First
impression
Our last
week’s theme was crossover and I have read three of the books on the list, so I
will talk a bit about all three because I cannot choose (having finished my
blog now, it might be a tiny bit long, so sit back and enjoy..).
I read His
Dark Materials about four years ago, my sister gave it to me and I loved it! I
just could not stop reading. I really enjoyed trying to understand all the
physics, but what really got me was the magic, the love, the idea of always
having your daemon next to you, to never be alone. That thought to me is so
beautiful. When Lyra had to leave her daemon behind, I felt so sad that I
cried, I felt her pain. I read all the books in no time and consider them some
of the most beautiful books I have read!
The other
book I read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I got from a
friend. One of my students had his presentation about the book and it did not
really appeal to me. But if somebody goes through the trouble of finding me a
book, I will go to the trouble of reading it and I am glad I did. It is
different from other books, because of the way it is written. Sometimes it was
a bit slow and repetitive, but I thought it was very interesting to look inside
Christopher’s head and to be taken along in his way of thinking and to see and
understand his logic and his fears.
All three
books had passages in it that really shocked me or made me very sad, that is
why I first wondered whether the books were even suitable for children. But
after talking about it in class and looking up information for this blog, I am sure children will love these books as
much as I did, because they experience the stories in a different way.
Class
discussion:
When I was
young I also read my mom’s book and enjoyed them very much, also lots of adults
can really appreciate youth literature as well. There never was a term to
describe books that appeal to children and adults at the same time, but since
Harry Potter there is ‘cross over’. Harry Potter was the first book which had
two different covers, one for children and one for adults. We discussed why
grown-ups like these books so much, is it because the general intellect is
declining? Or is it because church is less and less popular and people try to
find the magic in another way? Or maybe we are all just too busy and stressed
in our normal lives that we just want to be able to relax and read easy books.
There might be truth in all these statements, but to the people who are reading,
it does not matter.
The primary power of a cross over novel is the quality of the
story-telling. In any case it should be good children’s literature, this way
the author will have to stay true to the story line and entertain the reader. The
characters, setting and the plot lines should captivate the reader: child or
adult. And although there is (a lot of) violence and emotional conflicts, there
is a much broader sense of friendship that ties the story together (WCPL, 2013).
This is clear in all books, but to me most obviously in His Dark Materials. The
characters, the whole setting and plot hook you, from the way the landscape is
described, the lovely daemons, to the talking polar bears. The violence and the
cruelties are horrific and very painful but on the other side you see the tight
friendship between Lyra and Will and the bond, love and care between the
children and their daemons.
We also discussed in class that a lot of children wish
or think that their parents are not their real parents. This happens more or
less in all three stories (and coincidentally in all these three stories it is
the child against his or her father), but mostly in The Curious Case and His
Dark Materials. This makes sense as Erikson describes this inner urge of ‘rebelling
against parents’ in the fifth stage of Identity vs. Role Confusion, when
children are between twelve and eighteen years old (thiememeulenhof, n.d.). The
protagonists in these two books are respectively twelve and fifteen and so fit
into this stage. Bruno, the main character of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is
nine and still in stage four, where he is ready to start sharing responsibility
and striving to make plans and build up something with other kids (thiememeulenhof,
n.d.). Bruno starts to have these feelings, but you sometimes see that he is
not completely ready to take the responsibility yet (e.g. the scene with Shmuel
in the kitchen, or eating the food meant for Shmuel). Because he is not in
stage five yet, he is not rebelling that obviously against his parents,
although he does disobey them by going to the fence which he was not allowed
and we eventually know that he dies ‘because of his father’.
Age suitability/theory:
Looking at the different stages described above I would
recommend The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to children from nine and up and
adults of course. I have looked on a couple of websites and it seems that
children get education on WWII from about the age of 10-11 (eureka, n.d.)(onderwijs,
n.d.). Therefore the young children will in my opinion not grasp the real awfulness
of what is going on, but they will understand Bruno’s feelings of wanting to go
out and explore and secretly meeting with his new friend. Adults and older
children on the other hand will know what is going on and will feel the sadness
and danger throughout the whole book.
The Curious Case tells us about a fifteen year old,
but because he is autistic he sometimes comes across as younger, that is why I believe
that it would be a suitable book for children from the age of eight and up.
Although it was written for adults, children actually love it. The writer’s son
has read it three times now and he is twelve and he states that he had a
different experience every time he read it. He realized things about
Christopher’s point of view, he took it on face value at first then he started
seeing other point of views which contradicted with his and it got more and
more sophisticated (the guardian podcast, 2013). This is what we discussed in
class as well, young children do not care when other children are different,
they just accept them the way they are. As they grow older, they start to see
the differences and they will form an opinion about it. So at every age they
will have a different experience reading the book. For adults it is absolutely
interesting to look inside Christopher’s head, to see how he forms certain
ideas and why he acts in a particular way, they might even be able to connect
with him sometimes (the guardian, 2013).
The author did not have a specific target group in his
mind when writing His Dark Materials, when thinking of his audience he thinks of a group that
includes adults, children, male, female, the old, middle-aged and the young,
everyone who can read actually (Philip Pullman, n.d.). That is why I would recommend this book from the age of nine and up.
Lyra is twelve so she still has the innocence of children in stage four. Children
can definitely identify with her, with her quest to find her father, with her
love for her daemon and her caring for her best friend. Adults will think about
the physics and could recognize other themes and subjects in the book, a few of
them are: the Inquisition, the Fall and Temptation, good and evil and another
look on some Christian convictions (Philip Pullman, n.d.) .
Epilogue:
When I heard at the start of this block that we had to
read a book a week I was happy that I had already read a lot of them (and I still
am, because it is a lot to do), but having finished this course I know I haven’t
nearly read one tenth of all of the books I want to read. Looking on websites,
searching for literature and insides on the books, themes and theory, I came
across more titles I want to read and more authors who have written even more
books I need to read. I saved them all in my phone not knowing where to start. I
also read some of the books my teammates read for the bookfair, but most of
them have sequels and I do not know which book to read first now. I really
enjoyed this block, the class discussions were very interesting and having to
read books is the best homework you can get. Even though I did not like writing
the blogs, looking up information for them did make me alter my thoughts about
the book sometimes (Catcher in the Rey for example).
I do look at stories in a different way now. I realize
that when I recommend books to my students now I give them different reasons to
read it to what I used to do and I might even be more passionate about it than I
already was...
Sources:
Eureka. Retrieved November 6th from http://eureka.inos.nl/?q=node/51
The
Guardian. Stage. Retrieved November 6th from
The
Guardian. Podcast. Retrieved November 6th from http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2013/may/03/mark-haddon-curious-incident-podcast?popup=true
Ga het na Onderwijs. Op
bezoek. Retrieved
November 6th from http://onderwijs.gahetna.nl/op-bezoek
Thieme
Meulenhoff. Retrieved November 6th from http://tm.thiememeulenhoff.nl/assets/documentenservice_zen/hjk/archief/2002/10_juni_2002/jrg29-juni2002-vos-vertrouwenkrijgeninjezelfendewereld-erikeriksonhetfundamenteelvertrouwenvoordeidentiteitsontwikkeling.pdf
Washington
Centerville Public Library. Retrieved
November 6th from http://wcplfineprint.blogspot.nl/2010/11/crossover-literature-its-ok-to-read.html
