used is also important when choosing stories that are suitable for the children. Simpler words and vocabulary are used in children literature to ensure that the stories are understandable (Cooper, 2010). The message in the stories are also direct and does not have hidden meaning between the line because at the age of the children it is suitable to put just a simple message in a story.

Lastly, the stories influence the personal development of the children through values and the language used in the stories. When children learn literature, they will also learn about the message and values that are shown from the characters in the stories (Cubukcu, 2014). This will be the factors that will affect their development. In these two books, there are different types of values and language level determined. In Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick, the value is not to be greedy and being honest towards other people meanwhile in The Stinky Little Kitten, the value is about friendship. These values will be taught to the children to help them develop themselves. Kids who are exposed to good values at young age will be able to generate higher values in themselves through adults’ guidance (Novak Jr., 2008). Not only that, the language used also plays important role in the children’s personal development. In Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick, the language use is very basic and suitable for kids that just started to read. It only uses basic vocabulary and does not contains bombastic words. Due to this, it will ease the children to master basic words such as fox, cut, teach and watermelon. The storyline itself is very short but interesting. On the other hand, The Stinky Little Kitten use a higher language level than Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick. The language used in that book is suitable for children that already master basic language and can understand few bombastic words in the book. The storyline is quite long than Foxy Joxy Plays A Trick. Due to this, the language development of the children will increase from their prior knowledge.

In conclusion, we can see that it is clear that in children literature there are few things that can be analysed. We can see that there are elements of children literature in the stories which is element of storyline and theme. Then, we have to consider the suitability of the books that we choose in order to ensure that the children will understand the content and they will get the message that the writer tries to deliver. Not only that, there are also few component of children literature that will be the factors which influence the children personal development. Based on the two stories I chose, we can clearly see that these two books fit with the criteria that we are looking for.

 REFERENCES

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Novak Jr., F. G. (2008). Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature. Christianity & Literature, 57(2), 322–329. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=31515827&site=ehost-live

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