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Children's Books (children + book)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences33%

Selected Abstracts

The boundaries of property: lessons from Beatrix Potter

THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2004
Nicholas Blomley
Beatrix Potter's classic children's book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, offers an example of a well-entrenched view of property and its geographies. Drawing on this, and current scholarship on law and geography, I explore the ways in which the spatial boundaries of property are formally conceived. I then compare this model with the findings of a qualitative research project on people's everyday practices and understandings of their garden boundaries in inner city Vancouver. While this provides partial support for the formal model, I find more pervasive evidence for a very different view of the boundaries of property. While the dominant account assumes a determinate, individualistic and ordered view of the boundary, my findings suggest a more relational, porous and ambiguous alternative. The gap, however, proves instructive. In conclusion, therefore, I return to law and geography to reflect on the importance of thinking through the ways legal forms, such as property, are materially and spatially enacted within particular places. Finally, the study alerts us to the multivalent political possibilities of property. While property can, indeed, be individualistic and reified, it also contains more collective and fluid meanings. Le livre classique d'enfants, Pierre Lapin, par Beatrix Potter, donne un exemple d'une opinion bien implantée de la propriété et de ses géographies. En tirant de ce sujet, et de l'érudition récente de la loi et de la géographie, j'examine les façons dans lesquelles les frontières spatiales d'une propriété sont conçues officiellement. Ensuite, je met en parallèle ce modèle avec les résultats d'un projet de recherche qualitatif qui explique les habitudes quotidiennes des personnes et les compréhensions des frontières de leurs jardins dans les quartiers déshérités du Vancouver. Pendant que ce projet donne du soutien partiel pour l'ancien modèle, je trouve de l'évidence qui se fait sentir un peu partout pour une opinion très différente au sujet des frontières des propriétés. Tandis que l'explication principale admette une vue au sujet de la frontière qui est déterminante, individualiste et hiérarchisé, mes résultats proposent une alternative plus relationelle, plus perméable, et ambiguë. La lacune, cependant, démontre d'être éducative. En conclusion, donc, je retourne à la loi et à la géographie pour réfléchir sur l'importance de penser comment les formes légales, comme la propriété, sont promulgués d'une façon matérielle et spatialle dans les endroits particuliers. Finalement, cette étude nous avertit aux possibilités politiques et polyvalentes de la propriété. Lorsque la propriété peut, bien sûr, être individualiste et bien fondé, elle peut contenir des significations plus collectives et fluides. [source]

Gatty's Tale; or virtue restored

ENGLISH IN EDUCATION, Issue 1 2008
Vivienne Smith
Abstract Most children's books assume a moral framework in which their characters live and grow, but in most cases, morality remains extrinsic to the characters themselves: it is what happens to them and what they do, rather than what they believe and who they become. Kevin Crossley-Holland's novel Gatty's Tale, is unusual in that it presents a protagonist for whom being good matters for its own sake. This article explores Gatty's developing goodness, and shows how Crossley-Holland helps young readers understand what virtue is. [source]

A Bridge Too Far?

ENGLISH IN EDUCATION, Issue 2 2001
Floppy Fail the Apprentice Reader, How Biff, Kipper
Abstract This article is the result of a re-examination of reading scheme books. Taking a literary perspective, the implied reader was investigated in the most popular scheme, The Oxford Reading nee, in order to ascertain how the reader is constructed by the text. It is argued that such texts covertly construct a passive, struggling reader. As such, this has important implications for the National Literacy Strategy, particularly in the selection of texts for Guided Reading. Summary Reading scheme books are designed to bridge the gap between the oral language of the child and the literary language of the book. What is considered important is a recognisable primary world. There is little dialogue yet the language is supposed to reflect that of the child. Short simple sentences devoid of cohesive devices are considered easier to read because the apprentice reader is deemed not to have stamina. Key words such as nouns and verbs are emphasised and little attention is paid to rhythm, hence few elisions and much repetition. As such the reading scheme does not reflect the language of the child for there is little colloquial expression and the lack of literary features actually makes the text very difficult to read. Implied is a reader who is going to find the whole process difficult and has little to bring to the text. On the other hand the children's literature analysed enjoys a variety of narratives and subject matter yet all support the apprentice reader. Such literary texts employ cohesive devices, the third person has a sense of telling with echoes of the oral tradition while those in first person offer a sense of a teller close to the reader. Direct speech is used, which acts as a bridge from the oral to the literary world. The reader is being guided and helped and not left to struggle. Ironically, it is the literary text that offers more support than the supposedly carefully constructed reading scheme. Furthermore, it can be seen that the reading scheme examined constructs a passive reader to whom things happen. The construction of childhood itself is without joy, excitement and wonder. There is a dullness in the text and a dullness in the characters and the plot that constructs a negative view of reading and a negative construction of the child. The model in Figure 1 summarises the difference between the two types of text: Clearly this has implications for texts selected for pupils to read in the National Literacy Strategy, particularly for Guided Reading. There is no shortage in the UK of appropriate, well-written and superbly illustrated children's books that challenge, support and create an interest in literature. It remains a mystery why the dull reading scheme still has such a strong place in the primary classroom. [source]

Autonomy and Authorship: Storytelling in Children's Picture Books

HYPATIA, Issue 1 2010
LOUISE COLLINS
Diana Tietjens Meyers and Margaret Urban Walker argue that women's autonomy is impaired by mainstream representations that offer us impoverished resources to tell our own stories. Mainstream picture books apprentice young readers in norms of representation. Two popular picture books about child storytellers present competing views of a child's authority to tell his or her own story. Hence, they offer rival models of the development of autonomy: neo-liberal versus relational. Feminist critics should attend to such implicit models and the hidden assumptions they represent in children's books. [source]

How welfare reform affects young children: Experimental findings from Connecticut,A research note

JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2003
Susanna Loeb
As welfare-to-work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random-assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth. Children of mothers who entered Connecticut's Jobs First program, an initiative with strict 21-month time limits and work incentives, displayed moderate advantages in their early learning, compared with those in a control group. A number of potential mechanisms for this effect are explored, including maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care. Mothers in the new welfare program are more likely to be employed, have higher income, are less likely to be married, have more children's books in their home, and take their children to libraries and museums more frequently. However, these effects explain little of the observed gain in child outcomes. Other parenting practices and the home's social environment do explain early learning, but these remained unaffected by welfare reform. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management [source]

Lemurs and kids: primate conservation awareness through children's books

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 5 2009
Bernardo Urbani
No abstract is available for this article. [source]