Results: We found 17 studies concerning pedagogic aspect of children literature, while 21 and17 studies were selected for didactic and therapeutic dimensions, respectively. From a pedagogic point of view, tales convey basic values useful for children lives. In a didactic perspective, properly chosen storybooks represent a valuable resource for school activities, improving students’ language skills and building up a friendly/respectful classroom environment. Children stories are also used by health professionals for therapeutic purposes (bibliotherapy) to prevent unhealthy habits and addictions, or address psychosomatic disorders. Finally, storybooks and web-based/digital stories can be an effective vehicle for health contents, to encourage the adoption of healthy lifestyles among schoolchildren.
Methods: We have searched for original articles (from 1960s to 2019), by using the following keywords: "fairytales" or "fairy tales" or "folktales" or "fables" AND "education" or"development" or "learning" or "teaching" or "school" or "curriculum" or "classroom" AND "children" or "child" or "kids" or "childhood" AND "health" or "wellbeing".
Background: Tales were transmitted from one generation to another, enriching young people with values, beliefs, imagination and creativity. Children’s literature still plays a crucial part in education as it provides knowledge and entertainment, representing a typical example of "edutainment". In this paper, we carried out a review to examine pedagogic, didactic and psychological/therapeutic dimensions of children’s literature, with the aim of highlighting its role in promoting students’ holistic development and wellbeing.
As suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO), health literacy should be incorporated in school curricula, in the context of a health-promoting classroom environment, in order to provide new generations with useful knowledge about healthy lifestyles. 11 - 13 Actually, school represents the ideal setting to perform health-related interventions and positively influence students’ wellbeing as well as their academic achievements. 14 - 16 The final goal is to involve young generations in practical actions about healthy habits (i.e. balanced nutrition and physical exercise) and prevention of risky behaviours (such as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, drug use) through a personal re-elaboration of health knowledge.In our previous systematic review, we have provided evidence for taking into account narrative-based strategies among the possible highly motivating approaches to encourage schoolchildren in adopting healthy eating habits since childhood. 17 , 18 More broadly, in this paper we explored the rationale for using children’s literature and storytelling in school setting to promote students’ global development and wellbeing.
Storybooks (or digital tales) are easier to understand for all children compared to abstract notions or theories, and might become special instruments for mapping the reality and conveying health contents, especially to the most vulnerable groups. 9 , 10
It is known that stories – by reproducing fictional situations that match with children’s real problems – allow them to feel comfortable and safe in difficult circumstances, ensuring emotional security and providing healthier ways to deal with internal struggles, life adversities and stressors. 7 Story-tales compensate what young people may lack, by presenting them positive patterns of behaviours and constructive models through the characters they could identify with. 8
From a didactic point of view, storybooks can provide children with new information about the world, enrich vocabulary and enhance specific language skills (in the classroom or at home), nurturing communication between the storyteller (teacher, parent or other professional staff) and the listeners. 5 , 6
Reading or listening to tales can be considered significant community practices, capable to impact on young generations, empowering and preparing them for the future. 3 Since culture is crucial for learning, stories have a fundamental part in shaping individual’s role in the society, becoming a helpful resource from didactic, psychological/therapeutic and pedagogic perspectives. 4
Myths, fables and fairytales – originally founded on oral tradition – allowed adults to communicate with young people in an uninterrupted process until nowadays. 1 Tales have been told everywhere and in every time to educate, entertain and increase individuals’ awareness about moral principles and customs, thus representing an important part of traditional heritage as well as a way to reinforce tolerance and mutual knowledge among different populations. 2
A narrative review has been carried out in order to analyze the pedagogic, didactic and psychological/therapeutic dimensions of children’s literature, highlighting the potential of narrative-based strategies in fostering students’ global development and wellbeing. Starting from January 2019, over a five-month period in the context of PhD in Human Relations Science of Bari University (Italy), we have searched on Web of Science for original articles and books, published from 1960s to 2019, by using the following keywords: “fairytales” or “fairy tales” or “folktales” or “fables” AND “education” or “development” or “learning” or “teaching” or “school” or “curriculum” or “classroom” AND “children” or “child” or “kids” or “childhood” AND “health” or “wellbeing”. We summarized definitions of health, presenting “wellbeing” (in its three dimensions of physical, emotional/mental and social health) as the main goal of every educational practice, and school system as the ideal setting to display health-related interventions. We also used citation tracking to detect other papers concerning children literature and narrative-based strategies (from oral storytelling to printed books and digital resources) as effective operational tool for conveying health contents to promote global development and wellbeing in school setting, along with the prevention of risky behaviours. Finally, we have provided brief definitions of children’s literature, presenting some historical insights about its pedagogic or didactic use, and psychological/therapeutic applications (bibliotherapy and narrative medicine).
