I have become a big fan of Barbara Lehman's wordless picturebooks. Her simple, yet detailed drawings render her visual narratives in colorfully unexpected ways. The Red Book is about a book that is found by a boy and the adventures it takes him on.
A forum for the discussion of reading instruction in K-12 classroom settings focusing on workshop approaches to literacy instruction. For more information: www.frankserafini.com
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Overcoming Limitations: Some Thoughts with The Wild Things
The night that Max
wore his wolf-suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his Mother called
him “WILD THING!” and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without
eating anything.
From the opening lines
of the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, the author,
Maurice Sendak invites us to travel along with Max, to understand his vision of
the world and the limitations associated with childhood.
Through the use of
carefully chosen text and surrealistic pastel illustrations, Sendak invites us
to accompany Max on a journey into his imagination. Max is escaping the reality
of his life and his bedroom, by creating a world that allows him to push
through the limitations imposed upon him by his mother and the realities of his
childhood.
As the story
progresses, a forest grows in Max’s room, and of course in his imagination as
well. He is soon transported by private boat to an island where he tames the
Wild Things and is feared and respected. He quickly becomes the most Wild Thing
of all, and is crowned King of all the Wild Things.
As Max’s imagination
grows, we notice that the text slowly disappears and the illustrations grow to
three double page spreads that contain edge to edge illustrations with no text
at all. These “text-free” pages correspond to the “rumpus” where the story
reaches its climax and Max’s imagination has completely replaced reality.
In this book, the
written text becomes associated with reality and the illustrations become
associated with Max’s imagination. However, Sendak does not draw a definitive
line for us between reality and imagination, but slowly allows imagination to
overtake reality as the forest consumes Max’s bedroom, and then brings us back
to reality as the text reappears, Max finds his hot supper waiting for him, and
the book closes.
In Where the Wild
Things Are, Sendak has offered one of the first examples of a rebellious young
child as the main character in all of children’s literature. Max openly defies
his mother’s authority, talks back to her and is eventually punished for his
“wild” behavior. He has overstepped his limits and it becomes the Mother’s
obligation, to bring Max back in line for his inappropriate behavior.
Later in the story,
Max assumes the role of authoritarian, treating the Wild Things in much the
same manner as he was treated himself. Max takes charge of the rumpus,
declaring both a beginning as well as an ending to their hedonistic dance. By
these actions, Max limits the Wild Things' playfulness, taming them with the
trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once. Max wants to
gain control over this world, in much the same way his mother controls the
world outside of his imagination.
At the end of the
story, Max wants to return home where someone loves him best of all. He sails
home to find his supper waiting for him, and in Sendak’s classic finale, writes
that the supper “was still hot.” The illustrations have completely disappeared
on the last page, and a weary Max is left alone in the safety of his room with
the comfort of a warm meal.
The title of this column, Overcoming Limitations, refers to one of the central tensions in
Sendak’s book, as well as the current political climate we face as literacy
educators. Max tries to push the limitations imposed on him by his mother and
the reality of childhood in much the same way, as literacy educators, we are
trying to push the limitations imposed on us by mandated literacy standards,
narrowly construed reading programs and standardized assessments.
It is my contention
that the search for a single main idea of a piece of literature is one of the
most insidious limitations imposed upon young readers in our schools today.
Attempts to uncover the one true meaning of a text, have a narrowing effect on
the reading instructional practices and the literature discussions that take
place in contemporary elementary classrooms.
Based on modernist
assumptions about the nature of reality and the dualistic relationship between
the reader and the text, the New Criticism of the 1950's and 60's, still has a
profound effect on reading and literature instruction in today's schools.
Although the New Critics do not deny that readers are involved in the act of
reading, they hold firm to the belief that there is one "pure
meaning" of a text, and that only through precise, technical, objective
analysis of a text can readers come to know its true meaning. According to this
perspective, only the most accomplished readers, the critics in the upper
echelon of academia and literary theory, will ever come to know the true
meaning of a piece of literature. Students are seen as flawed, imperfect
readers, flailing around trying to find the secret codes necessary to unlock
the true meaning of a piece of literature.
