Children's literature week two

Child development
Child development entails the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. It is a continuous process with a predictable sequence yet having a unique course for every child. It does not progress at the same rate and each stage is affected by the preceding types of development. Because these developmental changes may be strongly influenced by genetic factors and events during prenatal life, genetics and prenatal development are usually included as part of the study of child development.

Children’s literature

Definition: includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are enjoyed by children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader.

Children's literature can be traced to stories and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, that adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the 15th century, a large quantity of literature, often with a moral or religious message, has been aimed specifically at children. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" as this period included the publication of many books acknowledged today as classics.

---Arrange the list of children’s classic books

(1) picture books- Books includes lots of pictures.

(2) fairy tales- Fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids, or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments.

(3) fables- Fable is a succinct fictional story that features animals or inanimate objects which are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson.

(4) nursery ryhmes-Nursery rhyme is used for traditional poems and songs for young children.

(5) fantasy- Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting.  

兒童文學的補充

(1)文學(literature)-包含 poetry, drama, fiction, etc.

(2)兒童文學起源- picture books +解說 eg. characters, plots, theme, and point of view

(3)兒童文學的常見主題- friendship, leadership, and companionship 並且加上勵志,目的是幫助孩子發現天分(gift)

The North Wind and the Sun

The North Wind and the Sun is one of Aesop's Fables. It is type 298 (Wind and Sun) in the Aarne-Thompson folktale classification. The moral it teaches about the superiority of persuasion over force has made the story widely known. It is also known for being a chosen text for phonetic transcriptions. The story concerns a competition between the North Wind and the Sun to decide which is the stronger of the two. The challenge was to make a passing traveler remove his cloak. However hard the North Wind blew, the traveler only wrapped his cloak tighter to keep warm, but when the Sun shone, the traveler was overcome with heat and soon took his cloak off.

The Fox and the Grapes

The Fox and the Grapes is one of the Aesop's fables, numbered 15 in the Perry Index. The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally succinct. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression "sour grapes" originated from this fable. The fable of The Fox and the Grapes is one of the few which feature only a single animal protagonist. There are several Greek versions as well as one in Latin by Phaedrus (IV.3) which is terse and to the point:

Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.' People who speak disparagingly of things that they cannot attain would do well to apply this story to themselves.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved. The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking wolves are attacking his flock. When one actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf. In later English-language poetic versions of the fable, the wolf also eats the boy. This happens in Fables for five year olds (1830) by John Hookham Frere, in William Ellery Leonard's Aesop & Hyssop (1912), and in his interpretation of Aesop's Fables (1965) by Louis Untermeyer.

"Sigh No More, Ladies..."-- William Shakespeare

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh nor more;

    Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never;

        Then sigh not so,

        But let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny;

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into. Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,

    Or dumps so dull and heavy;

The fraud of men was ever so,

    Since summer first was leavy.

        Then sigh not so,

        But let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into. Hey, nonny, nonny.

Much Ado About Nothing-- William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedic play by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623. Much Ado About Nothing is generally considered one of Shakespeare's best comedies because it combines elements of mistaken identities, love, robust hilarity with more serious meditations on honour, shame, and court politics.

By means of "noting" (which, in Shakespeare's day, sounded the same as "nothing" as in the play's title, and which means gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other, and Claudio is tricked into rejecting Hero at the altar on the erroneous belief that she has been unfaithful. At the end, Benedick and Beatrice join forces to set things right, and the others join in a dance celebrating the marriages of the two couples.

Vocabulary

anthro: human

anthropomorphized

meaning: to attribute human form or personality to

example: Our purpose is efficient , pragmatic , professional and innovative , to make products of high quality with strict scientific attitude and afford anthropomorphized post sale service that satisfy customer requirements.

Hans Christian Andersen

as a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, express themes that transcend age and nationality.

Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", "Thumbelina", and many more.

His stories have inspired ballets, animated and live-action films, and plays.

Aesop's Fables

The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop’s death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere. The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the later Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe. The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the Aesop corpus, even when they are demonstrably more recent work and sometimes from known authors.

Additional Supplement

Owe to[介系詞]

example: All this was owing to ill health.

Treasure her memory

Pledge my friendship

Don’t chat on me.

Don’t lie to me.

Don’t deceive me.

HW-watch the Charlotte’s Web

Video

How to take Great notes

Taking Better Lecture notes