Children’s literature is broadly defined as any creative literary work that has been especially written and designed for children’s use.19 Only in the 18th century, with the evolving of the concept of childhood, a separate genre of children’s literature was created.20 Modern children’s literature comprises short fairytales and fables, picture books, comics, cartoons, novels, nursery rhymes that can be potentially appreciated by most children.21 In our search, we selected 17 studies concerning pedagogic dimension of children literature,20,22-37 while 21 and 17 studies were chosen as addressing didactic1,5,38-56 and therapeutic dimensions,6,7,57-71 respectively ( ).
The crisis we are facing is not only economic and financial, but also political, cultural and ethical, generating anxiety and fear due to the perception of a precarious existence in the context of a growing individualism and insensitivity to other people’s difficulties. Moreover, our society measures everything in terms of monetary value, giving priority to scientific/technological knowledge and decreasing the relevance of human sciences, which have nurtured the traditional humus of citizenship education.72
Despite educational system is dealing worldwide with several challenges, school still represents the ideal setting to display interventions aimed at promoting students’ holistic development. Beyond its specific commitment, it is essential to build up healthy, respectful and satisfied citizens: the future adults capable to take care about themselves, the others and the environment.24,73
In the globalization era, characterized by deep socio-economic changes and collapse of the traditional social tissue (i.e. new forms of poverty, increase of inequalities, family mobility etc.), the cultural heritage of folktales – easily available both for parental and teachers’ use – could represent a helpful tool for promoting individual personal growth, social cohesion and sustainable development.2
Tales were told and are still told in every society and in many different settings to share experiences, customs, norms, and values, providing the listeners with entertainment and new knowledge.25 In the “culturalistic” perspective, children’s stories belong to a specific cultural niche that could help young people to move into the life, allowing them to understand who they are as human beings and how they can contribute to the progress of the world.26
Children’s literature continues to be a significant opportunity of presenting moral principles in an enjoyable and engaging way27 and it is growing fast along with the aim to entertain, educate and provide new knowledge (in line with the new concept of “edutainment”), being able to integrate fun and adventure demanded by children (simulating the activity of free play) with the adults’ objective of offering them a set of moral examples.20,28
A big part of children’s literature is represented by fairytales, which have the final goal of transmitting the basic universal values, and raising children’s awareness on many aspects of the life.29 That’s why, even before printing press was invented, fairytales have been used by parents to transmit culturally appropriate moral norms to their children from an early age, equipping them with information, attitudes, and skills that could act as a kind of “vaccination” against all kind of threats to individual or collective health.30
The most famous example fulfilling these criteria can be found in “Pinocchio”, written by Carlo Lorenzini (Collodi) to make children aware about the consequences of adopting wrong behaviours.31,32 Similarly, in Germany, the Grimm Brothers presented noble values and positive models in their amazing adventures, helping children to understand what is good and what is bad.33
Tales are very interesting for children because they show real aspects of family and community life, reinforcing the relations with the parents and highlighting ethical values related to social life.34,35 Through implicit meanings embodied in the stories, children indirectly acquire pedagogical messages, able to influence their global personality and stimulate a social sense of duty.27
Children’s stories are the place of endless possibilities, so that young people can open their mind to wide horizons, generate new viewpoints, find possible alternatives or solutions to problems, cultivating their points of strengths such as self-confidence and resilience.36
The role and importance of children’s books have changed in modern society, but even today, children’s literature (including movies and digital resources) influences our daily lives and contributes to the development of young people in a number of ways, ranging from the transmission of values to didactic purposes. The presence of digital technology represents a challenge but also an opportunity for traditional fairytales’ or fables’ existence. Digital storytelling (the combination of the art of telling stories with a variety of multimedia tools) is a helpful instrument to generate more appealing and stimulating learning experiences.37
Actually, printed publications tend to be expensive, while the Internet-based resources are a cheap alternative (usually available online for free), and might raise children’s interest towards books in many different ways. Combining narrative possibilities and technological potentials can be more powerful in terms of access to information, sharing of work, differentiated and motivated learning models. However, there is a fundamental distinction (at least in terms of establishing good relationships with educators) between watching a fairy tale on monitors (static and passive approach or even by computer-based interactive mode) and listening to a live re-telling of it.22,23,74
