Children's Literature and Learner Empowerment: Children and Teenagers in English Language Education 9781441144416, 9781472552808, 9781441153395

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Introduction: The EFL-Literature Classroom
Implications of ever-younger EFL classrooms
Well-crafted versus poorly crafted texts, language and content
The literacy spectrum
Reading as empowerment
Part 1 Visual Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom
Chapter 2 Developing the Mind’s Eye with Picturebooks
The challenge of children’s multimodal literary texts
Literacy and picturebooks
A cumulative progression in the EFL-literature classroom
The scope of picturebooks
Note
Chapter 3 Bridging a Curricular Gap with Graphic Novels
The contribution of graphic novels in the EFL-literature classroom
The emotional homelessness of adolescence and the home/away/home story
Developing literary skills with lower intermediate learners: Baum and Cavallaro’s The Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel
Part 2 Literary Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom
Chapter 4 Postmodern Fairy Tales: Co-constructing Meaning
Stepping-stones to co-constructing meaning
Gaining confidence as perceptive ‘gap’ readers with literary texts
The literature canon and schema-refreshing discourse
The motivational power of excess
An exemplar for teacher education: Scieszka and Smith’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf
Note
Chapter 5 The Poetry of Children’s Literature and Creative Writing
Children’s oral culture: A challenge to the language/literature dichotomy
Language patterning in children’s literature: The form/meaning dichotomy
Note
Chapter 6 Children’s Plays: Beyond the Oracy/Literacy Dichotomy
Drama processes
Play, plays and performance
Plays for children
Part 3 Critical Cultural Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom
Chapter 7 Radical Children’s Literature and Engaged Reading
Arguments for engaged reading with children’s literature
Global issues and children’s literature
FREE? Stories About Human Rights in the EFL-literature classroom
Note
Chapter 8 Harry Potter and Critical Cultural Literacy
Extensive reading with Harry Potter
Intensive reading: The ‘English Literature Canon’ versus Harry Potter in the EFL-literature classroom
Empowerment of the reader with Harry Potter
Looking at character in Harry Potter
Harry Potter and global issues
Notes
Conclusion
Bibliography
References
Index

Citation preview

Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment

Also available from Bloomsbury Children’s Literature in Second Language Education, Edited by Janice Bland and Christiane Lütge Corpus-Based Approaches to English Language Teaching, Edited by Mari Carmen Campoy, Begona Belles-Fortuno and Maria Lluisa Gea-Valor Understanding Language Classroom Contexts, Edited by Martin Wedell and Angi Malderez

Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment Children and Teenagers in English Language Education Janice Bland

LON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W YOR K • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © Janice Bland, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Janice Bland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-4441-6 ePDF: 978-1-4411-5339-5 ePub: 978-1-4411-6599-2



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bland, Janice. Children’s literature and learner empowerment: children and teenagers in English language education/Janice Bland. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-4441-6 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4411-5339-5 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4411-6599-2 (epub) 1. Children’s literature–Study and teaching. 2. English language–Study and teaching. 3. Children–Books and reading. 4. Teenagers–Books and reading. I. Title. PN1008.8.B57 2013 809’.89282071–dc23 2013006865

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To Reinhold, Cara and Emily

also Doreen and Bill

vi

Contents Acknowledgements

ix

1

1

Introduction: The EFL-Literature Classroom Implications of ever-younger EFL classrooms Well-crafted versus poorly crafted texts, language and content The literacy spectrum Reading as empowerment

2 7 13 27

Part 1  Visual Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom

29

2

31

3

Developing the Mind’s Eye with Picturebooks The challenge of children’s multimodal literary texts Literacy and picturebooks A cumulative progression in the EFL-literature classroom The scope of picturebooks Bridging a Curricular Gap with Graphic Novels The contribution of graphic novels in the EFL-literature classroom The emotional homelessness of adolescence and the home/ away/ home story Developing literary skills with lower intermediate learners: Baum and Cavallaro’s The Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel

32 34 37 39 74 75 82 96

Part 2  Literary Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom

109

4

111

Postmodern Fairy Tales: Co-constructing Meaning Stepping-stones to co-constructing meaning Gaining confidence as perceptive ‘gap’ readers with literary texts The literature canon and schema-refreshing discourse The motivational power of excess An exemplar for teacher education: Scieszka and Smith’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf

113 130 139 141 151

Contents

viii

5

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The Poetry of Children’s Literature and Creative Writing Children’s oral culture: A challenge to the language/literature dichotomy Language patterning in children’s literature: The form/meaning dichotomy Children’s Plays: Beyond the Oracy/Literacy Dichotomy Drama processes Play, plays and performance Plays for children

156 157 166 188 189 192 195

Part 3  Critical Cultural Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom

207

7

209

8

Radical Children’s Literature and Engaged Reading Arguments for engaged reading with children’s literature Global issues and children’s literature FREE? Stories About Human Rights in the EFL-literature classroom Harry Potter and Critical Cultural Literacy Extensive reading with Harry Potter Intensive reading: The ‘English Literature Canon’ versus Harry Potter in the EFL-literature classroom Empowerment of the reader with Harry Potter Looking at character in Harry Potter Harry Potter and global issues

Conclusion Bibliography References Index

210 225 241 254 256 259 261 267 273 293 299 303 327

Acknowledgements I gladly acknowledge the wisdom and scholarly support given to me by Laurenz Volkmann of Jena University while I was writing my doctoral thesis. My co-editors of the Children’s Literature in Language Education ejournal, Christiane Lütge of Münster University and Sandie Mourão, have supported me immeasurably with their encouragement and defence of the cause of children’s language learning. I would also like to wholeheartedly thank all peer reviewers of the CLELEjournal, which, though still in its infancy, has already shown the invaluable nature of the contribution made by experienced experts to the development of the ‘child’. I sincerely value the moral support given to me by colleagues in TEFL teacher education, including Maria Eisenmann, Kristin Kersten and Gisela SchmidSchönbein. I owe a debt to my editor, Rosie Pattinson, for her patience and friendly support, as well as to many of my student teachers who have shown keen interest in the matter of my research and have often contributed creative and innovative ideas. This book is based on my doctoral thesis for the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena.

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Introduction: The EFL-Literature Classroom

In many countries around the world, English language teaching in secondary schools includes the teaching of literary texts, and the central concern of Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment is creating a well-founded rationale for the selection of literature that might be studied with children and teenagers in the EFL classroom. The investigation draws for its theoretical background on studies of language teaching, second language acquisition, children’s literature scholarship, narrative theory, reading research, visual and critical literacy, cultural studies and pedagogical stylistics. I aim to reveal interconnections that support EFL learning and learner empowerment with children’s literature – interconnections that are bound to be largely missed by a narrow focus on applied linguistics. I use the term ‘children’s literature’ to cover all literature for children and younger adolescents, including oral literature such as fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The resistance towards employing children’s literature in language teaching mirrors the historical, now partly overhauled resistance of many scholars towards including the study of children’s literary texts in literature courses in academia: ‘The proximity of children’s literature to the domestic, nurturing, maternal, and, thus, the feminine sphere can be seen as a contributing factor in the marginalization of the subject in academic discourses’ (Thacker 2001: 3). However, there have always been voices in education for children’s literature as ‘an inspirational area for a productive interaction between adult, child and book’ (Hunt 2001: 263), and I will try to show the relevance for EFL teaching of what has been called ‘a parallel universe to the world of canonical literature, a universe of very large numbers of texts with a massive cultural influence’ (Hunt 2001: 2). The importance of reading competence for education as a whole as well as life skills has caused the promotion of a reading culture to become the challenge and obligation of all school subjects (Artelt and Dörfler 2010). The intrinsically motivational force of storytelling and picturebooks (mostly written as one word

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in recent scholarship to emphasize the word/image interdependency) in language teaching to young learners has already been well documented (Brewster and Ellis 2002; Enever and Schmid-Schönbein  2006; Garvie 1990; Halliwell 1992; Moon 2000; Wright 2009). However, worldwide, few primary English teachers are fully aware of the literary potential of picturebooks, and secondary-school teachers are even less familiar with children’s literature. To this end, a study of the role of children’s literature in ELT – and particularly how it can help carry along momentum from primary to secondary language teaching – is due.

Implications of ever-younger EFL classrooms A survey on the development of English by David Graddol produced the pronouncement: The age at which children start learning English has been lowering across the world. English has moved from the traditional ‘foreign languages’ slot in lower secondary school to primary school – even pre-school. The trend has gathered momentum only very recently and the intention is often to create a bilingual population. (Graddol 2006: 88)

It is vital that primary English is understood as a significant first step and basis in a continuum towards mastery of the foreign language and language awareness. The development of higher-order thinking through critical reading is an important contribution to the demanding academic work of the upper secondary school. Referring specifically to preparing young learners for the English-medium advanced mainstream EFL classroom, Ghosn writes: The traditional structurally-based texts and the newer, integrated, communicative courses might not be sufficient for the demands of the academic classes. On the other hand, a syllabus that is based, or that draws heavily on authentic children’s stories, provides a motivating medium for language learning while fostering the development of the thinking skills that are needed for L2 academic literacy. (Ghosn 2002: 172)

The curricular innovation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been growing steadily since the 1990s. While the English language as a subject of study may gradually disappear, and content-based EFL classrooms using English as a medium become the norm, intercultural learning, enriched by English-language literary and cultural texts, is likely to gain importance.

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An important aspect of learner empowerment seems to be routinely neglected in education, although it would be particularly relevant for intercultural learning: that teachers use the diverse ‘cultural information students bring into the classroom as legitimate and important constituents of learning’ (McLaren 1988: 214). Eisenmann refers to both the macro- and the micro-level contexts of learning when she writes ‘the contexts of learning not only depend on political and ideological agendas, cultural environment and school ethos, but also on emotional, physical, and social differences of the learners’ (Eisenmann 2013: 173). Not only the classroom texts, but also their selection for meaningful EFL classrooms must be critically examined, with consideration of the context at all levels. The differentiation between fast-attained Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and the far more gradually attained Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) (Cummins 1979, 1991) is very relevant for the literacyrelated competences of students who are in a minority situation, with their entire mainstream learning through a medium other than their L1. A study conducted in the United States (Hart and Risley 1995) shows that a similar concept to BICS and CALP would be relevant for assessing the impact of the socio-economic status (SES) of students on their reading. The study estimated that children of well-off middle-class backgrounds entered school having heard and seen 32 million more words than children from impoverished backgrounds, and it was demonstrated that this enormous gap in input was linked to a discrepancy of attainment at age 9. Lack of books in the home environment and lack of literacy events in the family semiotic domain certainly play a role in the literacy-related development of the individual student until well after adulthood has been reached: ‘Literacy as “the ability to read and write” situates literacy in the individual person, rather than in society. As such it obscures the multiple ways in which literacy interrelates with the workings of power’ (Gee 1996: 22). Particularly with primary and secondary students in the EFL classroom, who are seldom learning English to be acculturated into a particular target group, literacy could mean critical literacy in a global language and a step towards learner empowerment: Critical literacy is not a pedagogical technique to be learned but our ontological existence, i.e., part of our lives. It is something we do everyday to be informed agents in relation to others in a society where knowledge is socially constructed. We evaluate the texts in multiple forms critically to make our everyday decisions in various settings. (Lee 2011: 101)

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One ramification of ever-younger EFL classrooms is that, if the extent and quality of language input is increased through the extra years of language learning, there is a real opportunity for language emergence, the many chunks acquired through high-quality input acting as templates for a later focus on form. For ‘the rule is an artefact of the pattern-based learning, rather than the underlying source of learning’ (Schmitt and Carter 2004: 14). However, both the quality and the extent of input are frequently lacking with young learners – as the primary EFL classroom comprises often no more that one or two lessons per week. Recent investigations into extensive reading demonstrate it is a method that supports the development of leaner autonomy and motivation as well as language acquisition, provided the individual readers may select their texts for individual reading (in practice often out-of-class reading) and according to their interests (Grabe 2009; Krashen 2004, 2007, 2013; Maley 2008; Mason 2013; Renandya and Jacobs 2002). Researchers are now beginning to turn their attention to younger students and extensive reading, with encouraging results. To Grabe, due to the entwining of successful life opportunities with skilled reading abilities, it is ‘an important societal responsibility to offer every person the opportunity to become a skilled reader, and in many cases, this means becoming a skilled L2 reader’ (Grabe 2009: 6). An early start to extensive reading is recommended by Day and Bamford (1998: xiv), who consider, provided the children have learnt to read in their first language, that ‘extensive reading is appropriate at all stages of language learning; it is never too early – or too late – to learn to read a second language’. A recent case study with 9- to 10-year-olds in Germany, in their fourth year of EFL, extensively reading picturebooks, established that ‘the students themselves report a considerable rise in reading motivation, confidence and reading competence’ (Kolb 2013: 41). The availability of suitable literature is always an issue, in Germany quite as much as in Hungary where a 4-year reading project with donated picturebooks in the EFL classroom established that the children’s enthusiasm is partly due to the rarity of good books in their lives: The only English book they have access to is their textbook. Real books are attractive and interesting, they are in English and the children can even take them home to read and have a closer look at them. According to the teacher from the socially disadvantaged school (T2) ‘some of the children have never in their lives seen books of this quality, and maybe they never will’. (Lugossy 2006: 28)

Researchers have tirelessly provided data on the importance of reading for L1 and L2 language comprehension, which focuses on oracy as well as literacy

Introduction: The EFL-Literature Classroom

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(Rose 2006), but until students are provided with motivating reading material suitable for their age group, the chances for children to become readers, and all the empowerment that that entails, are extremely unequal. A report on reading in the United States, sponsored by Scholastic, which surveyed 500 children aged 5–17, concluded that the ‘benefits of reading are evidenced by the attitudes of high frequency readers. Compared to others, they are more likely to have positive self-perceptions and to associate strong reading skills with future success’ (Yankelovich 2006: 9). The same report found that the reason most often cited by children for why they don’t read more was ‘Trouble findings [sic] books I like’ (Yankelovich 2006: 34). Without a school library of attractive books, a reading programme has hardly any chance to be persuasive and successful (Krashen 2004, 2013). With this book I develop the case that whereas extensive reading is crucial for motivation as well as language acquisition, intensive communal (and pleasurable) booktalk on literary texts is additionally indispensable for the acquisition of literary literacy ‘as an all-encompassing term referring to different literary competences on various levels’ (Lütge 2012: 192). There is a need for analytic frameworks to identify authentic materials that can cater for children and teenagers’ affective, aesthetic and wider educational needs in addition to their functional–communicative language learning needs. For this reason, and because children’s earliest experience with literary texts is of the utmost importance, I explore whether children’s literature can provide a valuable start to their literary education in a foreign language. I believe that the concept presented here provides a missing link, as the survey begins with young learners and the literary experience that multilayered literature (i.e. readable in different ways at different levels of sophistication and maturity) for a young implied reader might supply for a slightly older reader. To Burwitz-Melzer ‘This issue of helping our students become lifelong readers by linking literature to their daily lives and world knowledge is not an issue which is only important for L1 learners – it also applies to L2 learners and can be enhanced and adapted from kindergarten onward through all grades and school types’ (Burwitz-Melzer 2013: 56). Ongoing teachers of EFL generally begin higher education with an extremely narrow knowledge of the wide field of literatures in English; certainly this is the case in Germany. For the most part, language learners are not introduced to fulllength literary texts in the EFL-literature classroom until they reach their final school years, at which point they read, and are examined on, one or two major and complex works. Unfortunately, ongoing teachers tend to begin their tertiary studies without the background reading in literary texts in English, including

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children’s literature, upon which self-confidence and pleasure as a reader usually depends. This is of major concern, as how can teachers who have not learnt to read in English for pleasure themselves motivate their future students to read? Reading as learner empowerment focuses on reading as a reader-centred and sociocultural process. Rita Baleiro gives two reasons for her transactional approach to literary reading in an educational setting: The first is connected to the fact that the meaning of a literary text is unstable. Therefore, only the intervention of the actions performed by the reader fix a certain pattern of meaning. The second reason is a consequence of my own understanding of the act of literary interpretation: I consider it to be an idiosyncratic act wherein the reader chooses to activate certain literary literacy skills and not others, while paying close attention to his/her emotional response to the text, to the textual material – the words and sequences of words in the text  – and to the conventions of the community he/she belongs to. (Baleiro 2011: 18)

The student-centred, meaning-making transactional approach – dynamically constructivist rather than absolutist and instructional – is in stark contrast to the current trend of foreign language teaching in European schools that follow the model of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF) (2001). German and other European researchers have identified some deficits in this framework, however. In the CEF, the important aspect of the content to be taught remains unspecified and neglected (Hu et al. 2008: 170), and this is despite the fact that current approaches in school education see English more and more as a medium for learning, less as the goal. Similarly, a Scottish applied linguist writes in The Guardian: ‘The CEF has no underlying theory and no content specifications’ (Fulcher 2004). This, of course, points to some major problems with the CEF as a basis for school EFL teaching: the lack of wider educational content and goals (Bredella 2003; Quetz and Vogt 2009: 64), the pragmatic functional–notional approach oriented towards adult learners, as well as the lack of recognition of the importance of creative language use (Quetz and Vogt 2009: 68–9). An over-reliance on the CEF for the formulation of national curricula is criticized, in that it was originally meant merely as a common frame of reference for further discussion of language teaching. The criticisms of the CEF could be summarized as a lack of description of how to achieve educational processes in language learning. This is problematic for the German school system, for example, which has traditionally considered the educational notion of Bildung

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(a well-known term due to the Bildungsroman genre) to be central to school learning. Bildung refers to the life-long development of individual growth, cultural sensibilities, social skills and a critical attitude. With Quetz and Vogt (2009: 83), I suggest that a methodology for the development of intercultural competence, for exploiting the affordances of fictional texts, drama processes and creative writing, is particularly neglected. Moreover, striving for communicative competences should not be seen as language acquisition only. Mike Fleming asks whether literature should be separately taught and assessed or included in the teaching of language: There is an argument for suggesting that to separate language from literature presents a conception of language that is too narrow and too functional. It is literature that encapsulates the language in its most subtle and intricate forms where nuances of meaning and ambiguity have to be embraced. (Fleming 2007: 55)

Well-crafted versus poorly crafted texts, language and content According to Nick Ellis ‘the knowledge underlying fluent use of language is not grammar in the sense of abstract rules or structure but a huge collection of memories of previously experienced utterances. These exemplars are linked, with like kinds being related in such a way that they resonate as abstract linguistic categories, schema, and prototypes’ (Ellis 2002: 166, my emphasis). Table 1.1 suggests several traits that distinguish well-crafted from poorly crafted texts for children. Authentic literary texts normally fall within the first category, for, as Bassnett and Grundy (1993: 7) maintain, ‘literature is a high point of language usage; arguably it marks the greatest skills a language user can demonstrate. Anyone who wants to acquire a profound knowledge of language that goes beyond the utilitarian will read literary texts in that language’. Many modified texts for language learning (EFL textbooks and graded readers) still in current use fall within the second category of poorly crafted texts, and do not tally with well-formed authentic discourse. It is also in the interest of serious EFL publishers that ongoing teachers are trained to distinguish well-crafted graded readers and authentic literature from poorly crafted texts. Badly simplified, overabbreviated texts, with few or no redundancies, are difficult to follow and lack patterns. They do not support the exemplar-based language tuning Ellis refers to, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

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Table 1.1  A comparison of language and content of well-crafted texts and poorly crafted texts for children Typical of well-crafted texts for children

Typical of poorly crafted texts for children

Language

Language

Well-written children’s literature is typically lexically dense and with idiomatic multi-word units: the ‘idiom principle’ that characterizes authentic discourse. There is stylistic cohesion such as marked lexical repetition, lexical chains and phonological patterns (e.g. rhythm and alliteration), explicit connectivity such as parallelisms, and the melodic tricolon (the rhetorical rule of three). As well as being linguistically appropriate for children, there are supportive visual iconicity (e.g. images and typographic experimentation) and aural iconicity (e.g. onomatopoeia and sound words).

