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"Too foreign?"
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From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:20:02 -0600
Norma Jean has raised some very interesting questions and I hope people will reply with candor, as requested.
I often do hear teachers and librarians remarking that a book is "too foreign" to appeal to American children. My sense is that adults often make that decision on behalf of children without even trying to see what children actually think.
In my own experience working with children, I always found Batchelder winner Uri Orlev, for example, to be a pretty easy author to book talk, both to children and adults. I remember one 12 year old boy in particular who loved "Island on Bird Street" so much that he read every book we had in the library by Orlev, including an adult novel that he found on his own!
On another occasion, I used the book "Buster's World" by Bjarne Reuter in a discussion with third and fourth graders. Most of the children enjoyed the book, even though they thought Buster was kind of strange.
(One child put it: "If Buster was a real person, I don't think I'd want him as a best friend but I would like to sit next to him in school.")
I wanted to get a sense of whether the children felt the book was foreign, so near the end of the discussion, I asked them where the thought the book was set. Blank looks all around. "Well," I asked, "Do you think it could have been set here in Madison?"
"Nooooo!"
"Somewhere else in Wisconsin?"
"Nooooo!"
"Maybe New York or Chicago?"
"Noooo!"
Finally one girl piped up, "I think it takes place in a foreign country."
"Why do you think that?"
"Well, it had those little lines through the o's sometimes and I don't think we ever do that in America."
"Is there anything else you noticed that would lead you to believe it was set in a foreign county?"
The children thought for a while and then one boy quietly spoke up,
"Well, I think it was set in another country because the grown ups were nice to the kids." Vigorous nods all around from the other children.
"What do you mean?" I asked, very surprised by the answer and the fact that the other kids so clearly agreed.
"Well, Buster was friends with that old woman in his neighborhood and she was nice to him and treated him like an equal. That would never happen in America. Kids and grown ups are never friends here." Lots of nodding and murmurs of agreement here among the children.
Whether or not it's true that American adults and children can't be friends, it was certainly clear that this is how these children perceived the world, and I'm not sure it's something many adult readers would have picked up on. We would more likely have been spending our time worrying about whether the lines through the o's would be a barrier for American children.
KT
Kathleen T. Horning, Director Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
horning at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3721 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 23 Mar 2004 11:20:02 AM CST
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:20:02 -0600
Norma Jean has raised some very interesting questions and I hope people will reply with candor, as requested.
I often do hear teachers and librarians remarking that a book is "too foreign" to appeal to American children. My sense is that adults often make that decision on behalf of children without even trying to see what children actually think.
In my own experience working with children, I always found Batchelder winner Uri Orlev, for example, to be a pretty easy author to book talk, both to children and adults. I remember one 12 year old boy in particular who loved "Island on Bird Street" so much that he read every book we had in the library by Orlev, including an adult novel that he found on his own!
On another occasion, I used the book "Buster's World" by Bjarne Reuter in a discussion with third and fourth graders. Most of the children enjoyed the book, even though they thought Buster was kind of strange.
(One child put it: "If Buster was a real person, I don't think I'd want him as a best friend but I would like to sit next to him in school.")
I wanted to get a sense of whether the children felt the book was foreign, so near the end of the discussion, I asked them where the thought the book was set. Blank looks all around. "Well," I asked, "Do you think it could have been set here in Madison?"
"Nooooo!"
"Somewhere else in Wisconsin?"
"Nooooo!"
"Maybe New York or Chicago?"
"Noooo!"
Finally one girl piped up, "I think it takes place in a foreign country."
"Why do you think that?"
"Well, it had those little lines through the o's sometimes and I don't think we ever do that in America."
"Is there anything else you noticed that would lead you to believe it was set in a foreign county?"
The children thought for a while and then one boy quietly spoke up,
"Well, I think it was set in another country because the grown ups were nice to the kids." Vigorous nods all around from the other children.
"What do you mean?" I asked, very surprised by the answer and the fact that the other kids so clearly agreed.
"Well, Buster was friends with that old woman in his neighborhood and she was nice to him and treated him like an equal. That would never happen in America. Kids and grown ups are never friends here." Lots of nodding and murmurs of agreement here among the children.
Whether or not it's true that American adults and children can't be friends, it was certainly clear that this is how these children perceived the world, and I'm not sure it's something many adult readers would have picked up on. We would more likely have been spending our time worrying about whether the lines through the o's would be a barrier for American children.
KT
Kathleen T. Horning, Director Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706
horning at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3721 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 23 Mar 2004 11:20:02 AM CST