The didactic intention of narrative works was discovered on clay tablets in Sumerian and Babylonian texts, dated back many centuries before Aesop’s fables (successively put into Latin verses by Phaedrus). Myths initially transmitted orally became well-known throughout the Mediterranean area thanks to Greek manuscripts of Alexandrian scribes, who used them in their daily education activities. Also philosophers (i.e. Plato) introduced myths and fables in their academic lessons with students and disciples: the rules of grammar and style were learned through the stories, encouraging young scholars to create new ones. Fables of Aesop were considered as useful didactic means also in medieval schools to teach Latin and rhetoric.1
Even today, children’s literature – as integral part of primary school curriculum – could be a significant experience in the lives of children, with fables and fairytales being used as motivating teaching tools in both humanistic and scientific disciplines.38-40 Educators are aware that all creative and artistic activities, including literature – while entertaining listeners or readers – can play a fundamental role in improving students’ knowledge, but also in the acquisition of daily life skills, useful to cope with any problematic situations.41
Childhood is a crucial stage for language development,75 so it is important to make it a pleasing experience: reading or listening to stories could be a joyful way for language training, able to overcome all the possible learning barriers.42-44 Thanks to the recurring narrative passages intrinsic in the fairy tales’ or fables, child is able to deal with some complicated concepts or patterns, which require more repetitions to be better interiorized. That’s why tales are a valuable resource in teaching foreign languages and improving language skills (writing, reading, speaking and listening).45 The use of narrative in teaching foreign languages has been found to lower the level of anxiety, allowing students to take risks in the language classes, thanks to the familiarity with stories and the relaxing learning environment generated by storytelling. Therefore, telling or reading stories is a successful strategy to acquire grammar structures, syntax, new vocabulary, increasing oral/written competences, and therefore the ability to communicate effectively and successfully.46
By reading or listening to stories, students enhance their verbal proficiency and learn to accurately express their thoughts and feelings in everyday relations, making practice of peace-making skills (i.e. negotiation and discussion).47
Learning from stories can stimulate and offer promising insights in other areas of children’s cognitive development such as problem-solving and reasoning skills.48 Educators should awaken children’s interest towards reading and, at the same time, encourage them to use imagination, finding themselves inside the story; once children become attached to their favourite characters, they can reproduce them while playing, following the time chain and cause-effect relation of narrated events, so that the educational message of the stories can be better interiorized.5,49 Educators should also be aware about their own responsibility when selecting children’s books for didactic purposes (not necessarily following popular titles or “best sellers”), and read the stories in a caring and warm environment.50 Storybooks are accessible to students of all ages and can be borrowed from libraries or friends, while digital storytelling can be easily and quickly found on the Internet, even for free.51
Multicomponent narrative-based approaches integrate traditional tales or other specifically developed storybooks, with audio and video resources (including those available on the Internet), cartoons, animated films, puppets or scenic elements.23,52,53 Theatre reading or dramatization of children’s literature can be used at school to overcome the risk of short attention span of schoolchildren, and when dealing with difficult textbooks. Reader’s theatre in the classroom involve students as actors as they were really acting on the stage, while the teacher is guiding the scene and giving suggestions to the characters. In a study investigating the impact of readers’ theatre over six weeks, students assigned to the theatre class showed significant progress in reading level, compared to a control group who received more traditional literary and vocabulary education. The readers’ theatre class presented better fluidity in reading and expression, enriched vocabulary, and increased motivation compared to the control group.54 Finally, it can be said that storytelling activities (including reader’s theatre) in school setting represent innovative didactic experiences, capable to build up also health knowledge and promote students’ global wellbeing.55,56
Children’s storybooks not only provide new knowledge – by enriching children’s vocabulary and enhancing their communication skills – but also ensure emotional support during problematic circumstances of the life. Encouraging children to overcome fears and inner conflicts, tales act as promoters for change, positively influencing their social behaviour.57
When parents or teachers provide children with a book, they usually hope that they will absorb the moral values that it contains.58-60 Actually, fairytales can produce positive effects on personality development, satisfying all psychological needs of the children such as contact, entertainment, and cognitive demand. In the Freudian perspective, assuming the absence of a well-defined superego and moral standards in childhood, fairytales are useful to show proper patterns of behaviours needed by children.61
