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Lesson 2: Playful Reading

In this lesson you will consider some of the possibilities for how one might read and think about children's literature. This lesson lays the foundation for a key idea that will run throughout the course: reading as play. We then consider the unique perspective of the child reader--the child as critic. Finally, we look at a framework that brings these ideas together--the Tell Me framework. This framework is designed to help readers deepen and widen their understanding of a story without imposing a particular meaning or point of view on a reader. You will practice the Tell Me technique in an online discussion of Dead End in Norvelt.

Lesson Objectives

In this lesson you will:

• Begin to ponder what it means to read "playfully." (This will develop throughout the course.)
• Begin to stretch your reading repertoire. (This will also develop throughout the course.)
• Become familiar with the basic framework of the Tell Me technique, particularly the three kinds of sharings: enthusiasms, puzzles, and patterns.
• Apply the Tell Me technique in a threaded discussion.

Children's Literature and Play

Playful Reading

Reading literature ought to be an act of playing. It ought to be like the imaginative play of young children as they try out different roles (mommy, daddy, teacher) or act out the stories the playing is imagining. Most importantly, there is no one right way to do it. "Playful reading" is like what James Carse (1987) in his book Finite and Infinite Games calls "infinite play." The purpose of infinite play is to continue playing. There is no definitive end to playing with blocks or dollhouses. Infinite play isn't over when the game is won, because there are no winners or losers. Infinite play does pause when a player become tired, but only as a pause, waiting for if and when the player wishes to resume playing. Playful reading is also infinite, readers can return again and again to the same text and enjoy a different pleasure each time. Playful reading never ends, but it does pause. The text waits for the next occasion the reader has chosen to engage with it, though that interval may be minutes, days, months, or even years.

"Playful reading" is not about winning. Reading as a game the reader must win evokes memories of English classrooms where students tried to figure out the "correct" or "right" (or "winning!") meaning, a meaning usually predetermined by a textbook or an answer key. This kind of reading is more like what James Carse calls "finite play." The purpose of finite play is to win; once the game is won, the game is over. Playful reading is never over, never finished. It is infinite in its possibilities. Playful reading is not only silly or frivolous. Children, in playing house, or building with blocks, can be extremely serious in their intentions. Playful reading can be also extremely profound, or even painful.

For a discussion on the importance of play, click the following link to read the position statement on play by the Association for Childhood Education International. (Note: This is a link to download a pdf file.)

Literary Theory

Literary theory helps us understand some of the different ways we might play with literature. Mention literary theory to most people who are interested in children's literature and their eyes begin to roll. "Esoteric." "Pointless." "That's what English professors and students do, but it has nothing to do with children or children's literature." "Can't we just have fun with the books and enjoy them?" "Why do we have to analyze everything?" If you share one or more of these points of view, chances are you've had a bad experience in a literature class where you needed to figure out what the instructor already knew about the literary work and then reproduce it in a paper or on a test. Who wouldn't hate that? This course isn't about you reproducing what the instructor already knows. Frankly, that's rather boring to the instructor as well.

In reality, literary theory is an organized attempt to understand something about the nature of literature in the hope that through this understanding, new and provocative meanings of a text might be revealed. Literary theory does two things: it explains what we already do as readers and it provides us with new ways of looking at children or children's literature." Literary theory is a language that helps us explain what we already intuit and it is a lens through which we can look for different meanings and understandings of the same text. Playfulness enters in when readers try on different theoretical "lenses," each lens illuminating some aspects of the text, while obscuring others.

We will play with theory in this class in several ways with a few themes appearing and reappearing throughout the course. What follows is a short description of some of the major themes that will be running throughout the course.