In our educational
institutions, students become socialized into particular ways of reading and
responding to texts. In other words, they learn how to play the Reading Game at
school. Because of the effects of these modernist perspectives on reading
instruction, students are often found waiting for the teacher or the Cliff
Notes to tell them what a piece of literature is really all about. As time
progresses, the teacher is perceived as the unquestioned arbiter of meaning,
the keeper of the literary knowledge. Many students eventually end up
"opting out" of literature discussions, deciding, instead, to wait
for the teacher to hand them the correct answers. Instructional
practices or commercial reading programs that require children to read a piece
of literature and then answer a series of multiple choice questions to assess
their comprehension, reduce the readers' response to a story to those
interpretations made available in the assessments or sanctioned by the
instructional manual. In many of these situations, there is one predetermined
main idea for each story and it can be found hidden among the four choices on a
scan-tron scoring sheet.
In contrast to these
modernist perspectives, reader response and transactional theories of reading
have tried to bring the role of the reader and the context of the reading event
back into the interpretive process. Although the New Critics would not deny the
presence of the reader in the act of reading, reader response theories perceive
readers as active participants in the reading process, constructing meaning as
they transact with a piece of literature in a particular context.
Rather than searching
for a single main idea, reader response theories are concerned with the social
construction of a "plurality of meanings" that are shaped by the
social, cultural, political and historical context of the readers and the
reading event. Because of the social
construction of a plurality of meanings, the concept of main idea should now be
defined as one socially sanctioned
interpretation of a piece of literature, rather than the discovery of some
universal truth, hidden deep within the bowels of the text, accessible only to
a certain class of readers.
In our literature
discussions, the value of exploring the conflicting perspectives associated
with the construction of multiple interpretations, takes precedence over the
search for a universal main idea. In other words, rather than seeing a
plurality of meanings as a problem to be overcome, we need to see these diverse
interpretations as an opportunity to extend our discussions and help children
develop more sophisticated interpretations of the texts they experience.
From a transactional
or reader response perspective, children's literature can be used to create a space, an opportunity for classroom
teachers to support readers' multiple interpretations and the social
construction of meaning. Literature can be used to help children better
understand the world and their place in it, interrogate contemporary social
issues and understand their role as a citizen in a democratic society.
In contemporary
societies, children are bombarded everyday with visual images; billboards,
advertisements, hypertexts, videos and environmental print, in addition to the
images contained in children's picture books. The ability to make sense of
these visual images, along with the ability to make sense of printed text, has
a profound effect on children's reading abilities.
I believe that the use
of children's picture books, especially in the intermediate and middle grades,
can support children's ability to make sense of the visual images they
encounter in their everyday lives. The types of picture books we choose to read
with our students, and the community of readers we develop around these texts,
has a profound effect on the way they view the reading process and the way they
are positioned as readers. As readers read
picture books, they are required to transact with the visual images as well as
written text in order to construct meaning. It is the interplay between text
and illustrations that make picture books unique and require readers to attend
to different systems of meaning. Classroom teachers need to support readers as
they develop the ability to transact with visual images and written language if
they are to construct more sophisticated interpretations with picture books.
Lawrence Sipe has
written that “picture books allow children to have multiple experiences as they
engage in creating new meanings and constructing new worlds”. He explains that
the relationship between text and illustrations in a children's picture book is
a synergistic one, where the effects and meanings offered by the two in unison
are greater than the sum of the text and the illustrations individually.
In the picture book
Where the Wild Things Are, much of the ambiguity that exists, is only apparent
when the text and illustrations are taken together. Some clues in the text
indicate that Max did in fact leave his bedroom, while other clues indicate
that he was only imagining his journey to the Where the Wild Things Are. There
exists an ironic twist here, a sense of tension between what is offered in the
text and what is offered in the illustrations. Children perceive this tension
and have to participate in the production of meaning, using both the text as
well as the illustrations to make sense of the story.
Perry Nodelman
describes how the text and the illustrations “limit” each other and describes
this relationship as one of “irony”. Text contains temporal information, that
is presented to us in a sequential, linear fashion. We read the words in
sequential order and progress from the start to the ending of the book.
Illustrations, however, contain spatial information and are presented
“all-at-once”, allowing us to move our eyes around the page as we please.
Illustrations are a simultaneous visual experience, while the text is
sequentially delivered. This ambiguity between text and illustrations is just
one way in which Sendak creates tension in this classic piece of children’s
literature.
For example, in the
written text, Sendak describes Max’s travels as going through night and day, in
and out of weeks and almost over a year. This statement is in conflict with
Max’s return and the hot supper waiting for him. Many children in my elementary
classes have used their imagination to try and resolve this tension. One child
even suggested that Max's mother probably used a microwave oven to reheat the
food, so that it was warm when Max returned from his adventure.
