Tag Archives: adult

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Little Annie’s Ramble: Two stories in one

Little Annie’s Ramble, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, on the surface appears to be a story about a little girls stroll through town with her adult neighbor, who is also the narrator.The two visit various locations that would attract a child’s attention such as a bakery and a toy store. The “ramble” comes to end when the town crier begins to alert the towns people of a missing girl and the narrator realizes he left with Annie without telling her mother.

This story can be interpreted from the perceptive of an adult man who gets so absorbed in a child’s world that he nearly forgets he himself is an adult at one point. The narrator in this interpretation is just a man who has more admiration for childhood rather than the child. The narrator ends up finding his own childhood in his ramble with little Annie. This could be what causes him to forget to tell Annie’s mother that he went on a walk with her.

The second interpretation is more dark since an adult could easily take the narrators jovial attitude towards Annie as perverse. There is one line in particular that makes the narrator look like a pedophile:“there are few grown ladies that could entice me from the side of little Anllie”. This line makes it sound like the narrator would prefer the company of a little girl over that of a grown woman. In addition, while the narrator claims to have forgotten to tell Annie’s mother he was with her, one could assume he did not tell her on purpose.

This is a rather conflicted text, at least for adults, since it can have various innuendos and interpretations.

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Kiddie Lit Response

“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grownup, to admire the grownup because it is grownup, to blush at the suspicion of being childish-these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.” This quote from C.S. Lewis that Beverly Lyon Clark mentions in her book Kiddie Lit was one that I found particularly interesting. In a society where maturity is a coveted quality, it was quite difficult for me to view this statement as having some truth to it. Being an “adult”, in my opinion, means having much responsibility, one being having a maturity level that greatly surpasses that of a child. As an adult, one is responsible for being a role model for children. This means that we are responsible for explaining to young minds what it means to be mature and what behaviors are socially acceptable or unacceptable. Furthermore, we have responsibilities that are necessary for us just to survive. This includes the all wonderful world of paying bills, feeding ourselves, and sheltering ourselves. There are, in fact, worries to have when being an adult. So for Lewis to say being concerned about being a grownup is childish is a bit inappropriate.

When we, as adults, cross the line from adulthood back into childhood/childishness, it can definitely be frowned upon. This is not to say that we cannot lower our maturity levels from time to time. Let us be completely honest, there are moments when we tend to “play around” and act like “children” when we are around our friends or when we are around younger siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. However, if this behavior carries over into our professional lives, society definitely raises its eyebrow. With this being said, I disagree with Lewis’ claim that being worried about acting childish is childish itself. There are instances in our lives where we just need to be aware of our behavior because of societal and professional expectations.

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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.

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The Pleasures of Children’s Literature

The excerpt from Perry Nodelman and Mevis Reimer’s text focuses on the relationship children actually have with children’s literature. In addition, it also explores how adults interaction with children’s literature differs from that of children and what causes these differences. One of the main differences comes from the literary “repertoire” that adults have versus the one children have. Adults tend to have a greater understanding of both language and its use.Furthermore adults can apply their past knowledge and experience towards the literature. This causes adults to have a different understanding and view of the literature. Adults would would be able to draw more from a children’s text because they have the capacity to. Children do not or rather cannot see more in a children’s text because their literary “repertoire” is limited. In this sense, Nodelman and Reimer point out that it is actually to difficult to decide what kind of children’s literature should and should not be read to/by children. In addition adults are the ones who inevitably decide what is considered “appropriate” literature for children. They do so based on their own hypothetical guess’s of what children would like in literature. Nodelman and Reimer  state this is not effective since the adults are making guess’s and cannot really know what the child might like in literature without actually being exposed to it. A child’s lack of knowledge allows him/her read any children’s literature and end up enjoying it. I think Nodelman and Reimer make an excellent point: adults should not decide what is considered “good” children’s literature for children. They themselves are no longer children and cannot interpret  it the same way a child does. What adults may consider  inappropriate is therefore irrelevant since a child may not even know that what they are reading can be viewed in that context.