Week 1_ Notes: Orientation (children literature)

Week 1
What’s Children Literature?	Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, 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. There is no single or widely used definition of children's literature. It can be broadly defined as anything that children read or more specifically defined as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama intended for and used by children and young people.
兒童文學的定義?	“關於兒童文學的論述，一向有兩種不同的態度。 　　第一種態度是：為兒童「選擇」優美的，合適的讀物。懷著這種態度的論述者，為「兒童文學」所下的定義必然是「廣義」的，那就是：凡是寫兒童的，為兒童寫的，兒童自己寫的，通通是兒童文學──只要它是適合兒童欣賞的。「兒童文學」的這種定義的優點是「廣大」，它幾乎包括了人類所有的一切文字製作，古代的，現代的，中國的，外國的，都是兒童文學，只要它是優美的，適合兒童欣賞的。它的重點在「選擇」，重點在定義後面的那個「但書」──不管怎麼樣，必須是優美的，適合兒童欣賞的。它強調「適合兒童欣賞」這個標準。…”
A critical handbook of children's literature Rebecca J. Lukens Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990 - 309 頁	Unlike an anthology of children's literature, which includes only chapters or summaries, this outstanding seventh edition teaches how to make appropriate judgments about what constitutes quality children's literature. Using the critical standards for all literature, explanations are supplemented by special issues in judging books for children. Taking readers through the definitions of literary terms by reviewing plot, character, theme, setting, point of view, style, and tone, and including special sections on censorship and the importance of reading aloud, Lukens provides sound criteria for assessing the merit of children's books. The book also includes chapters on rhymes, poetry, biography, and informational books. Emphasis is placed on multicultural literature, making it a book intended for use with a wide variety of children's books. For anyone interested in children's literature, education, language arts, and/or educational media.
Categories of children literature
a.      Picture book	A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil, among others.
b.      Fairy tales	A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features European folkloric fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids, or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables.
c.       Fables	Fable is a literary genre. A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities such as verbal communication), and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly in a pithy maxim.
d.      Nursery rhyme	The term nursery rhyme is used for traditional poems and songs for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century and in North America the term "Mother Goose Rhymes", introduced in the mid-1700s, is still often used.
e.       Fantasy	Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three, all of which are subgenres of speculative fiction.
f.       Adventure fiction	Adventure fiction is a genre of fiction in which an adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, forms the main storyline.
g.      Literary realism	Literary realism is the trend, beginning with mid nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors, toward depictions of contemporary life and society as it was, or is. In the spirit of general "realism," realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.
h.      Initiation	Initiation is a rite of passage marking entrance or acceptance into a group or society. It could also be a formal admission to adulthood in a community or one of its formal components. In an extended sense it can also signify a transformation in which the initiate is 'reborn' into a new role. Examples of initiation ceremonies might include Hindu diksha, Christian baptism or confirmation, Jewish bar or bat mitzvah, acceptance into a fraternal organization, secret society or religious order, or graduation from school or recruit training. A person taking the initiation ceremony in traditional rites, such as those depicted in these pictures, is called an initiate.
i.        Quest/ journey	In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and (frequently) as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and the overcoming of many obstacles, typically including much travel. The aspect of travel also allows the storyteller to showcase exotic locations and cultures (an objective of the narrator, not of the character).
j.        Bildungsroman	In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman, novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important.
What is that? What is that for? Why should I care?