Some authentic children’s literature and most EFL-graded readers are crafted with less skill – with typically low lexical density (e.g. lack of ‘musical’ repetition) and few multi-word units, thus a lack of the ‘idiom principle’. Far fewer marked cohesive ties such as lexical repetition and phonological patterning mean the language and ideas are less noticeable and less explicitly connected. The narrative style is often dull, as playful language, for example aural iconicity and tricola, is lacking. Moreover graded readers can be difficult to follow and even ill formed, due to strong abbreviation and oversimplification.

Content

Content

Well-crafted children’s literature is appropriate to the schemata of children; nonetheless, there is always a challenge, a widening of horizons. There is enriching intertextuality, and there are motivating allusions to the world of the child or young adult. Gaps or indeterminacy, for example, in postmodern and multimodal texts, allow a creative response – thus the context is partly determining.

EFL textbooks for young learners often underestimate children’s cognitive abilities. Over-determining pictures in textbooks limit children’s creative participation, and stereotyping is rife. Graded readers frequently remove important contextual details from the original, possibly leaving the plot intact but severely diminishing the background story and thus removing the opportunity for schema refreshment.

When reading or listening to stories, children should be allowed to guess at meanings and to make informed predictions about what the writer/storyteller will say next. They should not be encouraged to expect to understand every single word, leading to risk avoiding rather than risk taking. Furthermore, contrived texts usually lack the poetic devices, emotional and musical intensity that are helpful in making grammatical and lexical features salient, and can lead to a fascination with language. In fact, young children are very good at guessing at meanings and tolerating ambiguity, characteristics that should be cultivated, not discouraged. ‘Texts which have been contrived in order to provide children

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with some form of reading practice are notoriously difficult to predict, whereas well-written stories are relatively easy to predict’ (Parker and Parker 1991: 180). When dealing with stories, the content is inseparably woven within the language; both the content and language of stories are essential ingredients of the EFL classroom: ‘Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words’ (MacIntyre 1981: 216). According to Alasdair MacIntyre, children, when deprived of stories, lack the words and ideas that underlie confident, well-chosen action. Michael Rosen has made a similar point: ‘Children who come from homes where books are being read get access to the kinds of abstract and complex ideas that you can only get hold of easily through exposure to extended prose. The rest are being fed worksheets’ (Rosen 2009: N/A). Referring to first language acquisition, Ellis explains how language emerges in childhood: A high proportion of children’s early multiword speech is produced from a developing set of slot-and-frame patterns. These patterns are often based around chunks of one or two words or phrases and have slots into which the child can place a variety of words, for instance subgroups of nouns or verbs (e.g., I can’t  verb; where’s  noun  gone?). Children are very productive with these patterns and both the number of patterns and their structure develop over time. (Ellis 2002: 169)

This is extremely relevant to young learners of English, whose acquisition of the mother tongue is so recent that they collect foreign language utterances in a similar way (but, of course, only if there is massive input, which normally there is not) – to form an exemplar-based mental grammar and lexicon on which language noticing and analysis can later operate. Scott Thornbury (2009) aptly calls this ‘slow-release grammar’. Clearly, the well formedness as well as frequency of the language input – through classroom discourse, listening and reading – is of high relevance to the emerging L2 competences: Therefore, as children learn languages implicitly, by listening to them and by speaking them, it seems logical to think that the linguistic environment where the exposure to natural linguistic data takes place becomes an essential factor for foreign language learning, because it determines the amount of linguistic data that children have access to. (Fleta and García 2013: 195–6)

A content-based orientation and a focus on meaning place more emphasis on the content of the linguistic environment. When considering the schemata

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(generic knowledge structures in memory) of children, we realize that children themselves are sources of experience and meaning. Within their own horizons they are experts (for instance, fairy tales, animals alive and extinct, sports, games and fantasy motifs) and we should respect their expertise and offer texts that take them further, aiming to always reach a little beyond the children’s present level and into the zone of proximal development (ZPD), both in language and in content input. The ZPD gives particular significance to the ever-forward-moving upper levels of confidence that partnership – for example, between the child and teacher – can achieve (Vygotsky 1978: 86). Simplistic content is a widespread failing in textbooks for young learners. It may be the visual text not the verbal text that is simplistic in content: the complexity of input that images and layout can afford in contemporary children’s literature is emphasized throughout my argumentation, particularly in Chapters 2–4. From the first years of language learning, children’s literary texts, including poems, picturebooks and fairy tales, can give children faith in their thinking skills – as well as sewing the seeds of the habit of literature. This can help prevent a disruption or dramatic shift from early language learning to later literature studies. Nodelman points out how the ‘discourse about children developed over centuries’ creates culturally embedded pre-assumptions on the capacities of children. Owing to their culturally constructed beliefs on childhood thinking, educationalists’ research can be inherently distorted: Piaget’s notorious habit of always interpreting the results of his experiments in childhood development in terms that underestimated the capabilities of his subjects is a perfect example. (.  .  .) It has taken later experimenters with different cultural assumptions to reveal how slightly different versions of the same experiments reveal vastly superior capabilities in children. (Nodelman 1992: 30)

I have observed that student teachers completing their school internship in the pre-service phase, as well as experienced primary school teachers, too easily fall into the trap of neglecting the potential educational outcomes of primary foreignlanguage teaching, in favour of the currently expected – but for the young learner extremely limiting – functional-communicative goals, which will be more easily perceived by secondary school colleagues. If young learners are to make the very best use of their capacities – such as tolerance of ambiguity, risk taking, nonanalytic processing mode and holistic cognitive style – the purely linguistic gains (or lack of them) of primary language learning should not be allowed to entirely

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eclipse the potential benefits in educational and literacy terms. I endeavour to illustrate how literary quality can be identified through close reading of firstrate children’s literature, and enjoyed already in the upper primary and lower to mid-secondary school, as a preparation for canonical adult literature studies in the upper secondary school. A study of children’s literature can furthermore enhance and help fulfil many of the often unrealized educational goals of EFL: intercultural communicative competence, the ideological considerations of race, class, gender and ecocritical issues in texts, intertextual understanding, and visual literacy through the study of multimodal texts. Within the subject area of EFL, the development of thinking skills can and should be integrated; a framework for developing thinking skills includes: ‘creating dispositions and habits of good thinking; generalising the framework beyond a narrow focus on skills to include thinking curricula, thinking classrooms and thinking schools’ (McGuinness 1999: 1). One way of disempowering pre-adult students is by choosing to discuss adult literature for which they do not (yet) have the required schemata. Of course, the teacher can help teen readers to bridge gaps in their world knowledge; this is indeed how literature is mostly used in the EFL-literature classroom. However, the exclusive use of literary texts in this way is de-motivating and works against the training of literary literacy, for which filling in gaps autonomously is one of the most important exercises. It also works against learner autonomy, which, according to David Little, ‘depends on the development and exercise of a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and independent action’ (Little 2004: 69). Indeterminacy and postmodernism in contemporary children’s literature offer gaps that are a space for imagination, creativity and reflection. According to Thacker and Webb, ‘the kind of message expected in the stories we offer children’ has fundamentally changed in radical children’s literature: ‘The assumption that narrative trustworthiness, authorial control, closure and determinate meaning should be defining characteristics of the less difficult experience of reading children’s fiction are challenged by the work of numerous children’s authors’ (Thacker and Webb 2002: 142–3). The exemplars I introduce in the following chapters for the EFL-literature classroom nearly all belong to the category described by Thacker and Webb, and Reynolds (2010), as ‘radical children’s literature’. A possible advantage of non-canonical texts for the EFL-literature classroom is the less dense field of scholarly interpretation. A thoroughly investigated body of work might leave the impression of a definitive interpretation that the teacher must teach and the learners must learn.

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The disadvantage of a lack of scholarly attention to living children’s authors is the consequent neglect in teacher education of the important role that formative experiences with children’s literature plays – see ‘The Silence of the Critics’ (Fox 1998). Although there has, in the last decade, been an increase of scholarship both in the area of picturebooks and in the area of crossover literature, books for young fluent readers by contemporary authors are still comparatively neglected. Thacker (2001: 6) writes: ‘Excluding children’s literature from the map of a theory of literature constructed in the academic mainstream enforces these silences, by attempting to redefine a literary discourse without acknowledging the relevance of these formative experiences’. Current literary theories such as the reader-oriented reader response and reception theories contradict the notion of an absolute meaning of a literary text. Reader-response theory and Rosenblatt’s transactional theory (1978) now inform much literature teaching in the L1 context, but are less well known, though equally applicable, in the L2 literature classroom: The development of a methodology that is based upon informed concepts of reading and response rather than upon conventional, narrowly conceived ideas of comprehension and criticism is now the priority. At the heart of contemporary thinking about classroom method is the uniqueness of the reading event. Comprehension can only develop and criticism can only be well founded if they are rooted in the processes of reading and responding. (Benton 1992: 78–9, emphasis in the original)

Contemporary, radical children’s literature (and postmodern literature generally) particularly demands the active participation of the reader for the construction of meaning through its use of literary devices such as an unreliable narrator, irony, indeterminacy and lack of closure. The community of readers disentangles the literary text during booktalk; it is not explained by the teacher or other ‘expert’. In this way, using children’s and young adult literature as an open text (without absolute meanings) in the EFL-literature classroom will greatly enhance the autonomy of the learner and pleasure in reading and understanding. It is my argument that the reading classroom should be a learning-centred, dialogic and critical classroom. A subjective, uncritical reading is not normally part of the EFL-literature classroom if we take the need for ‘a progression of literary competences in the curriculum’ seriously (Lütge 2012: 192). Empowerment can be supported through the selection of children’s literature with postmodern

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features, which allow the reader agency by offering open texts for the reader to co-create according to the precepts of reader-response criticism. Wolfgang Iser considers narrative to be two sided: the verbal aspect steers reader reaction to the narrative and prevents arbitrariness, and simultaneously an affective aspect is triggered by what has been created by the language (Iser 1990: 40). However, as literary texts are artefacts in their own right and do not copy something already existing, this creation is indeterminate (Iser 1990: 45). Thus literary texts are characterized by an inherent indeterminacy, which nonetheless is not arbitrary. I contend that this can empower the reader – but only if the reader is in a position to enter into a dialogue with the storyworld, that is, if both the linguistic and experiential reservoirs are sufficiently filled. As Iser demonstrates, it is not a subjective, but an aware, conscious and critical transaction with the storyworld that is required for a literary reading. Baleiro states (2011: 18) a conscious reading ‘has the potential to turn itself into interpretation by involving the creation and confirmation of hypotheses in a permanent interaction between reader and text’. Jauss’ construct of the horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont) is a related concept, as it stipulates that value and meanings of literary texts change from generation to generation. According to Jauss (1970), the literariness of texts can be gauged by considering how far they surprise the reader by departing from the contemporary horizon of expectations, encouraging an aesthetic distance. It is clearly important that the literary text is accessible to the reader, so that a match or mismatch with the readers’ shared set of expectations, for instance, in an EFL-literature classroom, can be established.

The literacy spectrum The concept of multiple literacies – or multiliteracies – is highly relevant for a thoughtful, critical and interculturally responsive reading apprenticeship for digitally conversant students. The New London Group refers to a ‘Pedagogy of Multiliteracies’, and maintains: the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors’ twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving ­language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures. (New London Group 1996: 60)

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The most recent authoritative guides and encyclopaedias of children’s literature (see Hunt 1996, 2001; Nodelman and Reimer 2003; Rudd 2010a; Watson 2001) include entries on a wide range of texts types – extending beyond the written text to, for example, oral literature, graphic narratives and animated cartoons – which reflect the eclectic interests of children. This is also in line with the precepts of the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, which maintains that ‘what students needed to learn was changing, and that the main element of this change was that there was not a singular, canonical English that could or should be taught anymore’ (New London Group 1996: 63). Recent children’s literature scholarship likewise reflects the decanonization of postmodernism: ‘The majority of today’s theorists, though, are eclectic, especially given the postmodern tendency to mix or hybridize genres in varying degrees of parody or pastiche’ (Rudd 2010b: 184). The sense of parody and irony in contemporary postmodern children’s literature (Lewis 2001; Goldstone 2001) ensures that one and the same text addresses a wide audience. Thus the higher level of maturity of slightly older EFL students is a distinct advantage, as long as the texts are well chosen for their complexity and appropriateness. The challenging notion of multiliteracy, or, as expressed by Richard Kern (2000: 6), multiple literacies, implies a spectrum of relationships among readers, writers, texts, culture and language education: Texts (and here I intend a broad conception of the term—written, oral, visual, and audiovisual) offer learners new aesthetic experiences as well as content to interpret and critique. The point is not just to give students something to talk about for the sake of practicing language but also to engage them in the thoughtful and creative act of making connections among grammar, discourse, and meaning; between language and content; between language and culture; between another culture and their own. (Kern 2002: 24)

Kern lists seven principles of literacy that are applicable to language teaching: 1. Literacy involves interpretation. 2. Literacy involves collaboration. 3. Literacy involves conventions. 4. Literacy involves cultural knowledge. 5. Literacy involves problem solving. 6. Literacy involves reflection and self-reflection. 7.  Literacy involves language use (Kern 2000: 16–17). He names interpretation as pivotal to both communicative competence and literary studies, and literacy as the construct that deals with interpretation. Literacy is often divided into more or less coherent groupings (see Barton 2009). However, Hunt (2001: 281–2) considers ‘the mechanisms for acquiring literacy seem far from understood’, and

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refers in this respect to both functional literacy and the far broader definition of literacy ‘now more common in educational circles’. Barton and Hamilton point out that literacy events and literacy practices are involved in both formal and informal learning: Related to the constructed nature of literacy, any theory of literacy implies a theory of learning. Literacy practices change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making as well as formal education and training. (Barton and Hamilton 2000: 14, emphasis in the original.)

Many literacy experts no longer consider monomodal texts the norm. The novel is certainly still studied, but the internet should be read and viewed critically too, as well as film, graphic narratives and performances of many kinds. In teacher education, therefore, an understanding of semiotic systems and a meta-language to deal with describing multimodal texts should be introduced: Five semiotic systems have been identified; the linguistic (ie the traditional system of producing shared meaning using sounds, words, sentences, paragraphs etc), the visual (eg line, colour, vector, texture), the gestural (eg facial expression, body position and posture), the spatial (eg the organisation of people and objects in space) and the aural (eg sound, music and silence). (Anstey and Bull 2007: N/A)

Foreign language teaching will not normally – at least in European contexts – need to deal with the mechanisms for achieving functional literacy, the ability to read and write. A wider understanding of literacy ‘deals with far more than this: language in its contexts of use, extending out to “literary” literacy and “cultural” literacy’ (Hunt 2001: 282). This understanding of literacy as a spectrum is a pivotal concern of education. Literacy is the qualification required for reading both the ‘canon’ and worldwide texts (e.g. multimodal ensembles) – with confidence, mindfully and critically. Few can become experts at any skill without practice, and this is certainly true for the skills of the literacy spectrum. Anstey and Bull also refer to a ‘range of literacies and literate practices’, by which they mean ‘being literate in multiple modes (live, paper and digital electronic), being able to use appropriate literate practices in many different contexts, and being critically literate’ (Anstey and Bull 2009: 29). Children are generally immersed in a digital world outside of school – educators do their students a major disservice if the children perceive no connection between the EFL-literature classroom and their

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world beyond. Therefore, contemporary debates about remediation of text and hybridization are brought into my argument. Barton identifies different types of literacy: ‘when different practices cluster into coherent groups it is useful to talk in terms of them as being different literacies’ (Barton 2009: 38). In each case, according to Alastair Pennycook, literacy should involve developing a critical awareness in the reading of texts, also with regard to their implicit ideological connotations (Pennycook 2001). Literary literacy and critical cultural literacy are significant concepts in language education, which can be prepared initially by attention to visual literacy.

Visual literacy Research in the discipline of reading psychology has demonstrated the importance of images in contextualizing and visualizing the topic of the text, which lends students autonomy in their predicting and interpreting textual meaning (Carney and Levin  2002). McTaggart (2008: 33) maintains that the ‘student who, due to physiological, environmental, or cultural background, is unable to form pictures in his head while reading the printed word is not really reading. (. . .) The words give him no message, and they bring him no joy’. Jane Arnold refers to making sense of incoming data, including information on a language being learnt, with the help of ‘the mind’s eye’: the imagination. Arnold emphasizes the importance of stimulating the visualization abilities of the mind with guided processes in the language classroom. She describes visualization as purposefully retrieved mental images: It is seeing with what is sometimes called the ‘mind’s eye’, creating pictures in the mind, rather ghost-like images which we know exist but we cannot say exactly how or where. It should be noted, however, that images, while very often of a predominantly visual nature, may be associated with all sensory modes. (Arnold 1999: 260)

It has been demonstrated that, in order for students to achieve fluency and pleasure in L2 reading, their ability to create mental images during reading needs to be trained (Stevick 1986; Tomlinson 1997, 1998). In the United Kingdom L1 context, the influential Rose Report 2006 highlights literacy and oracy for encouraging children to create mental representations and increased ‘language comprehension’ (Rose 2006: 88). Language comprehension refers to far more

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than teaching word recognition and reading strategies, it involves processing language and concepts with the aid of multi-dimensional mental representations, whether speaking, listening or reading: Learners do have language problems but it is not so much uni-dimensional extensive knowledge of the vocabulary or syntax that they need, what they lack is the fun and involving experience of connecting the language with multidimensional mental representation that will ultimately lead to enhancement of the learners’ own individual lives. (Masuhara 2005: N/A)

Importantly, visualization and imagining as a valuable asset for language learning should not be reserved only for young learners. Referring to the United States educational context, Sipe argues that ‘picturebooks are valuable resources for developing visual aesthetic understanding in all grades, including middle school and secondary school’ (Sipe 2008b: 131). Many teachers mistakenly ‘consider the movement from pictures to words largely as an intellectual progression’ (Marsh and Millard 2000: 104). Arnold refers to the language-learning context when she maintains that: In our educational systems words and numbers have pushed imagery ‘out of the picture’, and in the process much is lost. When used appropriately, images can provide a strong impetus for learning. One of the reasons that this is so is that they are related to creativity and to our emotions; and these relationships can greatly empower learning. (Arnold 1999: 262)

The multi-dimensional emotive relationship between images and imagining and the empowering of language learning is crucial. Children’s literature is an important tool in encouraging vivid imagining, as we deal with anthro­ pomorphized storyworlds, in which toys and animals can talk, and often behave like humans, for instance, living in houses and wearing clothing: there is a whole cast of witches, monsters, dragons, goblins and others who are pictured for us but which have parallels, if at all, only in our heads. Even when children are the main characters, they may seem to exist without adults to care for them, and they often do impossible things. (Graham 2005: 212)

Referring to comics in the EFL classroom, Doff and Wanders (2005) also point to the principle of visualization as a means for bridging the teacher-made gulf between primary- and secondary-school language learning. But clearly

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the negotiation of understanding with high-quality picturebooks and graphic novels, as complex multimodal texts, needs training in teacher education: As teachers become more critical readers of picture books, in particular the illustrations and design elements, they are better positioned to help children construct meaning in transaction with the picture books they encounter. (.  .  .) Being able to lead sophisticated discussions with their students requires teachers to become more sophisticated readers themselves. (Serafini 2005: 63)

