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From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 12:40:52 -0500
I find it hard to generalize about the reception of foreign books by American children. After all, each classroom, each teacher, each community, each child comes to books with a different set of experiences and expectations.
I can imagine certain children of immigrants (I was such a one) rejecting anything foreign in an effort to be American, to blend in. Or I can imagine a classroom full of children from many places happily exploring and listening to a wide variety of books from other places (as well as books about other places). I can also imagine a classroom of children who have never met anyone from another country, who have not traveled far from their own homes and who are understandably stymied and uncomfortable with what seems simply too too different to deal with.
I can also imagine a variety of adults sharing these books with children. There are those who have traveled and lived overseas themselves (that's many of us on this list) who are able to communicate their experiences and passion for knowing other ways to their students. And then I can imagine adults bothered themselves by books that seem too different from their own experiences or ways of reading (as may be the case with some of Barbara's students), presenting these books to children with great reluctance if at all. I further suspect that such adults are far more comfortable with a book written by an American about another places rather than a book written by someone from another place. American writers mediate the differences to make the book s more accessible to an American audience, I suspect. Most of the folktales, for example, that we tout for multicultural teaching are retold by Americans in ways with which Americans are comfortable and familiar. My students, for example, are gleefully shocked by the German Grimm Cinderella I have (with the bloody footprints of the stepsisters after cutting off those toes and heels!), something a German child wouldn't think twice about. It is both the violence of the story and the violence of the imagines --- their folktale picturebooks (American ones) certainly aren't like that!
At any rate, I think the reception of the Batchelder books by children
(and many of the adults around them) is related very much to their general experience with foreignness. The more they've had the more likely, I would imagine, they are to take to the books.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Sat 27 Mar 2004 11:40:52 AM CST
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 12:40:52 -0500
I find it hard to generalize about the reception of foreign books by American children. After all, each classroom, each teacher, each community, each child comes to books with a different set of experiences and expectations.
I can imagine certain children of immigrants (I was such a one) rejecting anything foreign in an effort to be American, to blend in. Or I can imagine a classroom full of children from many places happily exploring and listening to a wide variety of books from other places (as well as books about other places). I can also imagine a classroom of children who have never met anyone from another country, who have not traveled far from their own homes and who are understandably stymied and uncomfortable with what seems simply too too different to deal with.
I can also imagine a variety of adults sharing these books with children. There are those who have traveled and lived overseas themselves (that's many of us on this list) who are able to communicate their experiences and passion for knowing other ways to their students. And then I can imagine adults bothered themselves by books that seem too different from their own experiences or ways of reading (as may be the case with some of Barbara's students), presenting these books to children with great reluctance if at all. I further suspect that such adults are far more comfortable with a book written by an American about another places rather than a book written by someone from another place. American writers mediate the differences to make the book s more accessible to an American audience, I suspect. Most of the folktales, for example, that we tout for multicultural teaching are retold by Americans in ways with which Americans are comfortable and familiar. My students, for example, are gleefully shocked by the German Grimm Cinderella I have (with the bloody footprints of the stepsisters after cutting off those toes and heels!), something a German child wouldn't think twice about. It is both the violence of the story and the violence of the imagines --- their folktale picturebooks (American ones) certainly aren't like that!
At any rate, I think the reception of the Batchelder books by children
(and many of the adults around them) is related very much to their general experience with foreignness. The more they've had the more likely, I would imagine, they are to take to the books.
Monica
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Sat 27 Mar 2004 11:40:52 AM CST