Childhood as an Idea

The first theme is the idea that childhood is not only a biological phenomenon but also is a historical construction. "Childhood" is a notion that is held by adults, and what counts as childhood has changed over time and across cultures. How adults answer questions such as, "Who are children?" "How are children different from adults?" "What is my responsibility as an adult towards children?" actually becomes the basis for our ideas about what kinds of books children need or should have access to and what kinds of books are not appropriate for children. What adults consider to be good books for children are shaped by the ideas about children that adults believe to be true. One idea from literary theory is the idea of the implied reader--that the literary text, through its structure, suggests who the reader of that particular text ought to become. Childhood, then, gets constructed by the adults who write the books and by the adults who choose which books children might read. The first few lessons of this course will explore a few of these ideas of childhood and will show how limiting or liberating these ideas might be to children and their reading.

Children and Power

Children are relatively powerless in comparison to adults, and children are heavily dependent upon adults. Children's literature often reflects the responses of other less powerful groups (for example, slaves and servants, women) to domination. Since children are rarely successful in directly challenging adult power, they often resort to subversive and/or secretive behavior. Secrets, especially secrets from adults, are important. Many of the most popular and enduring children's stories are based upon children committing and getting away with acts of subversion or outright naughtiness. Trickster characters from The Cat in the Hat to Matilda in Roald Dahl's story of the same name are common throughout children's literature. Feminist theory among other theories provides insight into why there is so much opposition, sneakiness, and misbehavior in children's literature.

We will also look at power when it comes to constructions of gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and other social markers.

The Political Economy of Children's Literature

In previous ages children have been perceived by adults as innocent or wicked, empty vessels or emerging adults, productive workers or weaker human beings in need of protection. In today's post-modern, global economy children are becoming positioned by society as consumers. In the past 15 years there has been a dramatic restructuring of the children's book publishing industry. This restructuring has had a profound impact on the kinds of books that are now available for children. We are seeing series books, sequels, and media tie-in's at unprecedented levels. The pressure for a book to turn a significant profit quickly is intense and exerts a homogenizing effect on children's books. With corporate mergers more children's books are coming from fewer sources. We may have more books than ever before, but the books seem a little less distinctive each year. Few of us understand how profoundly the business of children's literature affects which books are available for children to read or that economic concerns of the industry work their way out into the content and the form of children's books.

Children's Literature and Justice

Though injustice is not limited to matters of race, class, and gender, in this course we will spend some time focusing upon the potential meanings of race, class, and gender in children's books and questioning those potential meanings. There are many books on the market that discuss the validity of why multicultural education and multicultural children's literature are important. There are quite a few books available that describe hundreds of good multicultural books. There is very little available that talks about how one might read the culture encoded in a children's book or how to help children read for the meanings of cultural markers such as gender, race, and class. As a result, there is a subtle de-skilling of teachers occurring. Many teachers feel ill-equipped to decide if a multicultural book is a good book or not. As a result they rely upon the opinions of a few experts in the field to tell them if a certain book is good or not, authentic or not.

In this course we will present a vision of multicultural education and multicultural children's literature that rests on how readers attend to the signs of race, class, and gender in children's stories. The result is that adult readers will expand their repertoire of knowledge about multicultural literature and gain new strategies for interpreting cultural texts. Then in turn, I hope that adults will enable children to develop and assume their own authority in understanding and transforming the images of race, class, and gender the dominant culture asks children to assume.

Children's Literature and Spirit

Stories are an important vehicle in the human quest for meaning in life. The quest for meaning is vital to our emotional and spiritual health. Traditional forms of teaching and learning with literature often suppress this quest. At the end of this course we will describe the quest for meaning as occurring along four paths: a path of joy, a path of pain, a path of creativity, and a path of transformation. Exploring each of the four paths is necessary for healthy living and certain stories for children can tap into these quests. Stories of pain, creativity, and transformation are most often the kinds of stories adults attempt to keep from children. It may well be that these stories that make some adults uncomfortable are necessarily vital for the total emotional and spiritual health of the child.