Image and layout are increasingly central to the meaning of texts as multimodal ensembles: ‘literacy needs to be newly located within multimodal ensembles where the relationships of writing and image, screen and page, are unsettled in new relations’ (Jewitt and Kress 2010). Visual literacy also interrogates how multimodal ensembles influence the reader; this is crucial for intercultural learning and an awareness of potential stereotyping in the EFL classroom. Practising the skill of visual literacy means searching for meanings in pictures, and interpreting not only what the pictures tell us, but also when they hide information, and how they do so. In Part I, Visual Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom, I develop the argument that including visual literacy in the EFL-literature classroom fosters thinking dispositions. According to McGuinness (1999), necessary conditions of high-quality thinking include:

1. Learning is not routine and requires mental effort. 2. Activities are open-ended, socially mediated and generate ideas. 3. High-quality thinking involves uncertainty and interpretation. 4. Learning is about searching out meaning, actively creating meaning and imposing structure. 5. High-quality thinking creates a questioning, critical and reflective attitude to information and argument. 6. Learning involves multiple rather than unique solutions and metacognitive skills. The case for regarding high-quality picturebooks and graphic novels as literary texts rests largely on the elaborate layout and intertwining of pictures and words. Looking at complex picturebooks, children wonder, compare, discover and infer: ‘These are central concerns of literary reading, the need to infer, which is a key skill for all learners to develop more widely’ (Hall 2005: 21). The literacy scholar Margaret Meek (1988) has famously detailed how the process of reading

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picturebooks teaches novice readers how to read. The educationalist David Perkins describes learning thinking dispositions by looking at art. Perkins criticizes what he calls the ‘cutout mentality’ in contemporary school practice, such as pumpkin or spider cutouts for Halloween, turkey cutouts for Thanksgiving and candle cutouts for Christmas. This calls to mind Krashen’s (1999: 12) ‘overdetermining context’ discussed in Chapter 4. The cutout mentality inhibits mental activity and learning to think while examining the text (Perkins refers to art), as it cuts out the very richness of art (Perkins 1994: 89). Part I centres on visual literacy as a training for reading the complex semiotic domains of the contemporary world: ‘There are many voices asking for a genuine ecology of images, and for an authentic education to critical viewing, starting from early childhood’ (European Commission 2009: 114). Responding to the ‘paradigm shift’ to visual literacy (Browne 2004) and the ‘visual turn’ in language teaching (Burwitz-Melzer 2013: 58), Part I investigates the tremendous storytelling potential of multimodal texts. According to Kiefer: when considering how meaning is expressed, verbal and visual art have much in common. Both the author and the artist have elements available for conveying meaning. The author uses sounds and words, the phonetic and morphemic systems of language. The artist uses line, shape, color, value, and texture, the elements of art. (Kiefer 1993: 75–6)

Part I further investigates multimodal ensembles as offering scope for discovering ways in which we are influenced by pictures and words already with primary to mid-secondary language learners. Picturebooks and graphic novels are ‘multimodal’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001), in that they ‘draw upon multiple modes of expression – namely, written language, visual image and graphic design – to tell a story or offer information’ (Serafini 2009: 11). With reference to picturebooks and graphic novels, Chapters 2–4 consider the empowerment potential of gaps, discrepancies, different perspectives and indeterminacy for the EFL-literature classroom. Multimodal ensembles are attractive for many of today’s young readers, in that they recall the multiple windows that can be open simultaneously on computer screens. Readers have now become used to being in charge of the sequencing of reading, making energizing choices on what is central and what is peripheral, and which of any number of perspectives or angles to privilege. We create our own paths through the text and images, selecting and clicking our chosen sequence through the multiple links. If there is to be coherence, an essential principle of traditional literature, we create this

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for ourselves by making our own connections through our expectations and prior knowledge while engaging and ‘playing’ with the hypertext. Teachers and students can profit from a wider range of literary texts than ever before, involving different modes and transported by different media; however, this does not obviate but rather necessitates the need for a critical scrutiny: It is in the classroom that children’s literacy is – and ought to be – critically mediated by teachers and others involved in literacy education. (. . .) Since many of the new forms of text are encountered outside the classroom, and often at home, talking with children about their own experiences of texts must be part of considering what ‘literacy’ – and specifically critical literacy – might mean in the twenty-first century. (Bearne 2005: 14)

Children are used to a combination of text, image and dynamic layout: ‘In today’s society, most readers are familiar with hypertext, comfortable with all manner of digital formats, and understand the Internet as a multiplicity of (sometimes contradictory) texts that layer on to each other’ (Sipe and Pantaleo 2008: 4). This leads Goldstone to conclude: ‘The better children comprehend these postmodern books, the better they will understand the highly complex world that surrounds them’ (Goldstone 2001: 369). I continue this argument with my study of graphic narratives and young adult fiction in the EFL-literature classroom. In Philip Pullman’s words, graphic novels speak ‘to adolescent readers in a way that wordbased literature sometimes fails to’ (Pullman 2001: 300). If lack of interest is the case in the EFL-literature classroom, it may in part be due to the conventionality of the graded readers traditionally offered for scrutiny. For as Hesse states in her study on ‘teenage fiction’ in the EFL classroom: ‘In spite of teenagers’ occupation with electronic media, books seem to have a special appeal, at least to a large number of young people who have the means to buy books’ (Hesse 2009: 17). I argue that students need to be proactive, to be critical and to co-author, and the literary texts should be chosen correspondingly.

Literary literacy Literary literacy refers to the pleasure of constructing storyworlds and dialogic understandings, with the help of the imagination and the detective work of uncovering the texts’ secrets. It is an all-important complement to functional literacy. According to Rocco Versaci: ‘literary literacy’ is informed by the idea that a love of reading is an end in itself; after all, a life without stories is a much poorer life. This issue of helping our

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students become lifelong readers is one faced by all English and language arts teachers at all levels of education. (Versaci 2008: 94)

Perloff writes, in a commissioned ‘Opinion’ piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education (1997), that the ‘notion that everyone can read literature just because he or she knows how to read, is, I think, the fallacy that has gotten us where we are (or rather, are not) at the present moment’. Although there is a lack of clarity in the definition of the various literacy clusters, there is clarity among many educationalists on one point: ‘What is clear, however, is that the interface between functional and “literary” literacy confronts a good many demonstrably erroneous assumptions about the simplicity of acquiring reading skills, of children’s literature, and children’s responses’ (Hunt 2001: 283). It is mistaken to believe that children, teachers or university students can read literature in an interpretative way just because they know how to read. With regard to literary literacy, time and opportunities are needed for a reading apprenticeship, including reading both outside and inside school. The choice of texts in formal education is of the utmost importance, as many school children do not have any access to appealing and well-crafted books at home. Kern envisages literacy to be the paradigm that can close the gap between intermediate communicative foreign language teaching and advanced literature teaching: Literacy facilitates discussion of all the reciprocal relations of readers, writers, texts, culture, and language learning. (. . .) Because interpretation lies at the heart of both communicative competence and literary studies, literacy may well offer the common ground necessary for the reconciliation of language and literature teaching. This idea is not new but has developed progressively over the past several decades as an increasing number of scholars have argued for an emphasis on literacy in language education. (Kern 2002: 21)

Authentic multilayered children’s literature offers students the incentive to take an active role in their literary education already in the primary school, by enticing and demanding re-readings, and providing for a new creative response at each interaction, as well as repeated encounters with the verbal text that are so important specifically for EFL, ESL and EAL students. Scholars such as Barthes (1986: 30) on comics, Nodelmann (1988: 199) and Lewis (2001: 35–7) on picturebooks, describe ‘interanimation’. This refers to how the reader carries semantic traces from the pictures to the words, and from the words to the pictures. Interanimation requires readers to co-write the stories: ‘visual skills are essential for encouraging an active and even critical interpretation of textual and visual information’ (Arizpe and Styles 2003b: 97). In a pleasurable way, young

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students can learn to have confidence in their own interpretative response. With regard to both the L1 and L2 contexts, one of the most interesting studies on children’s readings of multimodal texts to date is that conducted in the United Kingdom with 84 children aged 4–11, 35 per cent of whom were bilingual with linguistic backgrounds ranging from very little knowledge of English to thirdgeneration bilinguals. The researchers (Arizpe and Styles 2003b) found that the children could not only literally understand complex images, but also produced inferences on aesthetic, metaphorical and ethical levels. Mourão has produced evidence that already pre-school Portuguese children in an EFL context are able to use the peritextual features of picturebooks, such as book covers and titles, ‘to develop on a cognitive level by predicting characters, plot, and setting and promoting critical and inferential thinking and interpretation skills’ (Mourão 2013: 82). In Part II, Literary Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom, I introduce three stepping-stones that shall lead to a deeper understanding of literary texts and finally to critical literacy: engaged reading, participatory reading and ‘reading against the text’. With the aid of the discipline of cultural studies, which is often represented in the foreign language department, the ideological implications of children’s literature should be examined, with a view to teaching school children to read culture critically. Children’s literature belongs to the cultural world of the child, and therefore must have a place as a central study for ongoing teachers: ‘children’s literature as a subject of both undergraduate and post-graduate study can now be found frequently placed within departments of literature or cultural studies’ (Thacker 2001: 3). Indeterminacy is an inherent characteristic of multimodal literary texts, and a dominant characteristic of postmodern picturebooks: All stories are built on gaps – writers and picturebook makers cannot describe, explain or show everything – but some picturebooks expose those gaps for us and thus reveal the comic absurdity of the situation we are left in when textual props are missing. (Lewis 2001: 96)

This empowers the reader or community of readers to become potentially as powerful as the teacher and author as co-creator in what has come to be known as a ‘writerly’ text (Fr. scriptible, Barthes 1990). An open, writerly text is more challenging ‘because of its structural and linguistic deviations and indeterminacy of meaning. It requires therefore the active participation of its readers’ (Wales 1989: 482). Indeterminacy in children’s literature (Goldstone 2001; Lewis 2001;

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Pantaleo 2008) is a construct that I return to repeatedly, as it is highly relevant for an interactive EFL-literature classroom. According to Voltaire, ‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd’. Uncertainty and indeterminacy afford the gaps that create a writerly text. I refer in Chapter 4 to indeterminacy as a definitive feature of multimodal texts: ‘the pictorial medium has problems with narrativity and requires a “reader” who is much more active in (re)constructing a narrative than would be necessary in verbal texts’ (Wolf 2005: 434). We encounter this playfulness combined with opportunities to be proactive particularly in postmodern literature. Bette Goldstone considers postmodern picturebooks as ‘renegades from (the) traditional picture book’: Postmodern characteristics found in picture books are the same as those found in  postmodern adult literature, fine arts, cinema, and popular culture – a cynicism  and mocking of traditional art forms; a reference back to the creative process of making the book, movie or image; a greater power given to the reader/ viewer encouraging cocreation with the author or artist; and a juxtaposition of unrelated images creating nonlinear formats. (Goldstone 2001: 362–3)

An important aspect of active literary interpretation is, as I argue in Part II, creative writing and performance. In Chapter 5 I show how the ludic nature of children’s literature supports a vital first step to linguistic creativity and pleasure in language learning. Pedagogical stylistics can be employed to highlight language patterning in children’s literature and to refine student teachers’ understanding of the importance of literary models of language, particularly for input enhancement (Sharwood Smith 1993), as aroused attention, imaging, affective and cognitive depth are significant factors for deep processing and long-term retention (Thornbury 2002: 24–6). Cook (2000: 22) points out that rhythm is emotive, a ‘source of comfort’, and shows that some childhood rhythms and rhymes ‘are surprisingly common across cultures. Even if not universal, their widespread occurrence suggests an innate disposition in the child both to perceive them and to like them’. Multimodality is again highlighted as a way to connect pleasurable experience of text outside school with the handling of text in the classroom: ‘Since multimodality is part of children’s everyday text experience, there is a pressing issue about the relationship between the kinds of reading and writing fostered in schools and this experience’ (Bearne 2005: 17). I refer to children’s plays in Chapter 6 as reflecting and involving the ludic nature of children’s culture. Children’s scripted drama can support and encourage

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reading and begin preparing for the EFL-literature classroom and the canonized play scripts of the upper-secondary school; this refers to the ‘cultural heritage justification for drama; teachers work on play texts in order to gain access to drama writing at its best’ (Fleming 2001: 92).

Critical cultural literary Part III, Critical Cultural Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom, focuses on probably the most important aspect of literacy for aware and empowered students – for ‘being multiliterate must also involve being critically literate, that is, having the ability to analyse texts, identify their origins and authenticity, and understand how they have been constructed in order to perceive their gaps, silences and biases’ (Anstey and Bull 2007: N/A). Referring to pre-service foreign language teacher education in the United States, Barnett stresses the interconnectedness of three elements: the study of language, literature and culture. A deficiency in the teaching of any one will lead, she claims, to a deficiency in all three: As specialists in language and literature, we know that the study of literature opens up many cultural vistas. So why be defensive? Why can’t we approach literature, culture, and language together, recognizing them as naturally intertwined? (. . .) Analyzing a nonfiction text for cultural bias differs little from interpreting literary points of view and the perspectives resulting from them. (. . .) If we do not integrate civilization, literature, and language in a concerted way, we will get only a veneer of language, literature, or cultural appreciation. (Barnett 1991: 9)

Barnett’s thesis was presented as a keynote address over 20 years ago, and since then the ‘cultural turn’ has been further developed in the humanities (Delanoy and Volkmann 2006: 11). In addition, intercultural communicative competence has been named as a central goal of foreign language teaching (Byram 1997; Doyé 1999; Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-von Ditfurth 2004), and literature is seen as an optimal way of supporting intercultural learning (Nünning 2007). Whereas critical literacy is referred to throughout Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment, Part III considers critical cultural literacy and reading as a cultural practice (Galda and Beach 2001). Learning to enter a storyworld imaginatively and mindfully is a pivotal competence in the intercultural communicative classroom, and thus should be given a central place in the EFLliterature classroom from the primary school onwards: the grounding of stories in storyworlds goes a long way towards explaining narratives’ immersiveness, their ability to ‘transport’ interpreters into places

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and times that they must occupy for the purposes of narrative comprehension. Interpreters (. . .) imaginatively (emotionally, viscerally) inhabit a world in which things matter, agitate, exalt, repulse, provide grounds for laughter and grief, and so on – both for narrative participants and for interpreters of the story. (.  .  .) storyworlds are mentally and emotionally projected environments in which interpreters are called upon to live out complex blends of cognitive and imaginative response. (Herman 2005: 570)

The connection between imagined storyworlds and intercultural competence is highlighted in Part III, which considers the arbitrariness of culture, and how cultural events are recorded differently according to the perspective from which they are described. The introduction of intercultural learning as an aspect of language education in the 1980s meant that, also for the EFL classroom, ‘culture was no longer seen as something fixed and objective’ (Delanoy and Volkmann 2006: 12). Claire Kramsch claims that culture ‘constitutes itself along three axes: the diachronic axis of time, the synchronic axis of space, and the metaphoric axis of the imagination’: Teaching culture means therefore teaching not only how things are and have been, but how they could have been or how else they could be. Neither history nor ethnography provide this imaginative leap that will enable learners to imagine cultures different from their own. (Kramsch 1996: 3)

It is the ‘metaphoric axis of the imagination’ that is called upon in order for the reader to enter a storyworld, live in it for a time and to exercise the ability to change perspective. This begins with young learners and picturebooks: When listening to stories, children identify with the main characters; they feel sad or worried for the protagonists when they are in difficult situations and feel relieved when a solution is found. This identification process allows children to better understand their own emotions and to get to know other people’s feelings as well. (Traverso 2013: 193–4)

The presentation of cultural information in current EFL textbooks is still frequently, according to Teske, ‘factual cultural information (.  .  .) reduced to teachable and memorisable chunks (.  .  .) focusing on cognition’ (Teske 2006: 26). This does not facilitate an imaginative leap and change of perspective: ‘Thus, the pupils have little chance to apply or transfer the information received, or to consolidate and integrate their knowledge through habitual or emotional processes’ (Teske 2006: 26). Critical literacy is the goal of reading with awareness and with circumspection. Its ethos is empowerment: ‘critical literacy is intended originally to empower the

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marginalized through literacy education’ (Lee 2011: 98). Lee further points out that it is a ‘misconception’ that critical literacy is more suitable for higher ability students, and I argue that critical literacy cannot be left until the later years of schooling, but must be introduced step by step, starting with picturebooks. This path is supportive for both the teacher and the young learner, as picturebooks can be employed in the EFL-literature classroom by teachers who do not feel confident with technology. Many educationalists recommend this route to critically engaging with multimedia and multimodal texts: An excellent alternative for introducing the terminology, concepts and issues involved with multimodal text is via the picture book. This familiar example of multimodality, that is suitable for all year levels, can be used to examine and articulate the codes and conventions of the visual and linguistic semiotic systems. (Anstey and Bull 2010: N/A)

Catherine Wallace (1992 and 2001) has shown that critical literacy should have a place in the EFL classroom, as empowering to language students. She argues that the central concept of a critical reading is the fact that language conveys ‘not just a propositional message but an ideological one’ (Wallace 1992: 69). She makes the interesting point: One advantage that L2 readers may have is that they are not the text’s model readers. Simply because they are not part of the intended readership they are in a position to bring fresh and legitimate interpretations to written texts. They are able to exploit their positions as outsiders. (Wallace 1992: 68, emphasis in the original)

L2 readers of children’s literature will be typically 2–3 years older than many L1 readers of the same literary text, which gives L2 students a good opportunity to achieve a critical reading. It is my argument that critical cultural literacy combines critical literacy with intercultural learning, as an empowering process. It involves EFL students becoming ‘linguistic detectives’, and asking questions such as ‘What would the story look like if it had been told by someone very different (in terms of race, gender, age, etc.) from the current author?’ (Harste 2003: 9). I consider questions of critical cultural literacy with children’s literature in Chapters 6 and 7, which particularly studies notions such as those formulated by Harste: Literature study and literature discussion are cultural practices that an important segment of our society values and that, more likely than not, we as English language arts educators are mandated to pass on to future generations.

Introduction: The EFL-Literature Classroom

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Nonetheless, it is now obvious that we need to expand the canon so that all participants can see themselves in the literature, not as ‘other’ but as the main character. This is why the use of multicultural literature is so important as well as why the use of literature that raises important social issues is key to making reading relevant. (Harste 2003: 9)

The call to expand the canon leads to the central aspect of the book: learner empowerment.