Children’s literature – as a form of artistic creativity – presents a therapeutic potential for readers and listeners, in the same way that Greek tragedy was able to “heal” the spectators.62,63 In the vision of the cathartic role of literature, we can say that it may influence children through psychological mechanisms, primarily consisting in involvement, imitation, identification, insight and universalism. Story-tales could be used in school-setting for primary prevention programs with the ultimate goal of preventing risky behaviours among young people, thanks to the potential of creative and artistic means such as specifically-developed children’s storybooks. Actually, narrative-based approach as a teaching and learning strategy is omnipresent in the classrooms, but it is infrequently used to promote students’ health.64
Literature, as well as other forms of art (music, dance, drama, drawing, painting etc.) can be used to empower and motivate children towards the adoption of healthy behaviours, contributing to the improvement of pupils’ quality of life. The educational properties of the stories allow young people to accept their own differences, while showing how the characters of the tale cope with difficulties, enabling readers to enter in a fantastic world of entertainment, and – at the story’s end – to come back into reality in a comfortable way.65
The main goal of art therapy in education is the holistic human development, to be accomplished by working on imagination, curiosity, and creativity, which represent all the basic features to be preserved in children, along with the natural needs of joy and play.66,67 Artistic activities present also the potential of breaking down cultural barriers, actively involving the most vulnerable and marginalized children, as assessed in a study examining the effect of a creative expression program designed to prevent emotional and behavioural problems in immigrant and refugee students attending multi-ethnic schools.76 This vision has been already adopted by the famous violinist Menuhin and his Foundation, to help vulnerable and disadvantaged children by using music and other form of arts.77
Within the broad umbrella of art therapy, we can find “library therapy”, which S.M. Crothers in 1916 has turned into the term “bibliotherapy”, characterized by the fact that the treatment is carried out by the means of literature, using books to foster individual emotional wellbeing. Understanding the principles and practices of bibliotherapy is essential for teachers and educators, working with children, who may take benefit from the exposure to reading materials related to their specific problems.
The “healing” potential of books was known since the time of the ancient Greece and even before: Ramses II in Egypt identified a group of books in his collection as “remedies for the soul”. Aristotle and other Greek philosophers believed that literature could deeply heal people, while the ancient Romans recognized the existence of a relationship between medicine and reading, with Aulo Cornelius Celso explicitly associating the reading with medical treatment. This attitude towards therapeutic opportunities of books was cultivated even in the Middle Age and Humanism/Renaissance times, but also in the late eighteenth century books were proposed as a remedy for different types of illnesses. Today, literature is somehow considered as psychological therapy, especially in childhood, and even as a cure for psychosomatic disorders.6
In the therapeutic approach, bibliotherapy includes also discussion and reflection on the story’s topics that overlap with the individual needs and have an evocative function that relies on projection and identification mechanisms. Proper storybooks work as a strategy for attitudinal change and self-improvement, acting through a compensatory function in children who lack of positive experiences which are often missing in their family or community.68 Therapeutic reading can also represent a form of prevention as the readers acquire a more flexible mind to recognize problems and eventually ask for help. There are books that address questions concerning physical appearance, emotions and character traits, family relationships, and socioeconomic problems.69 Bibliotherapy can be also applied in the field of psychotherapy for the treatment of minor disorders, eating behaviours and some forms of addictions, from alcohol and tobacco to drugs and ludopathy.7
Narrative medicine, an emerging discipline in healthcare field – which embraces medicine, psychoanalysis and literature – is used to overcome individual traumatic experiences. It helps patients and health professionals to tell and listen to the complex and unique stories of illness through an active approach (subjects are invited to compose poetic or literary pieces) or passive mode (consisting in reading already existing pieces).70,71
