I might be getting carried away. Too much planning is bound to backfire. On the other hand, I’ve got ideas floating around in my head that need some discussion to become properly formulated. So I’d like to do that now, while they are fresh. If I end up not using them right away, at least they will then be sitting there in some usable form when an opportunity arises.
To begin, some background. Lots of folks admit to math anxiety or hating science or whatever and how, as homeschooling parents, we try to teach this stuff anyway without passing on those negative feelings about particular subjects to our kids. Math seems to be the most common of these subjects but I’m sure folks have other ones. Mine is literature. I was an early and prolific reader. But I never “got” literature. As a discipline. I clearly worked out how to do what needed to be done, but I never really got comfortable with literary analysis. Consequently, I have avoided it as an adult (an adult that spent the better part of her adult life in and around universities so that isn’t as obvious as it seems). I became comfortable enough with literary texts more recently, but only if I could analyze them as a sociologist. I still don’t get what literary theorists do.
Now most of you are probably thinking, “Who cares? What difference does it make?” Particularly since my kid is only 10. But I think maybe it does. My kid is a strong a prolific reader. And I want to help her do more with some of what she reads. I’m fine with the using good literature to teach writing (including grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.). I know how to do that. And I’ve got Bravewriter to help. But all the “literature guides” for kids books contain questions that make my skin crawl.
A while ago I picked up Deconstructing Penguins in the bookstore just because it looked interesting. I loved it. The authors argue that you can do proper literary analysis with kids as young as 7 and they can have fun doing it. You can have deep and interesting conversations about good quality children’s literature. Their approach is to treat literature as a mystery — What is the story really about? They introduce the concepts of protagonist and antagonist and help kids discover the underlying themes of a book.
I’ve found a short article by the authors that gives you a flavour of their approach.
They give lots of excellent examples. And if we are reading one of the books they talk about, their example gives me enough confidence to talk about it with Tigger. So when she and her dad read Jack London’s Call of the Wild, I talked about these ideas. I even explained the protagonist/antagonist thing using the Charlotte’s Web example from the book because I knew she was very familiar with that story. Tigger was very open to this sort of discussion.
Recently we’ve been reading Poppy. It’s the August book for The Arrow so we have lots of spelling, grammar, punctuation and literary elements stuff to do with it. But we also really like the book. And it has some interesting themes in it. I’ve googled to see if there are any guides to help me out with discussions but all I find are the questions that make my skin crawl. Questions that just hit the surface or only hit on the most obvious stuff. And way to many questions about how certain things make you feel. Shudder.
I think I have a handle on the protagonist/antagonist thing. And I’m going to have a go at this. But my lifelong failure to “get” literature is creating some confidence issues. So if anyone wants to chip in with some confidence boosting advice, I’d love to hear from you. Also links to useful discussions of this particular book or resources that take this kind of approach to books that I could use to help me guide Tigger as we read stuff together.
And because I’m the kind of person who has a PhD and used to work in a (possibly “the”) Cultural Studies department, I’m also interested in what all those of you with degrees in literature (and I know you are out there) think of the approach the Goldstone’s propose. I’m not planning on introducing poststructuralism or anything but I’d love to know where this kind of thing fits in those bigger debates in the discipline.