There is an emerging strain of thinking in children's literature studies that takes its cues from eco-feminism. Instead of pulling convention apart or viewing the world as one big economic market to exploit, this focuses upon relationship and connection. It is perhaps best seen not in the conventional, dramatic, conflict-based forms of storytelling but in some of the nonlinear, episodic, less conflicted forms of storytelling. Its concern then isn't with deconstructing the conventional, but reconstructing new conventions based upon hope and respect. This part of the course asks you to consider these newer, messier forms of storytelling as part of a larger social project aimed at building a society based upon partnerships rather than competition.

The Child As Critic

Telling the Stories of Our Readings

One common complaint some adults make about looking at children's literature in the ways described in the previous section is that they don't like forcing meaning or imposing one particular view onto readers. Sometimes the complaint is followed by the statement, "I prefer to let children explore their own meanings in a story." Well, we all prefer that, too. However, the perspective this course takes is that children do not "naturally" look at a story in any particular way. Instead they learn ways of reading stories from more accomplished readers, especially teachers, parents, and other adults.

A researcher conducting research on children's responses to literature in a second/third grade classroom spent a semester in the classroom observing the children and their teacher read, talk, draw, paint, and write about the stories they were reading or having read to them. What the researcher noticed was that the children were keenly attuned to their teacher, searching for cues as to how they should approach their stories. This teacher was big on connections and asked the children if they could see any connections in a story to another story or connections to writing. So, during independent reading time the researcher saw many children looking for connections, especially to their writing. But there was one connection that was even more prevalent--connection to the present unit of study. If they were studying the weather, the teacher often picked books that had weather related themes and the children would make that kind of thematic connection in their reading. It's often the exception that proves the rule. The researcher asked two of the third graders about Ramona and Her Father, one of the books the teacher read aloud to the class. The researcher knew from the teacher that she had picked this book simply because she enjoyed it and wanted to share that enjoyment with her students. Two very sharp girls saw it differently. They were adamant in their interview with the researcher that their teacher chose Ramona and Her Father because it was connected to their current unit of study. Since this unit of study was "rocks" and since the girls were having such difficulty making a connection between "rocks" and Ramona, they decided that their teacher must have begun a new unit of study. Since they had just finished the chapter where Ramona tries to persuade her father to stop smoking, the girls decided that "not taking up smoking" was their new theme of study.

What all this suggests is that children are very sensitive to the cues more accomplished readers give as to how to read a text. If children don't look for connections in their reading to the craft of writing, it's because they've never been asked to consider that connection. If children don't talk about the differences in what boy characters and girl characters do or don't do in books, it's because they've never seen anyone looking at a book that way. Children will engage quite profoundly with stories in fairly sophisticated ways if they are shown how to engage and then be supported in their efforts. What's happening is this: the teacher is providing a frame from which to look at a story. Reading literature, even or especially children's literature, becomes so amazingly rich when we can use multiple frames. In other words, the more varied the adults' reading repertoire for literature is, the more varied the repertoires of the children that adults reads with will be. We will spend much of our time in this course looking at ourselves as readers of literature, because the best way to have children reading more richly is for the adults in their lives to become richer readers themselves. It is the perspective of this course that in order for children to change, adults must change first.

The Tell Me Framework

In this course we are asking you to stretch your ideas of what it means to read. What passes for reading pedagogy in this age of "No Child Left Behind" is that the best readers are readers who can read a text quickly, accurately, and only once, and be able to recall the basic points of the story. We are going to challenge that notion of reading in this course. Our ultimate goal for readers of children's literature is for children (and you) to discover that reading isn't always fast and it isn't always accurate, and that readers often don't know exactly what is going on in their stories. We especially want them (and you) to discover that reading something two, three, or more times can bring its own pleasure. And, this is the key point, if we want children to learn to read more richly and deeply, we adults must become deeper and richer readers, because the ways that children learn to interpret are taken from adults and other older readers. This isn't about getting the meaning "right" or imposing our ideas on children. It's about readers, young and old, telling the stories of their reading. This brings us to Tell Me.