Health is defined by WHO Constitution as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing”.78 WHO has demonstrated that many early deaths can be avoided if each stakeholder in the society takes its piece of responsibility in promoting healthy lifestyles.79 Health promotion and prevention represent two sides of the same coin being both focused on proactively maintaining people healthy.80 Primary prevention should start as early as possible and school has the opportunity to guide people since childhood on the right path towards healthy life. Actually, education and health are intertwined, and it is undoubtable that wellbeing has also a remarkable impact on students’ learning outcomes. School represents the ideal setting to convey proper contents about risk and protective factors81 by using motivating approaches (including “teaching narratively”), able to capture the interest of pupils and generate a harmonic and non-competitive learning environment.82 Narration can be regarded as an interesting way to trigger students’ motivation82 and develop a “narrative thinking”, which is fundamental for every human experience, including learning and interiorization processes.83-86 Specifically developed storybooks can foster children’s self-responsibility towards health and stimulate critical thinking about the consequences of adopting risky behaviours (i.e. unhealthy eating habits), thanks to psychological processes based on the identification with the characters of the stories.17 Actually, children literature and storytelling have been proved to be effective in specifically conveying health knowledge: the persuasive effects of narrative engagement have been illustrated in many researches and reviews.87-95 De Graaf et al have specifically performed a systematic review of 153 experimental studies on health-related narrative persuasion with a focus on the narrative characteristics as potential explanatory factors in the effectiveness to convey a health message.87,88 The results showed that stories that presented a healthy behaviour were more often associated with effects on the intention to adopt it, and stories with high emotional content were usually more effective, as well as the use of a first or second-person perspective in the text. No differences were observed between the media used for the narrative intervention (book or video etc.), while the familiarity of the setting and the way of displaying the health message in the narrative was found to be a promising persuasive factor.88 Shen and Han assessed 25 studies comparing narrative to non-narrative messages, showing a significant effect of narrative for primary prevention and detection of risky behaviours, but not for cessation of negative attitudes (e.g., quitting smoking).89 Zebregs et al included 15 studies that recorded positive persuasive effects of narrative.91 Braddock and Dillard metanalyzed 74 studies that compared narrative-based interventions to a control group that did not receive any relevant message.92 Their results showed that, compared to a baseline zero-effect, narrative had positive effects on story-consistent beliefs, attitudes and intentions. By reviewing 45 studies, Tukachinsky et al concluded that engagement with the narrative and its characters was positively related to attitudes and intentions implied by the narrative itself.93 Other authors have focused on the persuasive effects resulting from the “transportation” into a narrative world: when children read, they “enter” into tales and act out together with the characters.94 Dahlstrom et al have shown that it is important to consider whether the persuasive message is integrated in the causal structure of the narrative or not.95 Stories with two opponent main characters seem to have an impact on narrative persuasion in the context of social issues, while tales presenting a transition of the characters from unhealthy to healthy behaviour may be particularly beneficial.90 Moreover, the content and form of the narrative - such as characters, events, and the setting of the story - are very important: characters can be more or less similar to the readers, thus producing a different persuasive effect.96,97 A further dimension relevant to health-related “narrative persuasion” is the context of the presentation used in the narrative: an entertainment format where the reader is unaware that the narrative has a persuasive intention or a narrative frame in which the persuasive intent is more explicit.98-100 In addition to narrative characteristics, variables related to target recipients – like the predisposition to become engaged in narratives and prior knowledge of the readers – as well as the environment/situation in which the story is narrated may increase or reduce the engagement and effectiveness of narrative-based interventions.101,102 Most likely, the full process of persuasion is determined by the interaction of narrative, recipient and situational factors (such as noise in the environment) that can distract the student and decrease engagement. It should be emphasized that contents of the stories must be close to the children and the main character’s mental states needs to be as much as similar to the feelings of the child. Finally, it seems that multicomponent approaches including printed stories or tales told by a health educator in a face-to-face settings (i.e. live storytelling) can produce effects on beliefs, attitudes, intentions and even on the behaviours of recipients.103
by Denise von Stockar
As an introduction to this workshop, I will present some general thoughts on the challenges of children’s literature, hoping to provide a frame for the other presentations, as well as for our group discussions.
All literature, and literacy, is born from the human need to tell stories, to tell stories about one self or about others, to tell stories about the world to better understand our existence, the others and the universe we live in. All the stories, the myths, the fables and the novels, including those addressed to children are, in fact, the result of this wish and this basic need: they help us to live, to survive; they help children to grow up and develop.
