Today I was having a one on one meeting with my boss. I was telling her about TE 348 and about how I have to analyze children’s books. She asked me the question about what my favorite book was as a child. I told her about that it was Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone which starred Grover from Sesame Street. It turns out, even though there is a bigger age difference, we both share a love for the same book. Two people from different areas of the country and different ages grew up reading the same book.
This made me think about the reading from The Joy of Children’s Literature, about how popular reading traditional literature. We are reading a story that is the same or very similar to one that people read all over the world. The idea that literature can be used as a way to unite the world is a very powerful one. Even if the story was never read from the book, it may have been told in an oral tradition. An example would be Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. A lot of children have heard this story. Whether it was read or told to them, they heard it because their parents heard it. And their parents heard it from their grandparents. It’s a story that multiple generations and cultures can bond over because the basic themes of the story do not change.
One of the reasons we share traditional literature across cultures is because the common themes. All cultures use love, fear, jealousy, greed, etc. in their stories. These are common human traits that are addressed in all of these stories. These themes are addressed in today’s literature as well as our classics. Literature is a way for humans to connect. Whether it is over a favorite book, or a fairytale, or a fable, they all share some sort of human trait that we can all relate too. It is amazing to think of how we are all connected through literature and the possibilities that this brings for the classroom.
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