The Tell Me framework is deceptively simple. It hangs on what Chambers calls "the three sharings," enthusiasms, puzzles, and patterns. Here is what he means by them.

Enthusiasms

We want children to tell us what they liked about a story. We all hope that children will find delight in their reading. When they do, we ask them to tell us. We hope that their enthusiasm will be contagious to other children. Most of us have asked a child if they liked a book and what they liked about it, that's very commonplace. What isn't asked very often is what, if anything, a reader didn't like about a book. Asking what a reader disliked about a book is potentially far more powerful than asking what a reader liked. First, readers need to know that it is acceptable not to like a book or not to like something about a book. There is no book that is loved by everyone and there is no one who loves every book. Second, it is often those things about a book that we don't like that make for interesting discussion. So, even if you don't like a book, it can still be worthwhile to finish it and discuss it. Third, when readers can tell you what they don't like, often you learn something about how that reader reads. A commonly heard dislike is: "I didn't understand it." A little probing can reveal that a reader has encountered a textual feature such as a flashback for the first time. Fantasy and science fiction stories can throw some readers who have difficulty imagining something that does not exist in reality. Because "What did you dislike?" is such a powerful question, we can break the sharing of enthusiasms into two parts, likes and dislikes.

Puzzles

Equally powerful is asking readers if there is anything about the book that confused them, that they didn't understand, or were puzzled by. Generally, in school the "good" readers always know what's going on; it's only the "poor" readers who are confused. But all readers become confused from time to time and that's okay. In fact, often in stories it is that which puzzles us that is most compelling. What we don't know can make for interesting conversation. So questions such as, "Was there anything that didn't make sense to you?" "Was there anything that seemed wrong or out-of-place?" "Were there questions you had that the story didn't answer?" can provoke a lot of rich discussion.

Patterns

Patterns and other connections are another rich area to probe with other readers. Are there recurring elements within the story? Does the story remind you of other stories? Does the story bring up issues or connect to questions you might have brought into the book? Now we are at the heart of reading literature, connecting what you read with what you've already encountered either in that story itself or in other stories you have read or even life experiences.

The Tell Me Framework (cont'd)

The Four Sayings

Chambers goes on to discuss the importance of talk. The act of sharing your thoughts with someone else provides a structure to your thinking and often this is clarifying to you as well as to your listeners. Chambers calls this "saying for yourself" and "saying with others." You may have said to someone, "just thinking out loud." What you are saying is that by talking through an idea, you can give it a form and coherence and thus it becomes clearer in your mind. If you go on to ask that person, "Does that make sense?" you are shaping your thoughts into another level of clarity, one in which your ideas are comprehensible to someone besides yourself. Sharing isn't just about your ideas, it's about the ideas that everyone in the group brings to the discussion. This, Chambers calls, "saying together." Combining the ideas of other readers with your own, you can discover new meanings and ideas you hadn't thought of before."Saying the new," Chambers calls this, and this kind of saying can bring about some of the deepest pleasure a reader can experience with a book.

Asking for Evidence

A great follow-up question in a discussion is to ask what the reader read that led that reader to a particular conclusion. "How do you know this?" or "What did you read that led you to think that?" Don't do this in a challenging way, but in a way that suggests you really want to know, (because you really do want to know!) and because you didn't catch that or consider that when you read that bit.  The Common Core does emphasize this point in its framework as well.

What Critics Do

Chambers borrows from W. H. Auden a list of six jobs a literary critic can perform:

1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
3. Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4. Give a reading of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5. Throw light upon the process of artistic making.
6. Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, religion, ethics, etc.

Chambers' point in mentioning this list is that he contends that children are quite capable of performing each of these tasks of a critic.

A Few Basic Rules

Everything said should be considered as honorably reportable. This means that we will consider all statements to be an honest attempt to share what one really thinks. It means not using put-downs, but it also means if you don't understand what someone is saying you can ask, "How do you know that?" or "What did you read that suggested that idea to you?"

