What a reader is asked to KNOW:

About Life

• Blue is not a natural/normal color for human hair.
• There was once a time when men were perceived as “dominant”, and wives had to listen to the rules of their husbands.
• Swords are weapons used to kill.

About Language

• Basic comprehension of English, i.e., reading from left to right, how sentences and paragraphs are formed to create thoughts.
• Quotations and how they are used to separate dialogue from narration.
• Language as it is used to express emotion.
• Why “Blue Beard” goes from an identifying characteristic to a proper noun.

About Literature

• How to differentiate “bad” characters from “good” characters, and how their actions differentiate them.
• That identifiers can be used as nicknames.
• How to spot elements of foreshadowing in the main character’s journey.

What a reader is asked to DO:

• Put letters and words together into conscious streams of thought that relate to one another.
• Comprehend the beginning, climax, and resolution of the given story.
• Feel surprise at sudden character shifts and deception.

Who is the implied reader?

The implied reader of “Bluebeard” is a child. This assumption is owing to the fact that the writing is simple and straightforward, with limited (if any) use of simile, metaphor, or other literary devices. It is written in simple prose with very few characters having actual names. However, the child would need to read in the presence of an adult to better comprehend the darker themes of death and deception. A couple of potentially harmful results would be the child assuming that ALL wives had to listen to their husbands, and that people with blue hair/beards are untrustworthy.

What a Reader is Asked to Know:

About Life:

• What a sheep is, what a wolf is, what a shepherd and his dogs are what they do, what a lamb is
• What the relationship between the wolves and different animals (sheep and lamb in particular) is
• What it means to wear a different skin of animal, especially that a wolf is clever enough to do so
• What it means to prey on animals

About Language:

• The importance of the capitalization of different character’s titles
• In what perspective the story is being told
• Vocabulary – certain words need to be understood to see the dynamic between wolves and sheep more clearly, such as “vigilance” and “deceiving”

About Literature:

• That certain texts will describe things in a fictional way in order to depict lessons that are applicable to our reality – a fable
• Reading and understanding the impossible, such as a wolf who is able to wear the skin of a sheep and effectively pass as a real one.

What a Reader is Asked to do:

• Understand that this is a fable in which the reader will learn a lesson about life through the characters in the story.

Who is the implied reader of the text? What reader might know these things? What reader might be moved to do what is asked of them to do?

The implied readers of his text are children, based on the brevity and simplicity of the story. The story itself exploits the inherent predator-prey interaction between wolves and lambs. The wolf cannot get close to the sheep because of the protection provided by the shepherd and his watchdogs, so the wolf deceives by wearing the skin of a sheep to get closer to his prey and ultimately eat it. The lesson that is imparted to the implied reader is  “Appearances are deceptive”, but it is a lesson that doesn’t have to be given only to children, as adults who are reading it can understand and apply the lesson in everyday life as well.

What a Reader Is Asked to Know

 About Life

• What a Shepherd Boy, mountain, dark forest, village, and wolf is.
• That loneliness and excitement are feelings
• What it means to trick, deceive, and fool others

About Language

• How to read from left to right and top to bottom, while understanding the language that is being use
• Why Shepherd Boy and Wolf are capitalized

About Literature

• What fables are and the purpose they serve
• The message that fables give at the end are what the readers’ should learn after reading the fable

What a Reader Is Asked to Do

• Understand the flow of events starting from an introduction to a concluding statement
• Realize that the story is meant to bring out a sense of fear so that people who read it learn what not to do
• Understand the context of the story and how the characters’ interactions with each other make sense

Who is the Implied Reader?

The implied reader of the fable are children. The story speaks out against the idea of lying, which is a bad action taken by both children and adults. However, I feel that the author would feel more empowered to persuade a younger audience against lying through the use of fables such as “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. Despite the fact that the moral of the story is very obvious to both children and adults, the author makes the assumption that adults already know that lying is bad by using a wise man to give the concluding statement regarding what went wrong in the story.