I think it is important that we keep this perspective in mind while we discuss different aspects and different strategies for adequate reading education and fruitful reading promotion.
Production of children’s books has always been amazingly diverse; its multiple titles address young readers in very different ways: there are books that furnish information and transfer knowledge on the world around us; others present an image of children’s everyday life, or an image of their feelings and their conflicts, proposing how to solve them. There are books which talk about the Other, other cultures, other customs, or there are books about diverse cultural patrimonies…Each of these books carries a message and a specific perspective. We, the adults, are well aware of this but children do not really know these differences. That is why I think it is very important that children become familiar at the earliest possible age with the different literary genres so they learn to use them as they want. Because the true reading pleasure lies in the satisfaction we get from reading something that talks to us and touches us personally.
So a child may access the enormous literary resources, he must, of course, learn to read, and this in the broadest meaning of the word. Because reading, from a global point of view, is a very complex activity which is not limited to decoding a text, but it entails too the child’s capability to understand what he has read, to integrate it in his own context and personal experiences by analysing it in a critical way so he is able to take a stand on what he has read. Only this kind of complete and deep reading education will take children toward a real, integrated literacy.
However, reading education, the way it is performed, in Europe and in Africa, is too frequently associated only to the decoding techniques that school has to teach.
Reading education that wants to be sustainable should not content itself with transferring simple technical skills, but should make use of a whole array of indispensable competences for a real literacy. These competences frequently are linked to experiences children have had in their first months and their first years: very common experiences at first sight, but of great importance because they awaken children to the universe of reading and literature, beaconning the road to literacy.
I.Learning to read is learning to see …
The child “reads” his mother’s face since he is born, or his father’s or any other close person’s face: the child learns to look at the features and facial expressions of those around him and to react in an adequate manner
Then the child begins to “read” the objects he finds around him. He observes, recognizes and identifies them, getting ready for the next big step: reading and identifying real objects within the book, that is, identifying objects that are no more that iconographic representations of reality on a book’s page.
Around the sixth month, a baby acquires this iconic skill, that is, he learns to know the difference between the real object and the image it represents. In other words, he enters the world’s symbolic representation: the secret of all art, visual or literary.
From this first discovery of symbolic representation, the child starts to develop his skills in picture reading which become more and more sophisticated with time 2:
1) First the child points at the various objects that interest him on the picture.
2) Later, he points at them and names them. But he does not tell much, his language is still non-narrative.
3) After some time, this child can point at and name the image’s elements while telling a story. But it is not yet the book’s story; it is a personal story that comes from the associations the child makes between the picture and his own life. His language has become more narrative.
4) Finally, he succeeds in pointing at and talking about the picture’s elements while telling an end to the story in the book, detached from his personal experience: he now knows that there is a difference between his own story and that of the book.
5) At last, he points at the elements not only of an isolated picture, but of all the set of images that he can use as support to tell, in a narrative language, the entire story related in the book.
In this moment of his development a child can make a true visual reading of a picture book, based on the pictures. He learns to read the pictures’ grammar, and this prepares him for the reading of texts. The iconographic elements constitute the message of a picture which corresponds, from a linguistic point of view, to the letters, as graphic elements, that come together to form words, then sentences, then paragraphs and chapters of a book.
To be able to come this long way from simply pointing at visual elements to a visual reading of a complete series of pictures, the child must be able to look at several pictures, read many picture books, and this must be done in the company of an adult who guides him, and incites him to look and to interpret.
And once he starts going to school, the child should by all means continue to look at pictures, to read picture books, because prolonged visual reading will be an efficient support for text reading. Moreover, it will inspire and stimulate the ability to form inner pictures.
Finally, the child who has the possibility of looking regularly at picture books learns to cross another very important bridge of his psychological development. According to French psychiatrist Serge Tesseron, the small child places himself first within the pictures he is looking at; in consequence these pictures invade him very easily. Only after having watched several picture books he is able to take distance from the pictures he sees: he learns to place himself before the pictures, which loose the frequently menacing impact on him 3.
This ability to deal with and wish to control the pictures they see, appears to me as very important for the children of our times, frequently facing excessively tough and aggressive pictures for their young sensibilities.