Reading as empowerment Reading is empowering from the very first steps with picturebooks. Empower­ ment is an important springboard to success, and resultative motivation, the motivation that depends on good results (Ellis 1997: 75), has reciprocal effects by producing more success and is therefore of itself for many students the best initial step to language learning as well as pleasure reading. Resultative motivation is just one of the many reasons why these first steps towards pleasure reading with picture narratives in the primary EFL classroom should be continued into the secondary school. There is commonly an unproductive shift in teacher expectations between the primary and secondary EFL classrooms: In order to ensure the continuity and success of the learning process started at primary level, it has become extremely important for secondary teachers to build upon the knowledge the children have acquired before. (.  .  .) many teachers at secondary level still know too little about the constantly developing and changing methodology and targets at primary level. (Becker 2006: 20)

Many opportunities will never be open to all of our students – very many children have no access to children’s literature at home – therefore booktalk is a must in the classroom, among a community of readers, together with access to highly valued children’s literature. The young reader, the novice in most walks of life, is introduced gently to the idea of storyworld through children’s literature, introduced gently to the world of  ‘once upon a time’ and ‘they all lived happily ever after’, with all the concomitant and incidental opportunities for experiencing an imaginative, pleasurable and thoughtful response. In literary texts for younger readers, the imaginary worlds, characters and settings ‘usually bear enough resemblance to children and their real worlds for readers to imagine them: monsters tend to live in families, tigers come to drink tea in the kitchen,

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frogs and ducks get jealous – all act in ways familiar to children!’ (Cameron 2001: 166–7). In summary, the three parts of this book present and examine innovative approaches for achieving language, literary and educational goals in the EFL-literature classroom. I have selected highly regarded texts with which to exemplify how children’s literature could enrich and extend the existing canon of literature for English language teaching in each of the thematic areas. I seek to show how children’s literature is a most valuable asset for literature and language teaching, and that its status must be reconsidered in teacher education. This is not to replace canonical works with advanced EFL students, but to augment the canon and prepare for it, in the sense that many great works of literature are too valuable to be ‘squandered’ on young L2 readers who are in no way ready to enjoy them, fully understand them or profit from them. The concept of a static English Literature Canon should arguably be re-examined throughout ELT and teacher education: While a host of complex – or even simple – reasons may be responsible for the current low status of children’s literature courses in teacher-education programs, it is reasonable to assume that what underlies these scenarios, in many cases, is a lack of respect for the importance of children’s literature to teacher education and children’s education. (Hoewisch 2000)

Part One

Visual Literacy in the EFL-Literature Classroom

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2

Developing the Mind’s Eye with Picturebooks

It has already been emphasized that secondary-school literature lessons can learn  much from the primary school; Hellwig (2000: 188), for example, calls ­primary-school English the foundation of the EFL-literature classroom. My study begins with the contribution picturebooks can make to empowering language and literature learning, and the role of visual literacy in a literary apprenticeship. The title of this chapter refers to the mind’s eye, a phrase that has at least since Shakespeare connected visual memory with imagination: Hamlet:  My father – methinks I see my father. Horatio:  O, where, my lord? Hamlet:  In my mind’s eye, Horatio. (Hamlet Act I, Scene 2)

Morag Styles, referring to the National Literacy Strategy of 1998, a UK government document that stipulated national standards and targets (England and Wales) at key stages in primary education, writes: There is (. . .) a serious gap at the centre of the NLS – hardly a mention of visual literacy which, with all the new technologies children are expected to master, will surely be one of the dominant literacies of the twenty-first century. (Anderson and Styles 2000: 4)

The verbal text is traditionally considered as central both in L1 and in L2 education: ‘the primary focus in contemporary reading education has been on the strategies and skills necessary for understanding written language’ (Serafini 2009: 10). In foreign language teaching, the visual images in picturebooks are regarded and acknowledged as an effective scaffolding context, supporting comprehension. In this well-established approach, the pictures are valued as motivating prompts and explanatory support. Step by step, the pictures aid the children’s learning: from arousing interest, to facilitating comprehension, to engaging with the story, to making vocabulary memorable, to an important support in re-telling or acting out the story (Read 2008: 7). But can pictures

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and the image/verbal text dynamic within children’s literature help children discover new ideas, refresh established ideas, explore issues and transfer meanings?

The challenge of children’s multimodal literary texts Much reading pleasure derives from the recognition that we can be ourselves creative in making meaning: ‘Children are both problem solvers and problem generators: children attempt to solve problems presented to them, and they also seek novel challenges’ (Bransford 2000: 100). The connotations as well as the denotations of pictures can be considered at a young age, when the connotations of verbal text would still be elusive, especially in an EFL context. We can develop learner autonomy and deep thinking by encouraging children to formulate hypotheses and follow associations. Children naturally employ heuristics to learn – they learn by trial and error, guessing, comparing, exploring and discovering. As children are novices, probably complete newcomers, with regard to the foreign language, they can exploit their natural skill in exploring and discovering more advantageously with the aid of pictures than with verbal text. Open, ambiguous literary texts especially created for children challenge young learners to search for, and in the classroom negotiate for, understanding and meaning: By inviting a reader to pore over a page, modern picture books show readers how to explore different ways of making meaning. As their eyes inspect and interrogate the details, (. . .) children are not simply extending the ways in which they watch television. Artists and picture storytellers know that, so they purposely offer different kinds of reading secrets. (Meek 1995: 7)

Unravelling puzzling reading secrets is highly satisfying to children, and there are many challenges in postmodern picturebooks characterized by indeterminacy. Enigmatic picturebooks, with their juxtapositions of meanings created through pictures, words, layout and gaps invite participation, reflection, entice re-readings and encourage stimulating booktalk. The cognitive processes that can be set in motion by picture narratives serve to kindle children’s confidence in their own reading response. This can lead to intense reading satisfaction, including the reading of pictures, and the intellectual challenge of experiencing the world as focused through others’ eyes, with no ready-made answers of what is a right or a wrong interpretation. John Dewey emphasized the pedagogical fallacy

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of believing that a student learns no more than the specific thing he or she is concentrating on at a particular time: Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes  and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson  in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future. (Dewey 1938: 48)

This seminal observation warns against a narrow understanding of subject teaching and learning, and is extremely relevant for language teaching. Already well before the young learner in the EFL classroom can join in the classroom discourse, collateral learning such as attitudes and motivation can become established and is of fundamental importance for the future learning experience. The collateral learning involved in critical literacy engagement is a challenge to the EFL-literature classroom, and requires an expansion of the canon. Literacy is now seen as a dynamic spectrum of competences by many educationalists. This wider understanding of literacy is of major concern for pedagogy: What once reached students as textbooks now comes in a range of symbolic presentations (. . .). These have to be interpreted over a range of different contexts, some of which have different kinds of privileged access. Our teaching will have to begin with the understanding that the complexities of literacy are linked to the patterns of social practice and social meanings. From now on there will be multiple literacies (. . .). (Meek 1993: 96)

The New London Group (1996) uses the term multiliteracies to highlight the increasing complexity of texts due to the ever-growing use of multimedia. They relate this complexity to the complexity of spiralling cultural diversity due both to global connectedness and to local cultural and linguistic diversity: First, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. (New London Group 1996: 61)

Thus, the challenge of multimodal literary texts to active writerly participation through the different modes of communication, pictures, verbal text and layout may correspond usefully to the challenge facing literacy pedagogy today: the challenge of heterogeneous, culturally diverse classrooms, and the challenge of

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literacy education for students who, as digital natives, are more at home in the world of multimedia.

Literacy and picturebooks I refer here as elsewhere to overlapping literacy clusters, not clear-cut divisions. Functional literacy can be supported by the mnemonic patterning (phonological and semantic language patterning, see Chapter 5) of many literary picturebooks. Julia Donaldson, the current Children’s Laureate, is a masterful creator of patterned language: A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good. (The Gruffalo 19991) ‘Come, little monkey, come, come, come. It’s time I took you home to. . .’ ‘Mum!’ (Monkey Puzzle 2000) How the cat purred and how the witch grinned As they sat on their broomstick and flew through the wind. (Room on the Broom 2002) And the whale and the snail Told their wonderful tale Of shimmering ice and coral caves, And shooting stars and enormous waves. . . (The Snail and the Whale 2003)

In foreign language learning, rhymes and stories are first encountered aurally. This reflects the ubiquitous singing and celebrating of nursery rhymes in the English-speaking world with preliterate children: It is not surprising that nursery rhymes should be our most common cultural currency after the Bible. It is Mother Goose who first introduces us to who we are in the world, and it is she who brings us our first make-believe. Our infant imaginations are jollied awake as she translates the toes on our feet into pigs going to market, sends a cow over the moon, and tucks the world’s biggest family into bed in a shoe. We have given a name to all this fun. We call it nonsense. (. . .) Nonsense is often a term of convenience that only obscures how such stuff actually works on our imaginations. (Goldthwaite 1996: 15)

Most young EFL learners are ambitious to read for themselves some of the words of rhythmical stories that have fired their imaginations; usually they are

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enthused by their recent success in learning to read in their mother tongue. The motivational leap forwards due to their newly acquired reading skills is often under-utilized in early second language learning. Pictures facilitate the first-time reading of familiar texts by recalling to the reader’s mind the echoes of lexical chunks often heard before. So, for example, in Donaldson’s The Smartest Giant in Town (2002), the picture of a fox in a ‘sleeping bag’ that is clearly a giant sock will help students who have heard and understood the story read the giant’s words correctly from memory: ‘One of my socks is a bed for a fox’, although the two rhyming words are spelled so very differently. In this way, the pictures aid the recognition of how the verbal text on the page equates to the sound images they associate with the illustration, just as a picture of a cow jumping over the moon will instantaneously call a famous example of nursery poetics to the mind of most English-speaking beginner readers, thus tremendously supporting the reading process (Bryant et al. 1989 and 1990). This can lead to an empowering upward swing of success and first steps in learner autonomy in the EFL classroom. Visual literacy is empowering in a multimedia world, where the image has become a major tool of communication. Pictures in picturebooks can perform as windows on unfamiliar cultural contexts, as an opening for the imaginative and thoughtful understanding of otherness, and creating secondary storyworlds to be discovered. This is a relatively non-privileged area for the community of readers in the heterogeneous classroom – that may well manifest the local cultural and linguistic diversity identified by the New London Group – for all children from all cultures relate to pictures and story, though certainly in culturally specific ways: ‘Visual language is not – despite assumptions to the contrary – transparent and universally understood; it is culturally specific’ (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 4). David Lewis comments on how ‘young minds manage to conjure meaning’ on what he calls ‘twin-barrelled texts’: The words tell you something and the pictures show you something; the two somethings may be more or less related, but they may not. Back and forth you must go, wielding two kinds of looking that you must learn to fuse into understanding. (Lewis 2009: xii)

And Paula Kluth (2008: 169) reports on the relevance of visual literacy approaches for empowering students with disabilities, ‘including those with autism, some learning disabilities, and some cognitive disabilities’: students with a host of learning needs can be included in the literate community in ways they have never been included before. By expanding the strategies used

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Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment in the classroom and, specifically, by expanding the use of visual supports in literacy instruction, teachers are sure to reach a wider range of learners and to give every student opportunities to hone their skills as listeners, speakers, writers, and readers. (Kluth 2008: 187)

Deep thinking on the interaction of words and images can begin in the primary school when the pictures, which are particularly accessible to young learners, are given equal status to the words as rich iconic texts and conveyors of meaning. The image/word interaction of picturebooks has been characterized in as many as five different ways: as ‘symmetrical’, or telling the same story, as ‘enhancing’ when one mode amplifies the other, as ‘complementary’ when the enhancing dynamic takes on a special significance, as ‘counterpointing’, when the meanings diverge, and as ‘contradictory’ when the image and words oppose each other (Nikolajeva and Scott 2000: 225–6). Ingenious picturebooks perplex teachers and children alike, stimulating them to ask questions and construct their own interpretation. It follows that questions and answers are often genuine, rather than for language display. Many educationalists have accentuated the need for booktalk to be an exploration, not a test. ‘Teachers should rarely ask questions to which they know the answer – these are really pseudo-questions, more suited to testing than to teaching. Open-ended questions that encourage inference and multiple possible answers are the key’ (Sipe 2008b: 143). The motivational power of picturebooks may help initiate the habit of extensive pleasure reading – crucial for language acquisition, intercultural learning, relaxation and countless further educational goals. Picturebook characters, with their own bewitching, moving and enlightening stories, come alive for young learners, appealing simultaneously to the cognitive and affective dimensions of language learning; and the sooner children learn to bond with books the better. The primary teacher, particularly, is well aware of the young learner’s need for cross-curricular learning rather than narrowly focused subject learning. Very young learners engrossed in a picturebook will also express meanings in their mother tongue, which the teacher then recasts in English – and gradually L2 competence emerges (Mourão 2012). Language competence can hardly begin to emerge in a holistic way, however, when there is an over-emphasis on the acquisition of discrete vocabulary items, and too narrowly focused subject learning. The ultimate justification for including foreign language teaching as a main subject in the curriculum includes more than linguistic competences, and extends to wider affective and sociocultural areas of learning, a reminder of Dewey’s collateral learning. But somehow in the case of EFL, the importance of

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collateral learning is often neglected even by primary teachers – who are aware of the need for holistic learning in general rather more than secondary teachers are. This is possibly due to a feeling of insecurity on the part of primary teachers regarding the teaching of this new subject, English as a foreign language, for young learners.

A cumulative progression in the EFL-literature classroom The conventional approaches to using picturebooks in the EFL classroom, useful though they are in many ways, tend to ignore the more creative affordances of the dynamics of pictures combined with words. The emphasis is usually on the verbal text: when this is pattern-driven and therefore predictable, using the picturebook as a learning resource will effectively aid children’s language acquisition (Linse 2006: 75). A further approach focuses specifically on the pictures as artefacts, and the development of the child’s aesthetic awareness. Fine arts picturebooks are recommended for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), as art through the medium of English (Rymarczyk 2006: 139). It is my contention that an approach is desirous and beneficial, also in the EFL classroom, which exploits the contribution of children’s multimodal literature to initiate and prepare major competences in literary studies, and simultaneously training and encouraging visualization while reading. A literary approach based on multimodal ensembles allows the teacher to follow the same didactic principle as holds for the functional-communicative language lesson: a cumulative spiral progression, but towards literature competences. Literary devices that are common in multimodal narrative and that encourage the active participation of the reader – such as irony (e.g. when there is a mismatch between images and words), typographic experimentation and unusual layout – can be discovered step by step. Literary literacy is less often trained than functional literacy with beginner readers: ‘In comparison with the amount of research done on young children’s learning sound-symbol correspondences and other elements of literacy learning, there is relatively little work on young children’s literary interpretation of stories’ (Sipe 2008a: 3–4). Picturebooks are researched both by educationalists and by literature scholars, as ‘Picturebooks are almost invariably the first books that children encounter. This means that they shape aesthetic tastes, and introduce the principles and conventions of narrative. In all these ways picturebooks are a vital part of artistic

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and literary culture, but they are also witty, entertaining and part of the child’s world of play’ (Graham 2005: 209). Lewis (2001: 31) notes that the ‘picturebook began to be taken seriously as an object of academic study during the latter years of the twentieth century’, and Sipe (2008a: 4) deems that the ‘neglect of the literary understanding of young children is all the more striking, given the considerable amount of theoretical work (. . .) that has been done on picturebooks, the principal format through which most young children experience literature’. According to children’s literature scholar Peter Hunt, reading a picturebook is ‘an extremely sophisticated act’ (Hunt 2001: 288), and he goes so far as to claim that the picturebook has become ‘one of the richest and potentially most rewarding of literary forms’ (Hunt 2001: 291). Hunt highlights the necessity to read a picturebook at picture speed, not word speed. He further refers to the nonlinear characteristic of reading pictures, which may reveal something freshly meaningful to negotiate on each new reading. It is this roundabout negotiation of understanding that makes even a wordless picturebook extremely valuable for language learning and for encouraging thinking dispositions generally. A progressive roundabout negotiation of meaning can lead to a generative dialogic discourse, for clearly a development takes places on many fronts between the readings: language development of the child reader, visual literacy of the children and teacher and the cognitive development of the young learners. ‘Dialogic discourse represents the force of language in its most democratic, generative and creative aspect’ (Falconer 2010b: 166). Children’s literature scholar and educationalist Lawrence Sipe (2008b) suggests that successful teachers have at least five roles to fulfil when reading with children. These are:

i. As readers of the text (enacting the text, dividing the text into segments, drawing attention to language or other features). ii. As managers and encouragers (giving praise and support, encouraging children to listen to each other, respond and take risks). iii. As clarifiers and probers (nudging students to articulate their ideas, to go further with their booktalk and to reach higher levels of understanding). iv. As fellow wonderers and speculators (modelling a tolerance of ambiguity and allowing multiple interpretations; as teacher disclosing lack of certainty: ‘I’m not sure, either. . . What do you think?’). v. As extenders and refiners (taking advantage of learning scenarios and teaching opportunities as they arise, making use of booktalk for spontaneous teaching moments, e.g. meaning of irony).

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In addition to the roles identified by Sipe, the teacher in the EFL-literature classroom has at least two further roles:

vi. Modelling language (identifying the most useful, exciting and salient grammatical and lexical features in the picturebook, and highlighting them by bringing them into the classroom discourse in observations, questions, answers, in different contexts and in subsequent lessons). vii. Scaffolding meaning (using a wide scaffolding repertoire such as mime, gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, realia, total physical response and the teacher’s and students’ own drawings to support meaning). I now turn to the sophistication and range of picturebooks, and their potential for empowering students.

The scope of picturebooks Kern argues for ‘the use of “big C”, high culture, literary texts, together with “small c” quotidian culture texts throughout the curriculum – not just at the advanced level’ (Kern 2000: 7, emphasis in the original). The cognitive and humanistic dimensions must be balanced: Cognitively demanding (but linguistically feasible) tasks from the beginning of foreign language study stimulate intellectual engagement and will help ease the transition to upper-division course work. It is important, however, not to unduly emphasize the cognitive at the expense of the humanistic side of language learning. (Kern 2002: 23)

Sipe suggests that the range of picturebooks encompasses: 1. Wordless/nearly wordless picturebooks; 2. Playful postmodern picturebooks and 3. Picturebooks on serious social issues. He emphasizes teacher education: ‘Teachers’ knowledge of this ever-expanding range of possibilities is therefore crucial. If we limit children’s experience to a few genres, we may be limiting their developing literary understanding’ (Sipe 2008a: 230). To child psychologist David Wood, a ‘sizeable gap’ exists already in the mother tongue between what children ‘may know, remember or understand and their ability to account for what they know’ (Wood 1998: 153, emphasis in the original). This gap is wider, of course, in the second language classroom, where the children’s language repertoire is well behind their ability to know and understand. We restrict the literary development of EFL

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students if we invariably offer them picturebooks most popular with pre-school children, such as Eric Carle’s excellent books The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1968) and From Head to Toe (1997). Instead, the EFL-literature classroom could be fostering young learners’ understanding of metaphor and irony, devices that are prevalent in contemporary children’s literature (Nilsen and Nilsen 2005), that young children can begin to understand (Winner 1988) and that abound in Sipe’s second category: playful postmodern picturebooks. For this reason I argue the thematic areas recommended for primary-level EFL (e.g. in Germany) should be broadened, to give teachers more scope for choosing age-appropriate authentic material. I have divided Sipe’s third category ‘on serious social issues’ into two sections for the discussion of the value of picturebooks for a literary apprenticeship that follows. My third section emphasizes the aspect of intercultural learning, which is considered an essential component of foreign language teaching in many countries. My fourth section reflects the relatively new study in literature scholarship as well as pedagogy of the impact of culture on nature and the environment, ecocriticism and the affordances through picturebooks for an ecocritical discourse in the EFL-literature classroom.

