Real Literature for the Young

This is the 25th anniversary edition, which comes out in October.

A customer came into Barnes & Noble a couple of days ago asking for a book that I love, Linnea in Monet's Garden. This is a fictional account of a girl and a grandfatherly neighbor taking a trip to France to visit the garden of Monet, which he epitomized with his paintings of impressionistic lily pads and bridges. It is an entertaining book, but what I love most about it is how it incorporates real paintings, photographs, and history of Monet and his family into a story.

There are many children's books that do this so beautifully. Another is Emily by Barbara Cooney, the story of a young girl who moves into the house across the street from the reclusive poet, Emily Dickinson. Sprinkled throughout the book are lines of Dickinson's poetry. 

Besides being engaging stories, books like Linnea in Monet's Garden and Emily have the added benefit of teaching history to children. Unfortunately, not many young children are exposed to Monet and Emily Dickinson. Mainly, that is because we tend to think children are not sophisticated to appreciate or understand art and poetry.

Soapbox #1: If you introduce children to art and beauty at a young age, there is no reason they can't appreciate it. A little goes a long way with children, and, certainly, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways of teaching the young about art, but introducing children to beauty is part of the job of a parent! Thank goodness there is literature around to help.

There is currently a line of board books, Babylit, that introduces classic stories to preschoolers. Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre, Dracula, and A Christmas Carol are all board book titles that use the characters and settings of these classic stories to introduce colors, numbers, the alphabet, and other preschool-appropriate information. But how would children benefit by having an introduction to classic stories at such a young age?

 

Soapbox #2: The younger you introduce a child to something, the more natural it seems to him or her.  One of the reasons I chose to homeschool my children for many years was so I could invest time on art and literature, making it a natural part of their education.

When I was teaching my son, M (not using his name to spare him any possible embarrassment :-) ), at home, I decided to introduce him to Shakespeare in elementary school.  Lois Burdett publishes a wonderful series of Shakespeare stories (illustrated by her students--it's inspired!) that is geared toward 2nd-5th graders, so we read through a couple of those.  One night at dinner, my husband told a story about something that had happened at work.  When he was done, M pipes up with, "Hey, that reminds me of when Prince Hamlet said, 'The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king'"!  Oh, my gosh!  My 3rd grade son had not just accurately quoted the Bard, he had related literature to a real life situation!  It's been over 10 years, and I'm still not over it.   M really enjoyed Shakespeare, so much that I felt like we were missing out on some other literature that I wanted him to know about. The only way I could persuade him to take a Shakespeare break was to promise that we would cover some new Shakespeare stories the next year. Because of his enthusiasm, we studied Shakespeare for three years. And this was the reason why:  When M got to high school and "had" to read Shakespeare, I didn't want it to be negative or challenging for him. I knew that introducing him to this classic author would give him just enough framework to read the real books in a meaningful way.

Reading Linnea or Babylit's Pride and Prejudice will not make your baby into a literary genius, but one thing it may do is introduce him or her to literary classics. Doing that will make reading the real thing familiar and hopefully a more enjoyable experience. Pin It