II Learning to read is also learning to listen…
Literacy does not start only with watchful eyes, but also with listening ears…
During the first months of his life, the baby listens to his mother’s voice, his father’s voice or that of the person taking care of him. From these voices, the baby starts to build up his own voice and his personal language. At the same time, he learns to identify the voices of those who surround him. And while they sing a song or tell a story, the child discovers the poetic voice of the people around him, the melodious and singing voice that is so different from the everyday voice that gives orders and information needed for everyday life. This poetic voice is not only more beautiful, it tells little stories too, sings songs and nursery rhymes that introduce the child in the universe of literature and prepares his sensibility for these artistic forms, the simplest ones, the most archaic ones.
It is very important that we sing to babies, that we tell them not only one but many, many stories, at the most diverse moments of the day, in every occasion possible: invented stories, read or remembered, heard stories…
These moments of story telling are privileged moments, full of tenderness and suspense during which the child may discover, even before learning to read, the magic of literature, the story’s power.
Serge Tisseron, again, teaches us that the child who listens to stories when he is a baby, lives within the stories, like they were part of him. Only later, after having heard many stories, he starts to keep the stories at a distance, like something exterior to him that he now may integrate better4.
III Learning to read is also learning to communicate…
Listening to stories, looking at and interpreting picture books that tell stories…
These early reading experiences are central and are not possible without an adult who prepares them and directs them.
To read a picture book with one or several children: a simple reading scenario quite familiar to many adults… But are they really aware of the very ideal context those picture book reading moments offer for the child’s first communicative experiences?
When the child and the adult look together at a picture book, their regards are automatically converging toward the same end, the book and its story. It is a joint regard that creates, for the first time, the triangular space among the child, the adult and the book, and is the origin of every cultural transmission5: the adult takes the child into a cultural creation, that is the picture book, important precursor of all other cultural supports.
At the same time, this small scenario –shared reading of a picture book¬–marks another crucial moment in the biography of childhood reading.
Every child loves to point with his finger at the pictorial elements, the objects on the pictures of the book that he is looking at and explaining proudly to the adult. This action – even if it seem so modest – is not only remarkable from the point of view of reading skills (see above), but also and most important from the stand point of the child’s psychological development. Because by showing something to someone, the child demonstrates to the adult his perception and his subjective impression of what he is seeing. It is a spontaneous action that always assumes that the child already has an idea of the Other’s existence whom he is showing his wish to communicate actively with.
In such a situation of emerging interaction, it is very important that the adult sees and takes into account what the child is showing him. And that he reacts to this formidable impulse with excitement toward what the child is showing him. This demands an attentive presence, a great sensibility and a considerable availability from the adult. But it is worth it. Because if the adult doe not react to what the child is showing him, the child will loose the impulse of showing, and moreover, his trust in the Other and in his ability to communicate6.
By pointing with his finger at what interests him, the child is showing his intersubjectivity: I am communicating with another one. However, this scenario must be repeated numerous times so the ability to communicate and the habit of doing it may converge in the emergent reader. Later, the child will not be happy with just pointing with his finger; he will talk with pleasure about what he sees and what he thinks of the story. The adult must continue to listen to him, respectfully, patiently stimulating this interaction so important for true literacy. From this perspective, the child who has the possibility of discovering in this active way several picture books, in an animated dialogue with an adult or his peers that share the reading session, is a privileged one.
Later, at school age, when he will look less frequently at picture books in the company of an adult, but will read stories on his own, the child will continue to depend, even more so, on communicating about what he has read. Because of this, the adults must be as available as before, but in another way: they have to continue being interested in what their children are reading and they have to encourage them to talk, to interchange ideas, in an open discussion without any school evaluation. So the child will understand, in a definitive way, that reading is also a matter of communication, therefore, a social issue.
It is only during such on-going interactive readings that the child can fully develop his language competences, his vocabulary and his way to express himself; but also his social competences in the larger sense of the term.
IV The book is finally an object…
Indeed, the book, ideal support for initiating and learning to read, is above all –we must not forget it– a physical object that the child must domesticate. By manipulating it, chewing on it, sucking it, turning it around in every sense, the child slowly takes possession of his book. Later he will learn, always in a playful manner, to use it correctly: how to turn its pages, how to hold it the right way, how to pretend he is reading images as well as the black signs that “hide” its story. This way he learns to behave like a reader, which is an important step on the road to literacy. To be successful, he must have role models: adults and the bigger children who read.