I. Wordless/nearly wordless picturebooks II. Playful postmodern picturebooks III. Picturebooks with an implicit sociocultural agenda IV. Picturebooks with an environmental perspective

Wordless/nearly wordless picturebooks Because there are no words to alert readers to what is significant or absent in the pictures, the reading of wordless books is not as straightforward as is often assumed. (. . .) illustrators of wordless picturebooks frequently employ a language that owes much to comic strip, film and animated cartoons that use a pictorial sequence. (Graham 2005: 218)

Graham points to the complexity of wordless picturebooks from a literary perspective. For the young EFL student, wordless picturebooks are, in addition, linguistically challenging: sometimes teachers are misled into thinking that a book that only offers pictures is the easiest text type to use in a foreign language classroom. (. . .) – quite the contrary, picturebooks and graphic novels which are restricted to the graphic

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mode demand elaborate verbalization. If the author does not provide words, the  reader  will have  to do so, and this is often very difficult. (Burwitz-Melzer 2013: 61–2)

As nearly wordless picturebooks lack a verbal text, the teacher’s English language input to the classroom discourse takes on an essential modelling status. Chapter 5 investigates in detail how ongoing teachers can discover the need for – as well as train – language recycling in classroom discourse, for example, by studying the language patterning in children’s literature. A caretaker’s scaffolding discourse with pre-school children is known to be interactive and responsive to the child, and as such should be the model for collaborative talk in the classroom. The young EFL learners, with their high tolerance of ambiguity, must be allowed to experiment with the new language; the teacher ‘leads from behind’. This is best achieved when the students are involved in creative tasks (e.g. around a picturebook), and the teacher can rotate from group to group: Not only the learner is empowered, however; so also is the teacher. For it is precisely through frequently engaging in collaborative talk that the teacher is able to increase his or her understanding of children’s thinking in general, and it is only by engaging in such talk with a particular learner while he or she is engaged on a specific task that the teacher can become knowledgeable about that learner’s purposes and current state of understanding, and thus able to make his or her contributions contingently responsive to the learner’s needs. (Chang and Wells 1988: 98, emphasis in the original)

Chang and Wells refer here to learning processes in the first language classroom. With their transcribed examples they show that the teacher echoes some of the students’ utterances, with which she proves that she is really listening. In the second language environment, the teacher needs to echo and often also to recast, which means moulding anew or re-formulating the student’s utterance so that it is a useful and well-formed model. This is a gentle form of corrective feedback, one that does not discourage risk taking. Young language learners are usually receptive to implicit corrective feedback such as recasts, as this is  how they learnt their mother tongue, with the aid of caretaker talk. Of course, even young learners need to be supported in noticing the teacher’s input to the classroom discourse, and encouraged to echo quietly. Many young learners actively engage with new language by echoing it spontaneously, this is called private speech, which belongs, according to Vygotsky, to the sociocultural framework of learning. It is known as intrapersonal interaction

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(Saville-Troike 2006: 113–16). The following pages introduce the empowering affordances of four very different wordless or nearly wordless picturebooks: No David! (Shannon 1998), Handa’s Surprise (Browne 1994), The Snowman (Briggs 1980) and Good Night, Gorilla (Rathmann 1994), all suitable for the young learner EFL classroom. David Shannon’s No David! (Caldecott Honour Book) is an example of a nearly wordless picturebook that is appealing due to the vivacity of the pictures that authentically portray a mischievous lad getting into trouble time and time again. David’s escapades are easy for young learners to relate to, for example, when the greedy boy reaches up for cookies on a very high shelf (verbal text: No, David!), naughty David brings muddy footprints into the white-carpeted living room (No, David, no!) and cheeky David runs out of the house naked (Come back here, David!). The repetitive No, David! encourages chorusing in a gradual crescendo, until the reader reaches the intensely emotional final double-page spreads, when tearful David is invited for a cuddle (Yes, David.  .  .  I love you!). There are several ways in which this nearly wordless picturebook could help prepare for literary studies. The reader must interpret and infer the different meanings of the repeated monosyllable No! by studying the narrative dimension of the pictures. The reader can discover the mother’s point of view, and laugh, frown and exclaim at the naughty little boy. Writing a script to pictures can be managed with the teacher’s support, as each No suggests a different negative command, such as ‘Don’t steal cookies!’ ‘Don’t bring mud into the house!’ and ‘Don’t run around naked!’ This will provide self-generated text at exactly the right level for young learners to read when revisiting the story (at initial stages of language learning, writing is actually easier than reading unknown text). Students can consider why the protagonist and author-artist share the same name, and that books may or may not have an autobiographical element in the storyworld. Students who themselves are repeatedly criticized and reprimanded will be able to enter the storyworld and enjoy this book quite as much as high-flyers, surely already a good reason to introduce it to the class. The illustrations have a child-like quality, and may thus inspire the students to create drawings of David themselves, with an expressive caption of the student’s own choice, relating the idea of the book to their own lives and what they are not supposed to do at home or in school. The pictures provide many opportunities for collaborative booktalk. I use the expression ‘booktalk’, following Aidan Chambers, to refer to ‘co-operative talk in which a community of readers makes discoveries far beyond anything they could have found on

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their own’ (Chambers 2011: 164). I suggest booktalk is both less and more structured than most classroom discourse: it is not only generative and open, but it is also structured as it refers to a text: The excitement created by a good story is also likely to generate much more ‘pupil talk’ than the often rather artificial language texts. This sort of enthusiastic talk will also result in more opportunities for receiving feedback and for negotiating meaning, both of which are associated with L2 learning. (Ghosn 2002: 175)

Referring to the picture in Figure 2.1, the teacher can elicit a great deal of language, through encouraging student utterances and recasting where necessary, such as: ‘David likes bath-time. He loves water. There’s a flood. The whole bathroom is under water. David likes splashing. David likes pirates. He likes wearing his pirate hat. He likes playing sea battles. He’s got a battle-ship and a bomb’. The students can provide the toys, the rubber duck, the shark and the octopus, with dramatic talk as in speech balloons, yet still within the range of most early EFL classrooms, as the following examples show: Duck:  Help! Go away, shark! I’m scared! The shark wants to eat me! Shark:  I’m coming. I’m hungry. Watch out little duck! Octopus:  Hey, where am I? Where is David? I want my Daddy!

Figure 2.1  From No, David! by David Shannon © (1998). Reprinted by permission of Scholastic Inc

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And, of course, David himself is playing the role of a battle-hungry sea captain in this picture, and may be given a voice: ‘Look out! The shark is coming. It’s hungry and very dangerous’. Nearly wordless picturebooks are always participatory; the pictures must always be interpreted by the reader-viewer. This diminishes any absolute power of the writer-artist and empowers the reader: ‘The more that authorities dissolve and the more authors and artists abrogate responsibility for leading readers and viewers towards sense and meaning, then the more readers have to write the text they read’ (Lewis 2001: 91). This is an important early preparation for critical reading of literature and culture. The question of power is also relevant to the social context of the EFL classroom. The typical register of EFL-classroom discourse is dominated by initiation-response-feedback exchanges (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975), with answers already known to the teacher. These ‘display questions’ are intended to allow the teacher to check and the student to display language ability. With reference to the picture above this might be: What can you see in the picture? A yellow duck. Very good!

While accepting the potential of initiation-response-feedback (IRF) ‘as a preparatory step toward more emancipatory forms of discourse’, Leo van Lier maintains that its value diminishes unless it leads ‘to more discursive patterns marked by shared inquiry’: Characterized by one-sided control, IRF is only minimally dialogic, and the students’ participation in its construction (and in the progression toward the overall goal) is largely passive. Therefore IRF cannot not [sic] be regarded as fostering equality or contributing to a transformation of educational reality; it embodies the status quo. (van Lier 2001: 97)

When students are allowed to initiate discourse themselves (such as providing the rubber duck, the shark and the octopus with a voice), they are in the position to act and not merely to react to the teacher’s lead. According to Wood, the responses to the ‘closed type’ of questions: are likely to be terse and simply correct or incorrect. When pupils have answered a teacher’s questions, they usually say no more. Consequently, where such specific, closed questions are frequent, children will say little. (. . .) if other goals are also being sought – for example, encouraging children to reason out loud, to ask

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questions of their own, to state their own opinions, ideas and uncertainties, or to narrate – then the frequent use of specific, closed questions will not bring about the desired ends. (Wood 1998: 174–5, emphasis in the original)

Many educationalists have made the point that genuine questions and genuine responses to books are preferable to display questions: ‘Children should enter the story world of fiction and non-fiction to learn about life and make sense of their world, not to answer a series of questions’ (Short 1997: 64). Reading picturebooks, discovering secrets hidden between the lines and between the pictures, as well as extra meanings created by collisions between the pictures and words, requires mental activity. This points to the need for more challenging and open-ended questions, questions that encourage the necessary thinking dispositions. A picturebook with scarce verbal text demands mental activity to ‘read’ the story, and when this kind of questioning is encouraged by parents or teachers, ‘the child is enjoined to de-centre, think about and reflect on his own activities and, in consequence, becomes more analytic and less impulsive and achieves more effective control of his own learning’ (Wood 1998: 176). Providing young EFL learners with opportunities for linguistic initiative puts demands on the teacher that are similar to those of the materials developer. In addition, the teacher must become a master of scaffolding (Bruner 1983), such as verbal prompts, gestures and facial expression, and also be aware of the right moment to begin to dismantle the scaffold – the hand-over principle (Bruner 1983) – that is, as soon as the student is able to manage with less support. The clear advantage is that these opportunities will help empower children as selfregulating learners (Wood 1998: 179). The following picturebook discussion, on Eileen Brown’s Handa’s Surprise, centres on a counterpointing verbal/visual text dynamic. It is not unusual in postmodern picturebooks for the composite meaning to be enriched by a deliberately asymmetrical or even contradictory relationship (Nikolajeva and Scott 2000: 225–6) between the different modes of representation – the symbolic (words) and iconic (pictures). Handa’s Surprise is set in Kenya; the protagonist Handa puts seven delicious fruits in a basket for her friend, Akeyo. We see her on her way to Akeyo’s village, while the minimal verbal text records her thoughts. An astute picturebook reader will already spot the monkey’s tail in the branches above Handa, who carries her basket of fruit on her head, thinking: ‘I wonder which fruit she’ll like best?’ The next question: ‘Will she like the soft yellow banana, or the sweet-smelling guava?’ is accompanied by two superbly detailed double-page spreads of first a mischievous-looking monkey stealing

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the banana and then an ostrich snatching the guava. Handa walks on oblivious of the tricks the animals are playing literally over her head, and so the book continues (see Figure 2.2). The pictures are vibrant and colourful, drawing the young learner into a world of sensations: the fruit is soft, shiny, spiky, smooth, rough, round or long, ripe, refreshing, sweet-smelling or sour, exotic, delicious, juicy and looks healthy to eat. The impact on the reader certainly includes being ‘in the know’, perceiving more than Handa, who is surprised but delighted at the end by the humorous outcome of eight different animals’ antics: ‘The delight that young readers experience in realizing what is happening ahead of Handa and of the narrator bonds them to the book and makes each re-reading an exciting experience’ (Graham 2005: 211). European children reading this picturebook tend, at first glance, to see their expectations fulfilled that Handa is poor. Through more careful readings, students come to see that Handa is also rich. They find that she is rich in friends, in space to play, in the beauty of the wildlife and spectacular landscapes around her, in fresh produce, in bright colours and in time to play in the great outdoors.

Figure 2.2  From Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne © 1994. Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London SE11 5HJ

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‘Literary works first evoke and then frustrate the reader’s expectations, thus (if the reader continues reading) gradually changing his frame of reference’ (Tabbert 1980: 36). Handa’s Surprise contains no more than 13 sentences; any change in the reader’s frame of reference will be due to the pictures. Eileen Browne states in her acknowledgement: ‘The children featured in this book are from the Luo tribe of south-west Kenya’. Attention to detail, accuracy and aesthetic value is the hallmark of quality picturebooks, characteristics that are essential for any meaningful cross-curricular work in the primary school. A focus on characterization is central in the EFL-literature classroom. This can be prepared with picturebooks, due to the technique of extreme close-ups working against stereotyping: the ‘unique possibility to elaborate with close-ups, so that we literally can come closer to characters and almost feel as if we were talking to them’ (Nikolajeva 2003: 44). The narrative technique of high-quality picturebooks is akin to that of silent film; therefore, holding up a single copy of the picturebook to a large class that can hardly see the pictures is not the way to use its full potential. Some publishers are beginning to provide DVDs with their bestselling books. In the classroom, these are best projected onto a large screen using a data projector and loudspeakers. Minimal animation is added to the DVD ‘to bring the picture book to life’. Although this fascinates children, they certainly become more passive when watching moving pictures, therefore the DVD cannot replace the printed text, and having sufficient numbers of books in the classroom. The evocative still pictures of Handa’s Surprise reverberate with meaning, drawing children into the storyworld. It would seem that the affective dimension of children’s response to pictures casts a spell of wonder. The time factor, however, is crucial. When young children are swept along in a current of fast-moving and fragmented electronic images, they have no chance to cultivate thinking dispositions as the storyworld flashes by. Readers need sufficient time to linger over details, as well as their imaginative and collaborative response, to fill the silences between the pictures and bring the books to life. The teacher should guard against destroying the ‘essence of picturebook storytelling’, which is, according to Nodelman (1988: 239), the ‘sort of ironic relationship between the sequential storytelling of words and the series of stopped moments we see in a sequence of pictures’. The EFL-literature classroom also explores the theme of literary works. I have stated in the introduction that lack of content in textbooks and graded readers for young learners may be due to simplistic illustrations. A classic picturebook with highly developed content and no words at all is Raymond Briggs’ The

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Snowman. This picture narrative of a magical friendship, a change of perspective and the wonder of discovery is portrayed with exquisite detail. The narrative has some elements in common with the magic realism discussed in later chapters, in that the enigmatic nocturnal appearance of the Snowman who comes alive is set against a realistic portrayal of the world of a lonely child. When children interpret why the snowman is a novice with household appliances, they fill the gaps between the pictures. In trying to guide the Snowman, who wants to gain an insight into the boy’s life, the boy adjusts his experience – his earlier schemata – of his home environment to the needs of the other, to warn him of dangers in an environment that is for the protagonist familiar and secure. The reader observes how the boy adapts his understanding of his home ground to accommodate the very different needs of the Snowman, illustrating the process of accommodation (Piaget  1953: 6–7). When the reader empathizes with the snowman’s helplessness and awe, like the protagonist, the reader is learning to look and see from a new perspective. Here the visual viewpoint of the boy focalizer (we mostly see the back of his head and the snowman literally through the boy’s eyes, see Chapter  3) cleverly centres the reader’s attention on the boy’s observation of the fear, confusion and wonder felt by the snowman on discovering an unknown world. The Snowman offers no end of opportunities for student-led creative language work, from inventing speech bubbles to inventing titles for each page. Figure 2.3 could, for example, be entitled: Danger in the kitchen or The Snowman discovers electricity. Students might create speech bubbles such as: Boy:  Be careful. The kitchen is dangerous. Watch out! It’s an electric light. Don’t touch! It’s hot water. Keep away. Stop! Don’t move! Come away. Snowman:  What’s that for? Wow, what’s that light? Is it the sun? What’s water for? It’s wet, like snow. I don’t like it. It’s hot! I’m melting. Let me out!

Peggy Rathmann’s Good Night, Gorilla displays an empowering feature of radical children’s literature. It illustrates the essence of Bakhtinian carnivalesque, privileging the weak over the strong: ‘Bakhtin saw in fiction a great potential to represent a world turned upside down and hence to constitute sites of resistance to authority and to envisage cultural and political change’ (Stephens 2010a: 153). Already the title page indicates that the whole picture narrative will be from the gorilla’s point of view. The young gorilla stares at the picturebook reader/viewer, a finger to her lips, behind the back of the zookeeper. The young reader is let in on a secret and is not to give it away – an example of dramatic irony that children easily understand – unobserved, the gorilla has snatched the zookeeper’s key

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Figure 2.3  From The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (Puffin 2009). © Raymond Briggs 1978. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd

out of his pocket. According to Lewis (2001: 156): ‘Characters that look out of pictures at the viewer looking in seem to address the viewer directly and call for some kind of response.’ Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) refer to this as a demand image, as the reader is enticed and even coerced into complicity with the character looking out. The story unfolds with the reader and gorilla following the bamboozled zookeeper on his friendly round through the dark zoo, as he checks the animals

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in turn. The verbal text, at the turning of each page, is simply: ‘Good night, gorilla’ ‘Good night, elephant’ ‘Good night, lion’ ‘Good night, hyena. Good night, giraffe.’ ‘Good night, armadillo’. The rest of the story is told in pictures only, how first the gorilla, then all the other zoo animals, in turn set free by the gorilla, trail after the zookeeper on his ‘good night’ round. Finally, they follow him into his house and into his comfortable bedroom. The zookeeper falls asleep immediately, but the zookeeper’s wife is alerted by the chorus of ‘good nights’ in the pitch-black bedroom, and sleepily leads the animals back to the zoo. As this is carnivalesque, the gorilla wins in the end by stealing the keys again and managing to spend the night in the cosy bed with the zookeeper and his wife. There are plenty of visual jokes for the students to discover and enjoy. At the same time, the repetitive action, a source of humour, is extremely useful for language learning. It encourages the creation and aids the memorization of a simple story outline, which could begin like this, one line per picture: The gorilla steals the keys. She climbs out of the cage. She follows the zookeeper. She opens the elephant’s cage. The elephant follows the zookeeper and gorilla. The zookeeper doesn’t see anything. Next the gorilla opens the lion’s cage. The lion follows the zookeeper, the gorilla and the elephant. The zookeeper still doesn’t see anything!

Rathmann’s illustrations are extremely amusing. This includes two pitchblack double-page spreads in the bedroom when the light has been turned off. Nothing can be seen but the speech balloons of the animals’ good-night chorus on the first black double-page spread, and only the shining wide-open eyes of the zookeeper’s wife on the following black double-page spread, as she realizes the bedroom is full of animals. The humour is important in encouraging very young learners to enjoy this picturebook again and again, until they can chorus the story outline picture by picture, in unison and by heart. Enjoying the humour that is directed against the authority figures (the zookeeper and his wife) is an empowering social experience for young learners: Just as intense emotion is an elementary force setting the tone for many a success­ ful children’s book, so is humour. It conveys a sense of freedom by questioning norms or conventions, yet because the questioning is not meant to be absolute (as in the cases of satire and the grotesque), but playful and temporary, it may also reinforce a sense of social integration. Both effects are highly welcome to children and together they allow them to eat their cake and have it, too. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 3)

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Creative reader response, scripting, the consideration of character and theme, changing perspective and enjoying carnivalesque dramatic irony, are all elements of the advanced EFL-literature classroom. Carefully chosen picturebooks allow these elements to feature already in young learner EFL interaction.