What a Reader Is Asked to Know

About Life

• If you get hurt early and learn from it, you can still be successful in the long run
• Be careful with fragile things and who you choose to trust with fragile things

About Language

• How to read with punctuation and grammar
• How to read between the lines and understand the bigger idea
• What is a metaphor

About Literature

• The lesson does not always derive from the main character
• There is a lesson at the end of a fable
• The lesson may be told in a metaphor

What a Reader Is Asked to Do

• Learn the main lesson from the characters in the story

Who is the implied reader of the text?

The implied readers of this text can be children and adults. Th story is not too short, but it is simple enough for children to understand. The lesson at the end is also disguised in a metaphor. Although it is meant to be a children’s story both children and adults can learn a valuable lesson from the three sisters.

What a Reader Is Asked to Know

 About Life

• This nursery rhyme demands that you have previous knowledge on what a spider is, what a water sprout is, what it means to climb,
• When something gets wet it becomes slippery making the texture hard to grip and how heat from the sun can dry out something that is wet.
• The word “Itsy-Bitsy” implies a different characteristic to what a regular “spider” might imply.

About Language

• How to read in English, as well as having a good understanding as to how words are used together to express different ideas.
• You have to know that the text is to be read in the order of left to right and top to bottom.
• Why the words in the beginning of each line are capitalized.

About Literature

• There is no requirement for the text to be written in complete sentences because it is a poem.
• What a poem is and its significance as opposed to a non-poetic piece of literature.
• Even though the literary text is a narration of a spider climbing a water sprout, it is still a form literary entertainment.

What a Reader Is Asked to Do

• Translate what is presented in front of you into letters that form together into words that work together and express an idea.
• The understanding that the literature you are reading is a poem which means that you need to pay close attention to the patterns and attitudes that the author uses.
• Expect to receive some type of pleasure from the literature because it is a form of literature.

The nursery rhyme that I chose to respond to is the Itsy-Bitsy Spider by imitating Klassen’s model in order to perform a thorough analysis of the text. In my opinion, the implied reader of this poem are children because the previous knowledge that you are expected to have before reading this text, as well as what you are suppose to do with the literature, is not as complex compared to other works of literature. Anybody can find the same pleasure I received from reading this simple poem because the concepts and patterns found in this poem aren’t extremely difficult to follow.

“The Ant and the Grasshopper”

By: Joseph Jacobs

What a Reader Is Asked to Know

About Life

• What a grasshopper is, what an ant is, what winter is, what summer is, what corn is, what it means to store food, what it means to prepare ahead of time, what “toiling and moiling” means, why food is necessary
• How unlikely it is for a grasshopper and an ant to talk like humans

About Language

• Why words such as “Ant” and “Grasshopper” might be capitalized
• How to determine who is speaking in a text
• How to read in terms of understanding the punctuation and grammar

About Literature

• Reading about the actions of two different insects can teach a lesson that applies to everyday life in an entertaining way
• What a fable teaches readers at the end of a story

What a Reader Is Asked to Do

• Understand that this is a short story
• Understand that this is a fable where at the end the characters and the readers learn a lesson

Who is the implied reader of the text? What reader might know these things? What reader might be moved to do what is asked of them to do?

The implied readers of this text are children. The language used in “The Ant and The Grasshopper” is written in a story format that is short and simple. By using insects instead of humans in the fable this story becomes a more entertaining story for children. In the story the Ant works hard to store away food in the summer to prepare for the winter while the Grasshopper passes its time leisurely because there is plenty of food at the time. While fables are written in such a way for children to understand, this fable can easily have adults as the implied readers. If fables are written for children, then it is the adults that create this lesson that “it is best to prepare for the days of necessity” (Jacobs). This lesson is a universal idea that children and adults can learn from. Adults input this idea through a story to teach children.
Jacobs, Joseph. “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” The Ant and the Grasshopper. Aesop. 1909-14. Fables. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14, 27 Mar. 2001. Web. 7 Sept. 2015. <http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/36.html>.