If you are leading a book discussion, here are two additional rules just for leaders:

Avoid inserting yourself into the conversation. As soon as you weigh in on what you think about the story, that has the tendency to become the "official" reading. It takes some time and experience with the same group of child readers to come to a place where the children see you as just another reader and feel comfortable challenging your understandings.

Only ask questions to which you don't KNOW the answer. You might have a good idea what the answer is, but you can't prove it and there are other acceptable answers. Once the mystery is gone from a story, it ceases to be a story that can produce rich discussion. Keeping the mystery of meaning alive can be a tricky task, but it can lead to much pleasure.  This connects us to the ideas of infinite and finite play – implicit and explicit meaning.

This is the basic framework of Tell Me. In Chapter 14 Chambers fleshes out the framework with additional questions. There is no proper order to ask the questions. All or even most of the questions should never be asked of one book. Usually, only a few questions are enough to engage a group in discussion. Too many questions and you risk exhausting the (playful) readers. Going back to the idea of framing, the questions Chambers lists in his book are not about squeezing out a specific reading or imposing a particular meaning. This is about uncovering possible meanings and considering them with others.

Finally, note the Tell Me games Chambers describes in Chapter 16. The Non-Reader Game is particularly useful and powerful. It's a way to engage children who may have been absent or just didn't complete the reading. The idea is to have the ones who have read the story retell it as a group for the benefit of those who have not read it. The non-readers may interrupt at any time to ask questions or ask for clarity. It's rare that after playing the Non-Reader Game the non-readers don't go back and read the story, often on their own time.

Reading Highlights

The following may not cover all of the assigned readings for the lesson. Always be sure to check your syllabus schedule for reading specifics.

Jack Gantos

Dead End in Norvel is part memoir, part fiction, part manic, and part introspective.  Like most of Gantos' work it's fast paced, heavy on dialogue, told in first person, and filled with the bizarre.  You might be tempted to see the book as light reading, full of humor and one strange event after another.  But with Gantos there is usually something lurking beneath the surface.  Have some fun with this book.  It's a good one for playful reading.  If you can, read it twice.  When we read a text the first time, we read for plot.  We want to find out what is going to happen next.  The technology of the book combined with the skills of the author is set up to encourage us to read this way - to turn the page.  If read something a second time, we already know what is going to happen, so we can attend to other things - details we might have missed the first time, clues as to what may happen, symbolism, metaphor.  We characterize this as "first we read for sequence, then we read for secrets."  Hold onto that idea throughout the course.  When we come to the lesson on the Common Core, we'll make much of the idea that the Common Core seems to value reading for sequence, but not so much reading for secrets.  But for now, enjoy Dead End in Norvelt.

Activities & Assignments

Threaded Discussions

1. Participate in the Story Reading discussion forum. To access this discussion forum, go to the Activities link on the left menu, go to the Threaded Discussions folder, and choose the Lesson 2 - Playful Reading folder.
   • Read Dan Hade's story about reading Miss Nelson Is Missing with his preschool aged daughter from his article, "Being Literary in a Literature-Based Classroom."
   • Share and post a story of a reading by a child or children of a book.  It's fine for your story to be a recollection about your own reading of a book as a child.
      
2. Participate in the Dead End in Norvelt discussion forum. To access this discussion forum, go to the Activities link on the left menu, go to the Threaded Discussions folder, and choose the Lesson 2 - Playful Reading folder.
   
   • The ending of Ganto's Dead End in Norvelt is interesting and is often the focus of much discussion in some circles, so think about and discuss what you liked and disliked about Dead End in Norvelt. Note any puzzles or difficulties you had with the book and pay attention to any patterns you may discover.
   • Chart out and post the likes, dislikes, puzzles and patterns you saw in the Dead End in Norvelt and share your rationales.