Playful postmodern picturebooks There were empowering and sometimes subversive elements in children’s literature already before the current era of radical postmodern picturebooks: ‘What we have to realize is that the young have powerful allies in a host of gifted artists and writers to help them to subvert the world of their elders’ (Meek 1988: 40). A flirtation with disorder is typical for children’s playful nonsense literature (Goldthwaite 1996: 15), this reflects and corresponds to children’s position as society novices and even misfits – they experiment while they are learning to fit in. Radical postmodern literature satirizes convention and often parodies didacticism, this is appealing to children who are always being told what to do. Rules are broken, for example, when characters from a well-known fairytale enter another story, as will be described in Chapter 4. Rules are like a safety net for children; rule breaking not only provides the shock of novelty but also widens the opportunities for experimentation. Children often create their own alternative version of well-known texts, subverting the rules almost as soon as they have learnt them. The traditional rhyme Roses are red, violets are blue Sugar is sweet, and so are you.

is transformed, according to Iona and Peter Opie, in the games of twentieth century 12- or 13-year-olds, to the less pleasant versions: Roses are red, violets are blue Onions stink, and so do you (Opie and Opie 2001: 48) Roses are red, cabbages are green, My face may be funny, but yours is a scream. (Opie and Opie 2001: 171)

The trope of intertextuality weakens the idea of single texts containing absolute meanings: ‘intertextuality is the recognition that meaning is not contained simply within any given text, but emerges from the relationships between a text and other texts and/or cultural contexts’ (Stephens 2010c: 195). As soon as the teacher relinquishes the concept of an absolute meaning in a literary text,

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any more than absolute meanings in discourse generally or absolute meanings in isolated lexical items in vocabulary lists, the balance of power shifts away from the teacher somewhat and the student is empowered. Children, like other relatively powerless non-hegemonic social groups, need the opportunity for creativity and the fostering of thinking dispositions if they are to achieve agency and some self-determination in their life choices. Educational self-reliance needs to be trained, and can well begin with postmodern picturebooks. Postmodern literature is often inventive and bizarre. When things are incongruous or outof-place creativity is exercised. The text ‘sets up hermeneutic challenges to readers that force them to think of unexpected ways in which texts might make meanings’ (Reynolds 2010: 48). Postmodern literature is usually imaginatively subversive; the authority of parents, teachers, adults and other institutional power structures is challenged. This will be illustrated with five picturebooks suitable for the transitional phase between primary and secondary schools: The Tunnel (Browne 1989), Come Away from the Water, Shirley (Burningham 1977), Not Now, Bernard (McKee 1980), The Trouble with Gran (Cole 1987) and Piggybook (Browne 1986). Rule-breaking hybridity is a central feature of Anthony Browne’s The Tunnel, in which fairy-tale and fantasy motifs mix with the artist’s hyper-realistic illustrative style. The use of realism side by side with conventions of fantasy introduces the reader to the surreal and offers challenging implausibility, requiring flexibility and an imaginative response. In a Financial Times interview (14.05.11), Anthony Browne was asked if he could remember the first novel he had ever read. He replied: ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Most children have a natural surrealism in their imaginations; I felt like I was discovering a world I already knew’. Intertextuality is one of the most enriching literary devices of children’s literature as children delight in recognizing characters from favourite stories. The heroine of The Tunnel is an avid reader. In the bedroom scene, there are many fairy-tale motifs: the wolf mask and shadow, the red cloak, the wardrobe, Little Red Riding Hood in the picture, the fairy-tale lamp and book. Research on native speakers’ responses to picturebooks shows that 10-year-old children and older are better able to put into words any incongruity between the visual and verbal texts than are younger readers (Arizpe and Styles 2003a: 120–1). However, it has been shown that younger children perceive more details: ‘This may also be due to the time factor (. . .) – older children and adults may presume they are able to see more’ and therefore hurry over each image (Arizpe and Styles 2003a: 118). Children can usually outperform the teacher in discovering details,

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such as the shoes that suggest that someone is hiding under the bed, and the belt that looks like the tail of an animal; success in discovering book secrets is extremely motivating for young learners, and supports their positive evaluation of themselves as responder to books (Sipe 2008a: 214). The pictures in The Tunnel are rich in symbols that tantalize and animate to a sharing of hidden meanings. The brother and sister enter through the tunnel into a mysterious wood. The scene in the wood has been described by 8-year-old Ruth: Well one picture is nice and jolly and happy and just trees, and this picture is in darkness, forest, the trees there are very ugly, all swirls and squiggles. And you’ve got some weird trees at the back at the back and they make you think why is that there (. . .). (Arizpe and Styles 2003a: 119)

Learners of English (rather older than Ruth) would likewise benefit from the opportunity to use more adventurous expressions in their own writing, and to profit from the wealth of exciting lexical items their dictionaries can offer them, words of their own choosing. Textbook pictures and illustrations in graded  readers and reading schemes for first language novice readers usually follow and illustrate the written text in a straightforward, supportive way, however, ideally without the stereotyped banalities of many generic EFL books for the global market. Leading picturebook illustrators ‘are more ambitious than that and will aim for the unusual or unexpected, a secondary story, a running gag, a surreal embroidering, incongruity, ambiguity and irony’ (Graham 2005: 211). Comparing picturebooks to first language reading schemes, Meek considers: the interactions made possible by skilled artists and writers far outweigh what can be learned from books made up by those who offer readers no excitement, no challenge, no real help. Let children talk to you about what they see in pictures; they look more closely than their skipping and scanning elders. (Meek 1988: 19)

Postmodern picturebooks challenge the student to understand texts as dynamic and open. This is in opposition to what students are often led to believe: ‘For many foreign language students, the de facto goal of reading is uncovering the meaning, the theme, the point of a text (i.e. what the teacher reveals in class)’ (Kern 2000: 23, emphasis in the original). John Burningham’s Come Away from the Water, Shirley teaches that both realism and fantasy are conventions of storytelling, that neither should be understood as representing reality. This picturebook is about the imagination of childhood, and children’s intensely experienced inner world.

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Like all high-quality picturebooks, it demands a reading that values the signification of pictures: In this book, as in many picturebooks, the words are few and can be read in a short space of time, but the pictures need more time and scrutiny if their detail and meaning are to be perceived. Becoming alert to the way a written text constantly pushes the reader while a picture stops us in our tracks and slows down the reading is the first requirement for students in their appreciation of picturebooks. (Graham 2005: 210)

Clearly this slowing down of the reading is a great advantage to second language learners, as it affords time for mental activity and challenge, without being overchallenging in the verbal text. Shirley’s adventures are shown on the right-hand recto pages in a wordless picture narrative. On the left-hand verso pages we see Shirley’s parents on a British pebble beach. The verbal text is limited to the mother’s hilariously conventional and unseeing commentary, which ‘consists of phrases British children have heard since sea bathing became our annual endurance test’ (Meek 1988: 17). The mother sets the repressive parental tone with her first words: ‘Of course it’s far too cold for swimming, Shirley’. We observe the mother sitting, knitting and serving coffee from a thermos flask; and the father smoking his pipe, reading his newspaper and then falling asleep under the newspaper. Their seaside setting is very empty, which suggests they live in a rather empty world. Mother and father sit passively in their folding beach chairs as if watching a film (Figure 2.4, verso). Yet Shirley’s parents register absolutely nothing of her colourful fantasy play (Figure 2.4, recto). Her adventures are with a pirate ship and bloodthirsty pirates, a treasure map, treasure island and the discovery of buried treasure, with

Figure 2.4  Double-page spread from Come Away from the Water, Shirley by John Burningham © (1977), published by Random House Children’s Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd

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a faithful dog as her comrade, all against a richly contextualized background of golden sands, dark seas and wild skies: ‘Across the page Shirley is free to be adventurous in the way that books and stories have taught her’ (Meek 1988: 18). The young learners are in charge of the story, when they fill in the details of Shirley’s adventures, they are learning that in reading the emphasis can be on the writerly performance. The children can, for example, create a dialogue between Shirley and the dog, while they eagerly dig up the treasure chest together. The meaning can be indeterminate, the reader accepting non-resolution, in that ‘Burningham’s book shows how texts teach how they are to be read, so that there is no problem about which of the two stories is true. They both are’ (Meek 1988: 18). Burningham’s picturebook is anti-authoritarian both formally – as an open, highly ambiguous text – and thematically. An anonymous nursery rhyme matches well the ironic theme of the picturebook: Mother, may I go and swim? Yes, my darling daughter. Fold your clothes up neat and trim, But don’t go near the water!

Telling gaps in texts (Iser 1990) are ideal for the collaborative forming of ideas and negotiation of understanding and meaning in a community of readers. The following extract from David McKee’s allegorical Not Now, Bernard illustrates the kind of gap that demands a creative writerly response. Bernard tries to attract his parents’ attention, but constantly receives the same answer: ‘Not now, Bernard’. Even when he tells his Mum and Dad: ‘There’s a monster in the garden and it’s going to eat me,’ the answer is the same. So the monster eats Bernard up (Figure 2.5) but still his parents fail to notice. Central questions are left open: stories of this type have been given the child-friendly label ‘Question mark stories’ (Goldstone 2001: 368). Many questions are prompted by Not Now, Bernard: Can neglect of the mental well-being of a child have such fearful consequences that he is lost to a monster, or even turns into one? What happens if the parents go on not noticing that their son has become a monster? The answers are not to be found in the words or pictures. Children in the upper primary EFL-literature classroom become quiet and thoughtful when Not Now, Bernard is shared with them. Whereas mental activity in the primary classroom is often characterized by hushed concentration, a forest of waving hands in the air can be an indication that the matter of the lesson is rather too simple, and the students impatient and restless. Ten-year-old children have an acute sense of fairness and injustice. Some find this text disturbing; thus the highly relevant topic must be dealt with

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Figure 2.5  From Not, Now Bernard by David McKee © (1980). Reproduced by permission of Andersen Press

sensitively, but not ignored. It stimulates students to think about parental care, and the kind of things that can and do happen when it is lacking. The monster ate Bernard up, every bit. Then the monster went indoors. ‘ROAR,’ went the monster behind Bernard’s mother. ‘Not now, Bernard,’ said Bernard’s mother. The monster bit Bernard’s father. ‘Not now, Bernard,’ said Bernard’s father. (McKee 1980)

Babette Cole’s The Trouble with Gran demonstrates Bakhtinian carnivalesque once more, with an unusual site of resistance against an authoritarian adult.

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It is the tale of a grandmother who refuses to be bullied by the boy narrator’s teacher. Gran looks like a conventional elderly lady, called an OAP (Old Aged Pensioner) in the text. The humour of the postmodern story lies in the contrast between the visual image of the stereotyped grey-haired granny and her extremely unconventional behaviour. She is determined to be mischievous, and out-manoeuvres the dogmatic teacher who treats the OAPs like children as he organizes a dreary outing for his class, together with the OAPs. They are to go ‘to Wethorp’, a rainy seaside town: ‘But we want to go somewhere hot and exciting!’ said Gran. ‘Sit down and be quiet!’ snapped the teacher. (Cole 1987)

As in many of Cole’s picturebooks, the verbal text is in unexceptional, every-day ‘people prose’, an expression introduced by Alan Purves to refer to the rhythms of contemporary media-influenced speech (Purves 1994). The dialogue is authentically conversational and commonplace, a useful model for L2 students. Whereas each line of verbal text per picture is simple and prosaic, the pictures are extravagant. They are full of outrageous visual jokes to be discovered and shared, always privileging weakness (the old lady) over strength (the teacher). So when Gran is bored in rainy Wethorp, ‘Gran started to play up’. The words give us no clue that what she actually does is transform into a green monster, as the trouble with Gran is that, secretly, she is an alien. She sends the carousel horses galloping off the carousel: ‘She really livened up the fun fair!’ A class discussion could centre on different ways an alien Gran might ‘play up’ at the zoo. For example: She can ride on a whale. She can have tea with the chimpanzees. She can talk to the animals in their language, like Doctor Dolittle. She can box with a kangaroo and race the cheetahs. She can lift a horse one-handed like Pippi Langstrumpf. She can spit further than a llama. She can change colour faster than a chameleon. She can open all the cages for a midnight zoo party.

Gran then decides to take all the OAPs to Planet Gran: ‘We zoomed towards Gran’s planet . . . and landed just in time for carnival!’ The Planet Gran Carnival is a delightful visualization of the carnivalesque. There Gran joins in exactly those activities that demolish socially received ideas of an OAP: ‘Gran did the Limbo . . . . . . and climbed a bloomernut tree’. The bloomernut tree is covered in pink granny-size underwear (bloomers). This is an invitation to primary EFL students to create bizarre landscapes, with toy-growing trees and flowers, such as teddy-bear bushes and toy-car trees.

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Anthony Browne’s Piggybook focuses overtly on resistance to social forces, and is consequently an empowering narrative. It depicts a character who is finally able to resist a subject position she does not wish to accept; in this picturebook, it is Mrs Piggott who is oppressed. She is seen on the title page, giving a piggyback ride to her beaming and portly husband and two sons. The half-hidden pig motifs begin  already on the title page. Again, the verbal text is conventional (ironically so), matter-of-fact and with little lexical variety; the kind of verbal text mostly still found in graded readers for young EFL learners: Mr Piggott lived with his two sons, Simon and Patrick, in a nice house with a nice garden, and a nice car in the nice garage. Inside the house was his wife. (Browne 1986)

Like the Janet and John series, the text begins by celebrating stereotypical white middle-class family life. Janet and John was an unimaginative, plotless series of readers used for learning to read in nearly all UK primary schools, as well as in North America and New Zealand, from the 1950s to the early 1970s. It hardly mattered whether the families were New Zealand or American or British (. . .). They all looked much the same – mother, father, two closely spaced children – and they all carried the same message: this is the only right way to live. (Else 2008: 231)

The novice readers learning with Janet and John (80 per cent of all primary-school children in the United Kingdom in the 1960s) had no choice but to compare their own probably less wealthy, less comfortable lives with that of Janet and John, and quite possibly find their lives wanting. For today’s children, however, there could be a far wider choice of reading material that does not represent society as irrevocably instituted, suggesting that individual choice or agency is impossible, but instead encourages children to ask questions. Once again in Piggybook, the complexity is in the pictures, not the verbal text; therefore, the book need not over-challenge EFL readers. Mrs Piggott is the downtrodden mother who does all the housework, the cooking and goes to work. It is clear from the pictures that her enormous contribution is undervalued. She has no face, we see her nearly always from behind: she has very little agency in the Piggott family. The male members of the family are consumers: they thoughtlessly consume food, television and Mrs Piggott’s life. One day she leaves the family, leaving a note: ‘You are pigs.’ And the father and two boys rapidly turn into pigs as they attempt to look after themselves.

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All of the students will delight in searching for the pig motifs that are cleverly hidden in every image, making this picturebook a visual puzzle that is sustained throughout the 32 pages. As often in Browne’s work, there are also allusions to canonical paintings, such as Gainsborough’s ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews’. Mrs Piggott cuts the passive Mrs Andrews, who appears imprisoned and immobilized in her magnificent eighteenth-century clothes, out of the print over the mantelpiece before she leaves. Needless to say, the Piggotts learn their lesson, and Mrs Piggott returns to a family willing to reform and transform the family roles. This text, then, belongs to transformative children’s literature, and forms a bridge to the next category.

Picturebooks with an implicit sociocultural agenda Picturebooks can introduce different cultures and different social groupings authentically, while gently inviting comparisons to the equivalent world of childhood in one’s own culture. In teacher education as well as in the EFL classroom, there are still problems achieving ‘intercultural learning’, and leaving extreme ‘cultural stereotyping’ behind (considered in more detail in Part III): Literary texts produce different readings with different readers. A conversation about such different readings in the foreign language classroom can make learners aware of their prior knowledge, their expectations and the stereotypes they bring to the text. Thus they can become conscious of what guides them in the background, a critical insight essential for intercultural understanding. (Bredella 2004: 378)

Many picturebooks have a sociocultural theme, and some of these have been discussed in previous categories, such as Piggybook and Handa’s Surprise. Contemporary children’s literature is seldom explicitly didactic, but remains deliberately indeterminate and even enticingly secretive. To some extent we need to trust the book to tell its own story gradually, layer by layer; we cannot demand total comprehension of words and pictures (if such a thing even exists) at the outset. Sipe advises teachers not to pre-prepare too many questions: Whatever else they do, an abundance of purpose-setting questions establishes one thing: that you as the teacher are in charge, and that you have a definite ‘agenda’. In a way, this immediately cuts children off from the speculative, hypothesizing stance we want to encourage in order to promote their visual interpretive abilities. (Sipe 2008b: 142)

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This means, of course, that teachers need preparation in reacting spontaneously and supportively ‘online’ in the second language. This will be discussed in Chapter 5. Kramsch (1993: 3) argues that ‘classroom teaching is a juggling act that requires instant-by-instant decisions based on both local and global knowledge and on an intuitive grasp of the situation’. And Mourão expresses language learning with picturebooks as ‘not focusing on a predetermined language-learning objective, instead language and learning is being shaped by social interaction’ (Mourão 2013: 82). Literature is a highly expressive carrier of cultural meaning. Why select to teach detachedly and non-authentically about different cultures with didactically constructed materials through the medium of English, when we can directly experience the expression of culture through literature? This shall be illustrated with Amazing Grace (Hoffman and Binch 1991) and The Day of Ahmed’s Secret (Heide and Gilliland 1990), both suitable for primary or lower secondary-school EFL classrooms. Set in multicultural London, Mary Hoffman and Caroline Binch’s Amazing Grace has persuasive depth through its evocative pictures, and encourages thinking dispositions in young learners on social and psychological matters. Grace is a girl who loves stories and acting out the characters that live in her books: Joan of Arc, Anansi the Spiderman, Hiawatha, Mowgli, Dick Whittington and Aladdin. However, a problem arises with her friends: One day at school her teacher said they were going to do the play of Peter Pan. Grace put up her hand to be . . . Peter Pan. ‘You can’t be called Peter,’ said Raj, ‘That’s a boy’s name.’ But Grace kept her hand up. ‘You can’t be Peter Pan,’ whispered Natalie. ‘He wasn’t black.’ But Grace kept her hand up. (Hoffman and Binch 1991)

Grace and her family are portrayed with convincing emotional power, so that it is very easy for the reader to bond with this book and its message of confidence, courage and determination in the face of disappointment (see Figure 2.6). According to Friederike Klippel, the experience of picturebooks and storytelling creates multiple bonds that make stories last: ‘bonds between the teacher and her class, but also bonds between the text and its audience. These bonds function on a number of levels, the cognitive one, the social one, the affective one, the aesthetic one’ (Klippel 2006: 89). Louise Rosenblatt distinguishes ‘efferent’ and ‘aesthetic’ responses to texts (Rosenblatt 1982). Efferent reading is sifting the information in a text, often for a purpose such as directions for action, as in a driver’s manual. Aesthetic

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Figure 2.6  From Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman and illustrated by Caroline Binch © (1991). Reproduced by permission of Frances Lincoln

reading is experiencing the text by interacting with it: the ‘literary transaction’. According to Rosenblatt: Both efferent reading and aesthetic reading should be taught. If I concentrate on aesthetic reading, it is not only because our interest here today is in children and literature, but also because it is the kind of reading most neglected in our schools. Contrary to the general tendency to think of the efferent, the ‘literal’, as primary, the child’s earliest language behaviour seems closest to a primarily aesthetic approach to experience. (Rosenblatt 1982: 271)

Rosenblatt’s ‘literary transaction’ describes the reader’s choice of the aesthetic stance, creating literariness by a lived-through transaction with the text. It is

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perfectly possible, and this often happens in a literature class with older students, to read a literary text in an ‘efferent’ way, for example, when analysing merely the form of a poem, denying much of the literariness of the text. Allowing the natural aesthetic stance of younger readers to develop with texts such as Amazing Grace that positively encourage an aesthetic approach will foster the students’ literary development and support a literary apprenticeship. ‘Aesthetic reading is pedagogically significant because it allows the learner to explore the thoughts and feelings elicited by the text. It comprises both involvement and detachment’ (Bredella 2004: 378). Amazing Grace demands interaction: the intertextuality touches upon many stories of childhood, but leaves them to be completed by the reader. It is particularly the artwork that characterizes the protagonist Grace as a unique individual. Masuhara highlights the need for second language readers to go beyond a uni-dimensional linguistic approach to reading, and learn to create multi-dimensional mental representations by experiencing rather than studying text: Interestingly, of all the reactions in responding to a literary text, emotion seems to be the most pervasive of all in adding values, interest and meaning to the text and  in giving readers motivation to read on. Furthermore the emotive impact created by the text seems to leave a strong impression and to form a durable memory to aid recall. (Masuhara 2005: N/A)

Children readily share in Grace’s emotions, of happiness, hope, disappointment and joy, which are entirely authentic to the young reader. Bredella concludes ‘(t)he emphasis on the significance of the experiences presented in literary texts for the learner’s personality is important because texts used in foreign language classrooms are often shallow’ (Bredella 2004: 378). This is exactly the problem with many EFL materials, particularly for the young learner classroom. Students with a non-mainstream ethnic identity experience constant devaluation of their cultural as well as their linguistic capital in many classrooms. This prohibits identity investment in their learning and delays cognitive engagement. If we want pupils to feel confident in their identities as learners, we must pay as much attention to content and context as we do to objectives. This is of course true for all pupils but especially for those whose communities are viewed as inferior or deviant in mainstream society. (Arizpe and Styles 2003b: 179)

A supportive measure with regard to students’ cultural identities would be to introduce, for example, original Turkish or Arabic picturebooks in the EFL-literature

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classroom in Germany. On the one hand, the pictures rather than the verbal text are often central to the narrative and cultural dimension, on the other hand English as a lingua franca no longer ‘belongs’ to a privileged group, so I suggest it makes sense to go beyond the Anglophone world, and to include authentic picturebooks from diverse cultures in the EFL lesson. Interaction with picturebooks becomes a key to unlock ideas and understanding: ‘a portal, a gateway giving access to many individual worlds created by language’ (Klippel 2006: 88). Authors leave gaps to fill, trusting that the young reader will be an imaginative and creative addressee, who will give time generously and with as yet few cultural prejudices. Consequently, I argue that accuracy and authenticity in the pictures as well as verbal text are of prime importance. An illustration of this is Florence Heide and Judith Gilliland’s The Day of Ahmed’s Secret, which presents pictures of colourful and noisy Cairo streets, crowded with people, camels, carts and cars. Ahmed is a young delivery boy, and the reader follows him through his busy day, while he thinks: All kinds of sounds, maybe every sound in the world, are tangled together: trucks and donkeys, cars and camels, carts and buses, dogs and bells, shouts and calls and whistles and laughter all at once. (. . .) Loudest of all to me today is the silent sound of my secret, which I have not yet spoken. (Heide and Gilliland 1990)

The picturebook is illustrated by Ted Lewin, who has created a detailed collage of the city of Cairo with crowded streets and colourful carts, ancient buildings and modern transport. The storyworld is Cairo through Ahmed’s eyes: I buy my beans and rice, and sit in the shade of the old wall. My father has told me the wall is a thousand years old, and even our great-great-grandfathers were not yet born when it was built. There are many old buildings, many old walls like the one I lean against, in this city. I close my eyes and have my quiet time, the time my father says I must have each day. ‘If there are no quiet spaces in your head, it fills with noise,’ he has told me. (Heide and Gilliland 1990)

At the end of a long day, Ahmed returns home to his family. He tells his very special secret to his whole family, who have been waiting for him. It is dark and the lanterns are lit, and Ahmed takes a deep breath and speaks the ceremonious words: ‘Look’, I say. ‘Look, I can write my name.’