But we must not forget that messages transmitted in a book are organised in diverse manners. There are books that are read from top to bottom, others from left to right, like in the western cultures, and even others from right to left. The organisation of the narrative depends entirely on the culture that produces it; discovering it allows the budding reader to familiarise with cultures different from his own.
On the psychological level the book, especially the picture book, may play another role yet: that of transitional object that offers a wonderful transitional space7 between the child’s personal feelings and sensibility and the exterior reality, in which the child can develop his own imagination, his own feelings that help to separate himself from his parents, to live, and thus resolve his own psychological conflicts and find his own identity.
From this psychological point of view, the child uses the book as a screen on which he can project his own experiences. The pictures and the words of the story act as mirrors in which the children’s conflicts and feelings –fear, jealousy, aggressiveness, loneliness, and the need, the wish of being loved and accepted– are reflected while offering the child fictional alternatives and solutions to which he might perhaps never have found access any other way.
This way, the child can play with the fictional possibilities because they are literary and he can integrate them into his own life adding thus new elements.
V Why How does reading become a pertinent personal experience ?
We have seen that learning to read is more than learning the alphabet and decoding it. True literacy, objective of wise teaching, depends as a matter of fact on quite some other skills very often neglected, especially in the school scenario: the ability to read and understand pictures, to listen and integrate stories told out loud, to know how to communicate with others regarding what has been read and, finally, to familiarize with the book as a cultural object. Developing all these complex skills and interdependences must continue throughout childhood and puberty, at school and at home.
There is, however, one more challenging question: what to do so the child can discover the pleasure of reading, its usefulness and its pertinence for his own life?
How may he build a universe of essential reading that develops in relation to, or in close interaction with, his personal everyday universe?
Reading contributes in a concrete way to the very sense of our lives if it is endowed with meaning. We have to teach children not only to read, but to acknowledge the importance and actuality of knowing how to read within the context of their own life, teach them to grasp the true meaning of what is written, the role it can play in their personal lives and in the society they live in.
From this point of view, to read is not only to find the meaning of what is written. To read is also and above all, as the French psycholinguist Jean-Marie Besse says: “To understand the reason for this activity and the nature of this way of expression8.” From this perspective, the young reader must grasp what he has read in order to integrate it into his own everyday personal experiences: reading becomes thus an integral part of his life. Jean-Marie Besse has stated that the origin of reading problems that so many adults have is found not only in failure to decode words and lack of text comprehension skills, but above all in a total ignorance of the meaning and usefulness of written texts regarding our own life. Developing this crucial relation between reading and personal life begins, it is true, at home. Nevertheless it grows in a decisive way at school. Or more accurately in the relation among the different social spaces that are the school, the family, the extracurricular activities, the group of friends. Because above all the interpersonal, social and affective dimensions participating in the constitution of this personal relation to the written text, motivate children to perseverate in learning and improving reading.
In conclusion, I am in favour of an active network of school and non-school environments where children can have positive reading experiences within the frame of authentic diverse learning that is not limited to school but touch the different spaces of the child’s world. More precisely, we have to create for children walkways – or more walkways – among the different universes of their personal lives. But how?
Discussion is open.
Denise von Stockar
Institut Suisse Jeunesse et Médias
(translated from French by María Candelaria Posada)
Kigali, June, 2006
Notes
1 Cabrejo-Parra, Evelio. Cheminements de la lecture. In: Et pourquoi pas un éloge de la lecture? Actes des 13es Journées d’Arole. Bibliothèque de la Ville de la Chaux-de-Fonds et de l’Institut suisse Jeunesse et Médias, 2204, pp.22-23
2 Elster, Charles. Patterns within Preschoolers’ Emergent Readers. In: Reading Research Quarterly, 29 (1944), pp.403-418.
3 Tisseron, Serge. Lecture d’images et construction de soi. Nouvelles images et rapports nouveaux aux texts. In: Forum Suisse sur la lecture, bulletin 13/2004, p.49.
4 Ibid. pp.48-50.
5 Cabrejo-Parra, Evelio. Op.cit.
6 Ibid.
7 Winnicot, D.W. Playing and Reality. Tavistock, 1971
8 Besse, Jean-Marie. De l’entrée dans l’écrit à un apprentissage durable de la commnucation ècrite. Bulletin du Forum suisse sur la lecture, no. 14/2005, p.63