From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 10:18:52 -0500

Holly, thanks for bringing the Magic School Bus books into our discussion on nonlinear narratives. I suspect that adults have much more trouble trying to figure out how to read them (including reading them aloud) than children do.

Last fall I had an opportunity to work with a classroom of fifth-graders who were learning how to evaluate and review books. Prior to my classroom visit, I had selected three Magic School Bus books and had asked the 5th grade teacher to arrange for her students to "test them out" on K-2 students.

Over a period of a few weeks, they read them aloud, one-on-one, to younger students and observed their responses. When they came to report on their experiences in the large group, not one of the 5th graders indicated any difficulty with reading the books aloud. What they noted, however, was that each of them had read the books differently, depending on the preferences of the child to whom they were reading. Here are the conclusions they were able to draw:

1) The main strand of narrative described the action in the story and all the kids read at least this strand and then let the child to whom they were reading ask for the additional strands, if they wanted to know more. Fifth graders called this main strand "the story."

2) Most kindergartners had no interest in the text in the dialogue bubbles (what the 5th graders called "the jokes") because they didn't get the humor and the 5th graders soon learned to skip them when they were reading them aloud to the younger kids.

3) Some first and most second graders seemed to like the dialogue bubble text the best, as did the fifth graders themselves. First and second graders with short attention spans wanted ONLY "the jokes."

4) Only children who were truly interested in the subject matter (e.g. dinosaurs) to start with asked for the informational layer to be read to them. This included many kindergartners who wanted the main story and the information. The fifth graders called this narrative strand "the facts." Luckily, they were using three different books in the series, so they were able to draw this conclusion as many more kindergartners were interested in the book about the dinosaurs than they were in the one about the waterworks.

5) First and second graders with sophisticated senses of humor who were truly interested in the subject matter wanted to have all three strands of text read aloud to them.

We did this exercise to help the 5th grade reviewers begin to develop a sense of audience as they began reviewing books for younger children. I think they were surprised to find out that there were so many different responses but that they could still make some generalizations about the potential audience for Magic School Bus books. I gave absolutely no instructions to the 5th graders as to how they should read the books aloud because I was curious to see if they'd have any trouble figuring out how to do it. They obviosuly had no trouble at all!


Kathleen T. Horning (khorning at facstaff.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education University of Wisconsin-Madison 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
(608)&3930

t Some of the teachers in my classes have also not liked the Magic School Bus books because they can't be read aloud. It is helpful to them to see that each double spread is a web; as often as they use webs with their own students, it seems to be a new idea for them that an entire book could be written as a series of webs. Eliza has suggested that at least some children and young people have little difficulty in adjusting to the expectations of interactive texts and many of the people on this list enjoy them, but others may have to adjust their ideas of
"text" in order to appreciate them.

Holly

Holly G. Willett willett at rowan.edu Library Education Advisor/Coordinator Secondary Education/Foundations of Education Rowan University Glassboro, NJ 08028
(609) 256G59
Received on Mon 05 Oct 1998 10:18:52 AM CDT