From the secret mentioned in the title, a secret that Ahmed keeps throughout his crowded working day, to the darkness and solemnity of the final pages, the

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picturebook sends messages about the energy of the young, the need to believe in the wonder of education and how momentous the first steps to literacy are. Many cultural differences are documented in the pictures and words: the architecture of Cairo and the wind-swept desert on the doorstep to the city, the market business the reader witnesses, dress, food and drink, names, script and transport, and the fact that Ahmed is proud to be able to work to support his family. The repetition of Ahmed’s weighty secret provides rhythmical cohesion: ‘Today I have a secret, and all day long my secret will be like a friend to me. Tonight I will tell it to my family, but now I have work to do in my city.’ ‘I will have my secret to tell them. I have been saving it until tonight.’ ‘It is a long day. I think the moment will never come when I may share my secret, but of course I know that each day ends and that every moment has its time to be.’ (Heide and Gilliland 1990)

Ahmed’s secret as leitmotif connects his experience to the experience of all young learners in the EFL-literature classroom, as they grapple with bilingual or plurilingual literacy.

Picturebooks with an environmental perspective The final section of Chapter 2 suggests ways of introducing with picturebooks the equally universal relevance of our relationship to the natural world. The previous category, on picturebooks with a sociocultural agenda, reflects the humanist and teleological concepts that underlie most children’s literature. In the words of Cheryll Glotfelty ‘In most literary theory “the world” is synonymous with society – the social sphere. Ecocriticism expands the notion of “the world” to include the entire ecosphere’ (Glotfelty and Fromm 1996: xix). This is a relatively new discourse in literary theory, although a study of nature in literary works has as long a tradition as the study of culture, society and human relationships. Ecocritics often refer to D.  H. Lawrence’s dictum that ‘life itself consists in a live relatedness between man and his universe: sun, moon, stars, earth, trees, flowers, birds, animals, men, everything – and not in a “conquest” of anything by anything’ (Lawrence 2000: 72). The new point of departure is the recognition that, in studying the relationships between human culture and the physical world, ecocriticism joins the now established race, class and gender studies as an ethical literary discourse. To Stephens, ‘Humanity’s

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anthropocentric assumptions privilege culture over nature, and this practice was exacerbated both in children’s literature and its criticism by the domination of discourses around individual maturation that keep the human subject forever at the centre’ (Stephens 2010b: 169). If, as in my argument, studies in the EFLliterature classroom constitute CLIL, then the global environmental crisis can and should be included. Despite Stephens’ comment quoted above, there are many examples of children’s fiction where the environment plays a more or less active role, particularly for younger readers. I will introduce briefly six picturebooks that can be employed at different levels, from implicit learning in the first grade, with minimal English, to using picturebooks ecopedagogically in the secondary school. The picturebooks are Owl Babies (Waddell and Benson 1992), The Shepherd Boy (Lewis 1990), We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen and Oxenbury 1989), Oi! Get Off Our Train (John Burningham 1989), Zoo (Browne 1992) and The Stranger (Van Allsburg 1986). I begin with a picturebook entirely suitable for the youngest EFL learners. This book demonstrates, by contrast, how clichéd the depiction of nature is in most primary-school EFL textbooks. Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson’s Owl Babies bewitches with its evocative pictures and fairy-tale appeal: ‘Once there were three baby owls: Sarah and Percy and Bill. They lived in a hole in the trunk of a tree with their Owl Mother’. The baby owls gaze directly into the viewer’s eyes, establishing contact and demanding empathy: the demand gaze. The drama or conflict of the plot is established on a level that the youngest children can easily understand and relate to: ‘One night they woke up and their Owl Mother was GONE’. Furthermore, the refrain is so irresistible that very young EFL students join in already during the very first encounter with this book: ‘  “I want my mummy!” said Bill’. I want, however, to particularly draw attention to the setting. The owls are personified, in that they can speak and seem to be afraid of the dark; nonetheless, the forest is fully and naturalistically depicted, which helps give individuality and depth to the characterization of the owls. The natural environment of the forest is shown in  all its facets: it provides a safe and comfortable tree home for the owls, and it provides their food, for Owl Mother has gone hunting: ‘ “She’ll bring us mice and things that are nice,” said Sarah’. However, the forest also plays a salient role in the unfolding drama: the intensity of shade in the dead of night serves as a dark and ominous setting, while the baby owls shine luminously white and fearful in the moonlight, waiting for their mother. Seen from below, as in Figure 2.7, the trees are massive and statuesque. I suggest

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Figure 2.7  From Owl Babies by Martin Waddell © (1992), illustrated by Patrick Benson © (1992). Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London SE11 5HJ

this is the dignified representation of nature we should offer our students, the natural world taken seriously: Beginning with the idea that all entities in the great web of nature deserve recognition and a voice, an ecological literary criticism might explore how authors have represented the interaction of both the human and nonhuman voices in the landscape. (McDowell 1996: 372)

Instead, in most current primary EFL textbooks, nature is simplified, caricatured and trivialized. It is not at all unusual for picturebooks and children’s literature in general to highlight a natural portrayal of the landscape, in pictures as well as in words. Children are for the most part relatively unfettered by cultural baggage, and have

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a close relationship to their environment. The landscape can be portrayed as peaceful and uncorrupted, as in the tradition of pastoral poetry: The dominating idea and theme of most pastoral is the search for the simple life away from the court and town, away from corruption, war, strife, the love of gain, away from ‘getting and spending’. In a way it reveals a yearning for a lost innocence, for a pre-Fall paradisal life in which man existed in harmony with nature. (Cuddon 1999: 647)

Of course, childhood is not all innocence and ease, and never has been. Yet a celebration of the natural environment for younger children, such as in Kim Lewis’s The Shepherd Boy (shepherds and shepherdesses are a favourite pastoral theme in adult poetry and drama) honours the ideal of a harmonious balance, an upbringing with and through nature and her changing seasons. The celebration of the natural world and a touching father and son relationship is fulfilled by exceptionally detailed illustrations of the hillside setting. Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is a picturebook rendering of the rhythmic camp-fire chant, with its sing-song pattern and beat. As previously noted, some very successful picturebooks now exist both as book and as DVD, and a comparison of the two media can be productive. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt recounts how a father and four children successfully cross the long wavy grass (‘swishy swashy’), the deep cold river (‘splash splosh’), wade through the thick oozy mud (‘squelch squerch’), wander through the big dark forest (‘stumble trip’), run through a swirling whirling snow storm (‘hoooo woooo’) and at last enter a narrow gloomy cave (‘tiptoe tiptoe’). The double-page spreads are alternatively in colour and black and white. The black and white pictures carry the action forward with the rhythmical text, which changes very slightly at each obstacle (long wavy grass, deep cold river, thick oozy mud and so forth) and close-ups of the family preparing to negotiate the next landscape, for example, by removing their shoes. We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We’re not scared. Uh-uh! A river! A deep cold river. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it! (Rosen and Oxenbury 1989)

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The double-page spreads in colour have very little text, merely the onomatopoeic expressions quoted earlier. The family is dominated and dwarfed by the natural landscape, which is luxuriously rendered by Oxenbury. We see, in turn, a silent, empty beach, a grassy hillside with wild flowers, a river with water so clear that it mirrors the trees, a gleaming marsh landscape where the colours, wildlife and movement are mostly to be seen in the dramatic and windy sky, a mysterious forest of gigantic trees, and a snowstorm that engulfs the now tiny and insignificant family. Each of these landscapes is so dominant and powerful that the process of the family is slow and hesitant – until they finally enter the dark, gloomy cave, where there is indeed a bear. The story now comically reverses as the family rushes back through the different weathers and landscapes, chased by the bear. On the return trip they dash through all six landscapes crowded one after another on a single double-page spread, the breathless rhythm of the pictures now underlining the hectic chase. In the filmed version of the picturebook, the story ends with the family back home, hiding under the pink covers of the enormous family bed, announcing: ‘We’re not going on a bear hunt again’. For pre-school children, the excitement over, this is a fitting ending, a happy, safe homecoming. However, the author and illustrator were perhaps thinking of the older brothers and sisters who may read the picturebook aloud to the pre-schoolers when they created this book, and, fortunately for school-aged EFL learners, added one final double-page spread, Figure 2.8. The bear wanders back alone along the silent beach, which is now darkening as night falls and the sun sets in the mist over a sparkling sea. There is no cheerful family. All at once

Figure 2.8  From We’re going on a Bear Hunt Babies by Michael Rosen © (1989), illustrated by Helen Oxenbury © (1989). Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London SE11 5HJ

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the bear is the focalizer, and suggests loneliness and dejection. One double-page spread may seem a small gesture, but as there are only 12 full-colour double-page spreads in the picturebook altogether, it is very significant. It creates a vacuum that wants filling, and can promote not only an interesting discussion, but even a completely new perspective, or schema refreshment (Cook 1994). Why did the family want to hunt the bear? Do bears, other animals, other living creatures have rights? Is it possible to see human beings as anything other than the centre of all life? The film version of We’re going on a Bear Hunt is an unusually faithful rendering of the book as it very simply animates Oxenbury’s beautiful watercolour illustrations. Yet the director decided to omit the final double-page spread; and so the chance of a first glimpse at the subject of anthropocentrism is lost if the EFL classroom only considers the film. It is, however, highlighted by studying the gap between the film and the book. There are also explicitly pedagogical picturebooks on an environmental theme. John Burningham’s Oi! Get Off Our Train is one of these. The protagonist and his pyjama-case dog drive a steam train through the night (naturally they are supposed to be in bed), and soon have to share their train with five beleaguered and endangered animals. The refrain ‘Oi! Get off our train’, repeated five times, is an irresistible invitation to a young EFL classroom to join in. One by one, the animals explain why they need to get away. The tiger explains: ‘Please let me come with you on your train. They are cutting down the forests where I live, and soon there will be none of us left’. Of course, all the animals are taken onto the train and they journey on together, ‘and soon there will be none of us left’ becomes the new five-times repeated refrain. The language patterning that is so appealing in authentic children’s literature and so helpful for EFL students can lend the aura of poetry to a deceptively simple picturebook page. This is the case in many of Burningham’s texts. The no-nonsense authoritarian mother in Oi! Get Off Our Train ends the story fittingly when her list-like speech rhythms become almost poetic: ‘You must get up immediately or you will be late for school. There are lots of animals in the house. There’s an elephant in the hall, A seal in the bath, A crane in the washing, A tiger on the stairs And a polar bear by the fridge, Is it anything to do with you?’ (Burningham 1989)

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Anthony Browne’s Zoo (Kate Greenaway Medal winner) is a landmark picturebook. It was employed for a series of lessons delivered by a graduate student for her M.Ed. thesis focused on ‘Exploring the use of picturebooks in a foreign language class: Zoo (Anthony Browne) in the Hauptschule, 5th grade’ (Möhle 2008). The children in this class (11- to 13-year-olds), typically for a German Hauptschule, which caters for low-achieving children, were entirely inexperienced with regard to reading (including reading picturebooks) for pleasure. We can assume most of these students associate books with school learning – a domain where they have experienced failure as a rule. Zoo combines outstanding pictures with a serious examination of the relationship between man and animals, and the concept of keeping animals in cages. The students were well able to grasp the messages to be found in the pictures, with support from the teacher, and thoroughly enjoyed the unfamiliar experience of deep reading. Some of the children were able, even in a sequence of just three lessons, to discover the contradictions between the dialogue spoken by a thoughtless family at the zoo and the close-up images of the very beautiful but very beleaguered animals, see Figure 2.9. The animals communi-

Figure 2.9  From Zoo by Anthony Browne © (1992). Reprinted by permission of Farrar Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers and The Random House Group UK Limited. All rights reserved

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cate their anguish with their body language, which can be ‘read’ by the sensitive mother, but not by the rest of her family visiting the zoo. None of the animals in Zoo represent a demand image, they do not seem to seek eye contact, suggesting they have given up any expectations. Yet, the emotional power of Zoo is due to the persuasive pictures, encouraging even the inexperienced reader to bond with the silent animals, and – given sufficient time – achieve a critical distance to the squabbling, foolish and unthinking human visitors at the zoo, who are allegorically depicted as animals themselves. I thus concur with Ramke: it would be a waste of beautiful authentic literature to introduce a multilayered picturebook like ‘Zoo’ by Anthony Brown in the EFL classroom, just to employ new vocabulary or grammar rules. In contrast to many school-based textbooks (. . .), authentic English picturebooks can be much more than just a tool for foreign language learning. They can help pupils to become critical interpreters of texts. (Ramke 2011: 10)

I turn finally to Chris Van Allsburg’s The Stranger. This is a picturebook suitable for the secondary school that encourages the reader to quite literally understand nature as one of the characters of the story, resulting in a dialogic interplay of voices. To McDowell, writing on ecocriticism: Dialogics helps first by placing an emphasis on contradictory voices, rather than focusing mainly upon the authoritative monologic voice of the narrator. We begin to hear characters and elements of the landscape that have been marginalized. (. . .) We can analyse the interplay of these different languages for an understanding of the values associated with the characters and elements and for a sense of how characters and elements of the landscape influence each other. (McDowell 1996: 374)

Introducing a natural phenomenon as a participant in the storyworld is the puzzle of The Stranger. It can be considered a magic realist text, as something magical and inexplicable enters a realistic setting. The stranger is a character who enters the life of a farming family when he is accidentally hit by Farmer Bailey’s truck. He seems to have lost his memory in the accident, and joins in the farming at ‘the time of year Farmer Bailey liked best, when summer turned to fall’. The illustrations are rich with the golden colours of the harvest. Like the opening shot of a film, the opening panorama of this autumn scenery is seen from the bird’s eye view, as if the reader/viewer is sitting in the branches of the

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trees. Van Allsburg subdues the cultural elements of the location and allows the autumnal landscape to draw us in: The trees frame the panorama as if they are in control of what is shown. The viewer’s gaze is directed not towards the truck but into the distance, guided by the river and the bordering trees. The colours underline the clear border between culture and nature. The colours used for the natural environment are warm browns and greens, while a cold, metallic blue is used for the truck. In all, the truck and the house in the distance look insignificant and forlorn in this supreme natural landscape. (Bartels-Bland 2011: 11)

Already on the next page we leap downwards to the worm’s eye view, a quite unusual and thought-provoking angle from which to contemplate the stranger lying in the road (Figure 2.10). This is the visual viewpoint of a small animal in the road near the stranger’s head. Showing a scene from such a skewed angle has been called ‘very deliberate manipulations of the reader’s viewpoint’ (Lewis 2001: 161). With such examples of the literal or visual viewpoint in picturebooks,

Figure 2.10  Excerpted from The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg © (1986). Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved

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we can very graphically demonstrate and bring about an understanding of the related concept of figurative point of view so vital to literary literacy (visual viewpoint is used frequently in graphic novels, see Chapter 3). The angle from which we view the stranger in the road will ‘encourage thoughts on what it would be like to be in the stranger’s position, having been hit by a truck. Which in turn might stimulate thoughts on the plight of animals being run over’ (Bartels-Bland 2011: 12). Similarly, figurative point of view in a purely verbal narrative refers to the angle or filter through which we perceive the storyworld, sharing the vision of the focalizer. In some children’s literature, nature is not a mere backdrop to more important human-centred concerns, nature herself becomes a character in the story. The Stranger appears to go even further, by personifying autumn in the figure of the stranger. After his accident, the stranger remains initially on the friendly Bailey farm, and the seasons appear disrupted. At last the stranger’s memory returns, and he realizes he must return to his natural environment. In this symbolic picturebook, the equilibrium in nature is restored and the seasons return to normal when the family sadly lets their new friend, the stranger, go. I have shown in this chapter that the use of picturebooks in the EFL-literature classroom motivates and empowers students to reach deeper understandings and thinking dispositions, while promoting their language acquisition and visual literacy. Children’s earliest experience with literature is of the utmost importance: literary picturebooks can provide a stress-free beginning. They can initiate, in the primary school and transition to secondary school, ‘an investigative process, where readers are expected to generate, share and negotiate meaning in interactions with other readers’ (Serafini 2005: 63).

Note 1 Page numbers cannot be provided, as picturebooks are always unpaginated.

3

Bridging a Curricular Gap with Graphic Novels

This chapter continues the examination of multimodal texts and visual literacy with reference to the graphic novel, which is a medium scarcely discussed to date in discourse on texts for the EFL-literature classroom. There is a German expression that describes the danger zone of losing the habit of literature, possibly for life; it is known as the Leseknick. This takes place with great frequency at about the age of 12. Until that age, the majority of children – at least in Germany – enjoy reading (Harmgarth 1999: 18). The same study identifies the three vital institutions for the reading culture of children: home, school and libraries (Harmgarth 1999: 29). School libraries are not mentioned in this study, presumably as for the most part state-school libraries in Germany are either entirely non-existent, or they are drearily and, from the point of view of pleasure reading in English, hopelessly stocked rooms or basements, voluntarily organized by parents or teachers, and open for just a few hours per week. This means, of course, that many children have extremely little or no contact with motivating children’s literature after their very first books in the primary school. The school has then a major role in potentially equalizing the chances of children to maintain the habit of literature (Hurrelmann et al. 1995), a role that it fails to fulfil. This was demonstrated by the German PISA results in L1 reading literacy (2000 and 2009), where the social background was shown to have a very significant influence on literacy ability. Germany has, perhaps, been rather slow to recognize the pivotal educational potential of reading. The German expressions Lesesucht, Vielleserei and Lesewut (reading mania, inordinate reading and reading craze) demonstrate a historical extreme distrust of reading that originated in the eighteenth century. With regard to the reading of fiction and particularly of fantasy, there is still a lack of confidence in the educational power of narrative created by words, and, in the case of graphic novels and picturebooks, created by words and pictures: ‘the metaphoric axis of the imagination’ (Kramsch 1996) referred to in the introduction. Therefore, it is fitting that this chapter will deal with two remediated classics that have been read, studied and admired for over a

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century, Treasure Island and The Wizard of Oz, as well as a contemporary classic, Coraline, that, in its epigraph, quoted from G. K. Chesterton, invokes the fairy tale: ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten’.