In another example,
the illustrations portray a sense of elapsed time as Sendak alternates light
and dark colors in the sky suggesting the progression from day to night and
back to day. This passage of time and the tension between the illustrations and
text is further developed by the ambiguous illustrations of the moon. In one
picture it appears as a quarter moon and in others as a full moon. My students
have noticed these changes in the moon and suggested that time must have passed
if the moon had changed. However, this made them unsure about how the supper
could still be warm.
Roland Barthes has
offered a distinction between two types of texts, namely a writerly text and a
readerly text. A readerly text is one where the reader may consume almost
passively the meanings from the text, where the information is simply
"transmitted" as the reader allows the author to determine the
meaning. In comparison, a writerly text is produced actively by readers who
must put the text together as they read. According to Barthes,
the text forces readers to become active co-producers of meaning, writing the
text for themselves during the act of reading. Readers, especially when
transacting with picture books, must use both visual cues, as well as textual
references to make meaning, as they transact with the story.
It is my contention
that these types of writerly texts, picture books like Where the Wild Things
Are, that contain ambiguity, tension or irony between text and illustrations,
offer more opportunities for students and teachers to interact and construct
diverse interpretations. Along with the
characteristics of the texts being used, the type of the community of readers
we develop also plays an important role in the way readers transact with texts.
In reading communities where readers are seen as active participants in the
construction of meaning, the search is not for the main idea of a piece of
literature, but for the multiple interpretations that are offered by members of
the community.
Because of this, the
concept of readerly or writerly texts should not be allowed to exclude the
importance of the social context of the construction and negotiation of
meaning. In our classrooms, we may also create readerly or writerly communities
depending on how we react to students' interpretations to the stories we share. By conceptualizing the
reading process as a relationship among author, reader, text and context, a
reduction of the complexities inherent in any of the three vertices can result
in theoretical or pedagogical myopia that constrains the plurality of meanings
that may be constructed.
Whether the focus is
on the nature of the text (Iser), the social interactions of a community of
readers (Fish), the effects of the cultural, historical and political contexts
of the reading event, or the competencies that the reader brings to the reading
event (Luke), literary theorists that have suggested a distinction between a
monologic, text controlled model that focuses on finding the single, correct
interpretation of a text, and a dialogic, reader response model where multiple
interpretations are constructed in the social context of the reading event.
Margaret Meek Spencer has
argued that a picture book invites all kinds of readings and allows the
invention of a set of stories rather than a single story. Because our community
of readers accepted and supported a variety of interpretations, students
learned how to deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity that often comes with
the construction of multiple interpretations of a piece of literature. My goals
were to expand the opportunities for interpreting a piece of literature and
create a SPACE where students could share diverse interpretations in order to
deepen their own understandings of a particular text.
Ellen Langer (The
Power of Mindful Learning) has written that how we learn something affects how
we will use that knowledge. I believe that this pertains to our knowledge of
the elements and structures of literature as well.
Finally, as adults, our interpretations of children’s literature are drastically
different from that of our children and students. As “facilitators” of
literature studies, we need to be careful that our interpretations don’t
dominate our discussions and direct students’ thinking in ways that they would
not venture by themselves. There is a fine line between facilitating a
literature discussion and taking control over it, supporting certain
interpretations and suppressing others.
I have learned that I need to accept my student
interpretations, not as an incomplete or reduced version of my own
interpretations, but rather as a unique perspective on children’s literature
and the world. I need to help children live with the ambiguities inherent in quality
literature and help them move beyond the limitations imposed on them by
traditional school curriculum and instructional practices. In this way, I hope
to create a forum for children to see the possibilities in literature and feel
open to discussing the multiple interpretations and realities they create.
for further reading...
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
PBD: Picturebooks with Multiple Narrators
Today's Picturebook of the Day review features picturebooks with multiple narrators. Each of these stories are rendered with more than one point of view. I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat; George vs. George; and Come Away from the Water, Shirley all feature two narrators juxtaposed over a particular situation and provide the reader with a set of opposing viewpoints. The well known Voices in the Park extends this concept to feature four different voices each telling their version of a trip to the park. These books are great for introducing the concept of perspective and help students understand there is more than one way to look at things.
More of these books can be found on a booklist on my website at:
Monday, April 7, 2014
PBD: Sir Cumference and .....some math
This series of humorous picturebooks are excellent texts for introducing math concepts through children's literature. They are also delightful texts just to be read and pondered.
A list of picturebooks for teaching math concepts can be found on my website at: http://www.frankserafini.com/book-lists/mathpicbooks.pdf
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