First time reading this story and the language is difficult to read at some points, but still readable. In the first chapter Tom Sawyer is seen as a troublemaker. He was caught by his Aunt Polly when he was hiding from her and quickly escapes by fooling her. Later he is suspected of playing hooky from school and went swimming instead. He almost got away with it until his half-brother Sid calls him out about the color of the thread used for his collar. It was white when it was sewn by Aunt Polly, but it was now black. Despite his trouble-making habits he is depicted to be more mature than the other kids his age. First in chapter 2, he is able to get other kids to d his work in exchange for something material that the other kids had. He does this by declaring his work was not actually work and made the other kids think it was work only he could be trusted with.
Author Archives: jaime.chang
Alice
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, throughout the story, Alice is very curious about the new things she encounters. We first see Alice being curious when she sees a rabbit going about while she is thinking about what to do. She finds it peculiar that the rabbit had a “waistcoat-pocket” (2) on and even pulls out a pocket watch from it. Out of her curiosity of this peculiar rabbit, she immediately follows him and even jumps in with him when he jumps down a hole “never once considering how in the world to get out again” (3). By jumping in without considering her next actions and the consequences of her actions, Alice appears to be curious because she follows her instincts to learn more about this rabbit which she finds peculiar. In the hole, she begins her journey exploring a new land. To these new things she always says “I wonder.” The usage of “I wonder” shows the reader that she is curious because she’s always questioning things and wondering about them. For example, when she’s falling down the hole, she says to herself, ” I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time” (4) thinking about what is going on. She continues to wonder her location. In addition, later on, she discovers a drink that makes her shrink. She thinks of it as a “curious feeling” (11). She didn’t fear for her life when she continued to shrink but wondered instead, “what [she] should be like [when she goes out] like a candle” (11). Therefore, with her constant wondering and disregard for her safety, Alice seems to be a very curious child.
Rollo
The interesting thing I noticed while reading the story Rollo at Play in the Woods by James Abott was the use of the word penitent at the beginning of the story on page 11 and towards the end of the story on page 23. I think this one word stuck to me because to me it was the meaning of the whole story where one experiences regret and learns how to set things right. Penitent means the regret one feels when they did something wrong and in this story Rollo and his cousin James felt just that. In the story the mother of Rollo and the character that seems to be a more mature play the role of leading Rollo into what the moral of the story is. On page 9 the mother says to Rollo, “Now it is my duty not to yield to such feelings as you have now, but to punish them” shows that she’s guiding him to what is perceived to be the right thing to do. I think that the moral of the story is to get children to right their wrongs and understand what it means to be fair.
Two Implied Readers
After reading the document “How To Read Children’s Literature” I never thought about the implied reader being the children and the adult. I have always thought children’s literature was mainly focused on children being the only audience it was intended for. After being introduced to an adult as another implied reader, they have a larger knowledge base than the implied child reader. When I first read the poem I tried to read it in the perspective of a child and it worked out in two cases where the reader requires a “body of knowledge of literature and life”, called repertoire that adults had more of than children did. The first thing was how a cat and an owl cannot be seen together as partners. Such a relationship would be seen in a fiction story or a fantasy, but reading further int the document I remembered how different animals can be close despite knowing such a relationship would not occur. The second thing was the words runcible and bong-tree, and I never heard of these words and assumed they were made up words. I thought they were words a child would be curious about and ask someone older to tell them what the words meant. Obviously, I decided to look up these words after I finished the poem.