Toward a method of classifying children's literature

Theorizing from Deb:

As a means of furthering my goal of helping my KidsOutAndAbout.com readership grow ever smarter and more thoughtful about their parenting, I have started to write more book reviews and do more interviews with children's authors on the KOA site. As you know from the post that is two posts below this one, I intend to pursue writing children's books in earnest. So I've started to read Madison's books more actively. Actually, what I'm doing is steering her toward books that I enjoyed when I was a girl, and I'm either reading them with her out loud, or snagging her books and reading them on my own, as a means of formulating what I like and don't like about such books.

We're about 2/3 of the way through The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, a book I loved as a kid and read until the pages fell out. Madison loves it too. Yesterday when the kids were at the pool with David, I read through to the end. I sobbed most of the way, as I would have throughout much of the first part had I not been under control while reading to Madison. It's not a sad book or anything, in fact it's quite a joyous book, but I think I was just astonished at how different it is to read the same book as an adult. One sees so much more in it. For example, I would never have understood as a child why The Secret Garden is, among other things, about redemption. The significance of redemption to human life was absolutely beyond me as a child (despite being Catholic then). I could understand it, theoretically, as a teenager, but there is no substitute for living life, making terrible mistakes and doing one's best to make up for them, to "get" what redemption is about and its significance to human relationships...and why books that address this topic can be so powerful. (Incidentally, I’m glad I have a good memory, because I can zoom back to childhood and remember what I got from reading a certain passage, and compare it with how I respond as an adult. I did this recently when I saw The Karate Kid Part II, as well. I loved that movie when I was 17. I saw it recently, and I still really like it, but now I’m seeing it from the adult point of view rather than the kid point of view. To say that it’s dramatically different is putting it mildly.)

Reading Madison’s books got me thinking a lot about the differences between the adult and child experiences of a book that is meant for children to read. After all, the book is written by an adult. Are some books experienced the same by both adults and children, and some experienced differently? What are the dimensions that comprise the differences?

I'm going to address chapter books only, because picture books are not intended to be read in the same way as are chapter books. It's true that picture books sometimes teach values, but I don't think they fall into my two neat categories, so they're out. I'm really interested in the higher-level conceptual thinking that is possible by readers of chapter books.

Here is my main conclusion: There are two kinds of children's books (aren't there always "two kinds" of everything?):

1) Books that place the child protagonists in a safe and stable world setting, in which the problem to be solved is situational, and achievements made and lessons learned are those typical in and useful to childhood.

2) Books that address personal development and integration into the rest of the world – an adult world – in which the personal development of the protagonist(s) is central to the plot.

Books of Type #2 win Newberry Medals, and books of Type #1 don’t. But I think both are important to have available for children.

Type #1 teaches concrete achievements that children ought to learn, and teaches them how to navigate their own world, an environment that has been carefully circumscribed by adults (difficult enough when you are a kid). It’s easier (and psychologically safer) for a young reader to identify with the protagonist in Type #1 books.

Type #2 books teach children to spread their mental wings beyond the concerns of childhood, to see themselves as the same person they will be when they are adults, to move in an adult world that is usually unstable and fraught with uncertainty. Type #2 gives young readers glimpses into the idea that things will change, that they will change, and that the direction in which change happens is important.

To put it briefly, Type #1 shows how to do, Type #2 shows how to become.

My next post will try to elucidate the characteristics of “Doing” books and “Becoming” books.

Question: What do you think of the words “Doing” and “Becoming” as designators of the two categories? I suspect there are better buzzwords to describe the two categories, and I’d love to have suggestions. Maybe "stable world" and "unstable world"? No, that's not that satisfying either.