The contribution of graphic novels in the EFL-literature classroom The Harmgarth study also reports on the favourite reading materials of girls and boys between the ages of 12 and 16. Comics are at the top of the list for boys and less favoured by girls: ‘Especially boys seem to enjoy working with this medium, as in a 9th grade English class in which the students individually could choose a novel from eleven books – half of them graphic novels – every boy chose a graphic novel’ (Hecke 2013: 127). While choosing the graphic-novel medium for the EFL-literature classroom, we should investigate further for the favourite genre of boys and girls. Whereas love stories are very popular among girls but not at all among boys, both girls and boys show interest in non-fiction. Furthermore, both boys and girls, given the choice, would opt for adventure stories and horror stories (Harmgarth 1999: 24). Consequently, the adventure story Treasure Island and the horror story Coraline should interest boys as well as girls; they were both first written as children’s fiction, and have been subsequently remediated as a graphic novel. For the younger age group, I will be focusing on The Wizard of Oz as a graphic novel. Comics/graphic novels have tremendous potential for crossing the curricular gap between the study of language and the abrupt start to literary studies employing adult literature, as well as the pedagogic gap between the more visual educational culture of the primary school and the more abstract and verbal educational culture of the secondary school. Furthermore, recent prize-winning graphic fiction as, for instance, Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, demonstrates how graphic narratives have the potential to cross the institutionalized gap between popular fiction and canonized literature. On all three points there is still far to go in the pursuit of recognition of its educational potential, as the graphic novel is strongly tainted by the trivial subject-matter, which has, until recently, dominated the medium. It is now, however, possible to embark on challenging discussions on global issues in the EFL-literature classroom with the aid of thought-provoking graphic novels by masterly creators, and some multimodal texts on race, class, gender and ecology

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issues are discussed in Chapter 7. I argue in this chapter that the investigation of the literary potential of graphic novels should be an essential component of EFL teacher education, alongside film studies; equally, the potential of graphic novels for training visual literacy should supplement the pedagogic examination of picturebooks for EFL education. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. (Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene 2)

Picturebook written as one word and graphic novel are two neologisms that have recently been created in an attempt to encourage the world of education – for instance, teachers and teacher educators – to take (‘childish’) picture books and (‘trivial’) comics seriously. Many believe they know all these multimodal ensembles have to offer and neglect to even consider their potential for the secondary school EFL-literature classroom. Graphic novels are novel-length stories, usually bound like a book, told in words and images. Whereas comics are frequently ongoing series, graphic novels usually tell a stand-alone story. Difficult though it is for publishers, bookshops, author/illustrators and teachers to differentiate comics and graphic novels, a recent development has made it problematic to differentiate graphic novels and picturebooks. This is the advent of picturebooks that are longer than the standard 32 pages, and on complex subjects that seem to imply secondary-school readers. Two such books are Wiesner’s Flotsam and Tan’s The Arrival, to be dealt with in Chapter 7.

Graphic novels for reluctant and high-level readers In the United States, many educators have discovered the value of the graphic novel for teaching literacy: ‘Teachers use graphic novels because they enable the struggling reader, motivate the reluctant one, and challenge the high-level learner’ (McTaggart 2008: 32, emphasis in the original). The potential of graphic novels for the EFL-literature classroom similarly stretches from a support for reluctant L2 readers to a challenge for high-level L2 readers. It might be summarized as follows: I.  Struggling and reluctant readers need graphics to motivate them to go on with the story. In the primary school, much of their experience of picturebooks will probably have been in read-aloud story-telling sessions, rather than as an autonomous reading experience. The verbal text in graphic novels is generally in short bursts of dialogue, and the images explain much of the meaning: ‘Image

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and text share narrative responsibility. Because of this, many teachers have found great success using graphic novels with ELL students and struggling readers’ (Yang 2008: 187). Moreover, students feel there is a connection between the media they enjoy in their free time and their school reading, helping to bridge yet another gap. By using images in our classrooms, we may reach those pupils who find text difficult  to access. We also give opportunities for pupils to explore meaning on their own terms and in their own way. Many pupils, when faced with the written word, feel that they have to decode and decipher and then find THE answer. A great many may feel that they cannot do this and that they, therefore, can’t ‘do’ English. (Cooze 2007: 26)

II.  Graphic novels can offer the teen reader who needs diversion, ‘not a mindless but a mindful form of escapism that uses a unique kind of language – “graphic language” – to invite us into different worlds in order to help us better understand our own’ (Versaci 2007: 6). At the same time, the fragmentary nature of graphic narratives helps students, and boys particularly, find a connection to their experience of story in the fragmented postmodern media world of the twenty-first century. ‘Sequential art provides plenty of opportunity for connecting the story to children’s own experiences, predicting what will happen and inferring what happens between panels’ (Tiemensma 2009: 6). Many educationalists have expressed how graphic narratives can form a bridge to canonized forms of print-intensive reading: ‘As vehicles for discussion, comics offer a gateway to more advanced works of literature discussed in middle school or high school’ (Seelow 2010: 57). III.  There are, of course, pre-teen and teen readers who wish to be challenged by texts; this works well where the images, the sequencing, the layout and the verbal text interact in ways that are charged with meaning beyond the meanings available in verbal text alone. This promotes stimulating booktalk: The notion that graphic novels are too simplistic to be regarded as serious reading is outdated. (.  .  .) They require readers to be actively engaged in the process of decoding and comprehending a range of literary devices, including narrative structures, metaphor and symbolism, point of view, and the use of puns and alliteration, intertextuality, and inference. (Crawford and Weiner 2010: 5)

IV.  Advanced readers can be offered the opportunity to compare texts critically, as many graphic novels are re-workings of children’s or young adult classics, or

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exist also as film. Graphic novels can form a bridge between the first literary texts, picturebooks, and the important narrative medium of film. Akin to intertexuality, intermediality is a growing area of study due to the proliferation of remediations: for instance, when a story is told and retold as a novel, as a graphic novel and as a film. What happens to the story when it crosses from one medium to another, and what are the narrative devices to enact the story in a different medium? It is, for instance, interesting to study how the ‘frozen moments’ in the panels of a graphic narrative can suggest either placid or hectic movement, through the choice and composition of encapsulated instants, and the transitions between them, sometimes through conventionalized motion lines, through the facial expressions and body language of the characters as well as through the layout on the page. Students can compare the different experiences of receiving information through  written narrative, versus receiving it visually without words. They can analyze how information about character is derived from facial and bodily expressions, and about meaning and foreshadowing from the pictures’ composition and viewpoint. (Crawford and Weiner 2010: 7)

Graphic novels offer students the incentive to take an active and therefore empowering role in their literary education. Characteristics that require readers to co-create the stories include typographic experimentation, unusual layout and montage. The affordances of learning through careful looking are too little recognized, although crucial for the later study of film, as well as for critical literacy with regard to new and largely visual media. The Harvard educationalist David Perkins (1994) describes the opportunity of art as a ‘supportive platform for building thinking dispositions’. He refers to Sensory anchoring (. . . a picture) can be physically present as you think and talk, providing an anchor over a prolonged period of exploration. Instant access (. . .) You can check something with a glance, point with a finger. (. . .) Personal engagement. Works of art invite and welcome sustained involvement. (. . .) Dispositional atmosphere (.  .  .) Giving thinking time, thinking broadly and adventurously, and so on, are uses of the mind that call for concern and commitment, spirit and persistence. (. . .) Wide-spectrum cognition. Building thinking around a work of art guarantees the involvement of multiple sensory modalities. (. . .)

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Multiconnectedness (. . .) The multiconnectedness of art creates an opportunity to bridge thinking dispositions across to diverse other contexts explored in tandem with the work of art. (Perkins 1994: 83–6, emphasis in the original)

To encourage thinking dispositions, according to Perkins, it is essential not to hurry over looking at art: ‘ “Thinking through looking” thus has a double meaning: the looking we do should be thought through, and thoughtful looking is a way to make thinking better’ (Perkins 1994: 3). I maintain that every one of Perkins’ key attributes of building thinking dispositions by looking at art is relevant to language teaching. However, ongoing teachers, as adult readers, require training in thinking through looking in order to be able to teach it, as visual communication also follows certain ‘grammatical’ rules (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). To teach children’s literature reflectively and critically in the EFL-literature classroom, I suggest that the training of future teachers should aim to achieve: – the disposition to give looking time, to look broadly and adventurously, to look clearly and deeply, and to look in an organized fashion. (. . .) When we put together the deliberative and managerial powers of reflective intelligence with the quick and flexible response of experiential intelligence, then we truly have the intelligent eye. (Perkins 1994: 82–3)

The unique devices of graphic novels To verbalize thinking processes, share sense impressions and personal involvement with graphic narratives in the EFL-literature classroom, both the student and teacher need a specialist terminology to describe the literary devices and visual conventions of graphic novels: ‘To read comics or a graphic novel the critical skills needed for all reading comprehension are needed. (.  .  .) This literacy includes understanding the unique language of comics’ (Tiemensma 2009: 3). Visual iconicity in the form of different kinds of images, meaning expressed in the layout and typographic creativity and aural iconicity in the form of onomatopoeia and sound words are central to graphic novels. Conventions that should be named and explained in the EFL-literature classroom include:

1. Speech and thought balloons (or bubbles) – The extensive use of direct speech in graphic novels deepens the reader’s involvement with characters in the story, for instance through an idiosyncratic way of

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speaking. The characters in graphic novels generally speak in ‘people prose’ (Purves 1994), employing the rhythm and register of conversational language, which can be very supportive of second language acquisition. Graphic novels with slang-filled speech balloons can be avoided in the EFL-literature classroom. Captions and narrative situation – The caption is the (usually boxed) area of text that is narrated, not spoken in dialogue. Echoing the original novels, The Wizard of Oz has few captions and an authorial narrative situation, Coraline has a figural narrative situation and Treasure Island has many captions and a first-person narrative situation. The panels reflect this, as The Wizard of Oz panels privilege no particular visual viewpoint, the Coraline panels largely figure Coraline’s figurative point of view, but not her visual viewpoint (Coraline herself is usually in the panel and we see much more than she would see). Treasure Island, however, frequently shows Jim’s restricted visual viewpoint, Jim is not in most of the panels himself and we see just snatches of the action as he would. Visual viewpoint – Figurative point of view, focalization and perspective structure all have specific meanings as literary devices. A new expression is needed to describe what in film is known as ‘cinematic point of view’ (Keating 2005: 440). When in a panel we see the back of the head of the focalizer, foregrounded and in close-up, we know we are viewing the image literally as if with his eyes, from his visual viewpoint. Panel – Each image is in a panel, usually enclosed by a border. The sequence, size and shape of panels are significant. The readers mentally construct the relationship between the stopped moments of each panel and close the gaps in their imagination. Layout – The juxtaposition of panels, like cinematic montage, carries meaning and can be emotionally charged. The rhythm on the page can speed up or slow down the narrative. Transition – This refers to how one panel changes to the next, showing the thoughtful reader how the action has been broken up into frozen moments or fractured. As in picturebooks, this is carefully orchestrated to contribute meanings. Gutter – This is the space between panels. It is in these gaps that reader participation and interpretation is required: ‘a silent dance of the seen and the unseen’ (McCloud 1993: 92). Vanderbeke (2006: 366) calls this space

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‘an integral part of the comic. In the classroom, this may offer itself for various tasks like telling what may have happened between temporally distant panels or adding one’s own panels with additional dialogue in order to fill gaps’.   8. Motion lines – These have become conventionalized to indicate movement.   9. Sound words – These add a visualized soundtrack. Aural iconicity or onomatopoeic sound play (Wales 1989: 226) creates dramatic energy when the sound resembles the meaning; ‘The idea that a picture can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer is vital to the art of comics’ (McCloud 1993: 121). 10. Typographic creativity – This adds meaning to the verbal text through visual means. 11. Encapsulation – This is the trapping of a certain moment or certain character in a panel. The panel may encapsulate only a significant detail, leaving the rest to our imagination. 12. Salience – This refers to how a single element or detail is highlighted. 13. Flashback/bird’s eye view and worm’s eye view/close-up and extreme close-up – These are devices borrowed from film, and can achieve cinematic effects. 14. Cartoon style – A cartoony artistic style is common in comics and graphic novels. Scott McCloud identifies ‘amplification through simplification’: the cartoon style is more abstract and therefore more universal, and potentially more focused and intense than realistic styles (McCloud 1993: 30). Amplification through simplification was a literary technique already before the graphic novel medium. It is used to stunning effect in George Orwell’s allegorical Animal Farm (1945), for example. 15. Silhouette – this is a radical kind of amplification through simplification that is used sparingly for extreme focus and intensity. The aforementioned devices can be exemplified and discussed during booktalk in the EFL-literature classroom; they are features of graphic novels that have become useful tools for achieving narrative effects. Referring to Coraline, Burwitz-Melzer states (2013: 61) ‘it may be useful to make students aware of these different tools and to discuss the elaborated “camera angles”, the rapid succession of similar panels to indicate action, and the special design to indicate a parallel world’.

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The emotional homelessness of adolescence and the home/away/home story Kimberley Reynolds puts forward the notion that some children’s literature manifests ‘transformative energy’, in this way contributing ‘to the social and aesthetic transformation of culture by (.  .  .) encouraging readers to approach ideas, issues, and objects from new perspectives and so prepare the way for change. This is the sense in which I see writing for the young as replete with radical potential’ (Reynolds 2010: 1). The classic Treasure Island has received the approbation and even adulation of generations of readers, children as well as adult; the contemporary classic Coraline has received widespread acclaim and approval, for the original novel (Gaiman 2002), the graphic novel (Gaiman and Russell 2008) and the film (Selick 2009). The fact that these texts are remediated and reinvented with high frequency indicates they are seedbeds of creativity. They promote creativity among the artists who remediate the texts, in the literature classroom, due to their elaborate characterization and complex treatment of the home/away/home story and also in the adolescent reader. I argue this is due to their transformative energy, as the heroes Jim Hawkins and Coraline are forceful and radical. As imaginative and adept graphic novels, both of these texts are accessible to the mid-secondary-school EFL-literature classroom.

Treasure Island Graphic Novel: An adventure story in the EFL-literature classroom Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson 1883) remains to this day a consummate favourite: ‘one of the handful of modern stories which have become part of popular culture and have (more or less) crossed the adult-child divide’ (Hunt 2001: 234). The setting has a universal appeal: ‘The spell of islands and caves (. . .) seems to be perceptible all over the world’ (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 4). New editions are regularly published, often with remarkable illustrations that illuminate the storyworld, for example, the recent John Lawrence illustrated, non-abridged version (Walker Books 2010). Treasure Island is also the chosen read of the literate monkey hero of the picturebook It’s a Book (Lane Smith), also first published in 2010. The primate is engrossed in reading Treasure Island, but extremely patiently answers questions on the book to a tech-savvy donkey, who knows nothing about print media: Can it text? No.

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Tweet? No. Wi-Fi? No. Can it do this? TOOT No . . . it’s a book. Look. [The monkey shows the book] ‘Arrrrrrrrr,’ nodded Long John Silver, ‘we’re in agreement then?’ He unsheathed his broad cutlass laughing a maniacal laugh, ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ Jim was petrified. The end was upon him. Then in the distance, a ship! A wide smile played across the lad’s face. [The donkey comments] Too many letters. I’ll fix it. LJS: rrr! K? lol! JIM: :( ! :) (Smith 2010)

The joke, and pedagogical message, of the picturebook is that once the donkey starts reading Treasure Island himself, he won’t give it back, even though it doesn’t ‘do’ anything, unlike the digital media the donkey is at home with. Clearly, the donkey does have enough imagination to ‘do’ everything himself in his own head, and the monkey has to make his way to the library to get another copy of Treasure Island. The graphic novel Treasure Island (Stevenson/Hamilton 2005) is a dynamic multimodal text with which EFL students can experience a great deal of the exhilarating quality of the original. It is as if Stevenson were speaking to ‘the wiser youngsters of today’ in the twenty-first century, fans of Pirates of the Caribbean, over a century after he wrote the epigraph: If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And buccaneers, and buried gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of today: – So be it, and fall on! (Stevenson 1883/2010: 5)

Treasure Island offers the home/away/home pattern that children’s literature scholars have identified as a basic dynamic that drives much children’s fiction,

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from its inception in the nineteenth century to the present. The following list of binary oppositions is taken from a much longer list compiled by Nodelman and Reimer, who maintain ‘In fact, the various values commonly associated in children’s texts with being at home on the one hand and being away on the other define some of the most central thematic concerns of a surprising amount of children’s literature’ (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 199). The oppositions listed below are all in evidence in both Treasure Island and Coraline: HOME AWAY Adult Child Maturity Childishness Civilization Nature Restraint Wildness Imprisonment Freedom Boredom Adventure Safety Danger Calm Excitement Acceptance Defiance Common sense Imagination Sense Nonsense Custom Anarchy Conservatism Innovation (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 199)

Nodelman and Reimer believe these themes are predominant in texts written for children and young adults. This indicates the need for children to consider, as they grow up, leaving their home in search of new experience, and returning home again. In literature, young protagonists often acquire new insights and new perspectives on their own identity, and that of their caregivers and their social environment, while away from home, although this depends on the complexity of the text (identity and subject positions offered in texts will be considered in detail in Part III). Both Treasure Island and Coraline are complex texts, with complex father figures in the former and complex mother figures in the latter. It is the sometimes ambiguous, sometimes emblematic characterization of Treasure Island that captivates, as well as the fast-paced and exotic adventure. Stevenson (who wrote Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1886) creates in the villainous pirate Long John Silver, a character that is at once devilish and seductive, attractive and horrific. Already the two-toned front cover of the graphic novel (see Figure 3.1) illustrates the ambiguity of the antagonist, which

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Figure 3.1  Front cover of Treasure Island: The Graphic Novel (Puffin Graphics) by Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Tim Hamilton © (2005) by Byron Preiss Visual Publications. Used by permission of Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

can be used in the EFL-literature classroom to elicit ideas and predictions on the forthcoming story, and to prompt connections to other stories students are familiar with. Although Jim Hawkins is almost from the outset warned about ‘the seafaring man with one leg’, he does not connect the figure that haunted his dreams with  the  fatherly character he soon after meets: ‘On stormy nights, I would see  him  in a thousand forms. And with a thousand diabolical expressions’

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(Stevenson/Hamilton 2005: 11). This is an example of foreshadowing for the EFLliterature classroom to discover. Long John Silver becomes the ship’s cook before he becomes the leader of the mutineers on the voyage to Treasure Island. He can be seen smiling, friendly and welcoming: ‘Come, Hawkins, come and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son’ (Stevenson/Hamilton 2005: 55). As Jim Hawkins’ father died just before the voyage began, the affable and food-providing Long John Silver, with words like ‘my son’ and his kindness to Jim, establish him as a father figure. Like Hamlet with regard to his stepfather Claudius, Jim soon learns, however, ‘That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain’ (Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5). While hidden in an apple barrel, Jim overhears the mutineers’ murderous plans, deviously led by Silver. The panels of this scene show snatches of the mutineers, sometimes just a shadow or a foot. Similarly, we are frequently, throughout the graphic novel, shown glimpses of action or landscapes rather than complete scenes. This hurries the action forward, and emphasizes that, in the captions, Jim narrates the story (just as the original is a first-person narrative, narrated mostly by Jim, partly by the doctor) and thus most scenes are observed from Jim’s visual viewpoint, quite often from a place of hiding and with imperfect vision (see Figure 3.2). In this way, the graphic artist Hamilton has resisted ‘filling in the gaps’: the reader still has the task to fill in the gaps in the graphic novel, as in any literary text. Jim, just as the protagonist Coraline in the later work, observes scenes of horrifying violence. While in hiding, he witnesses the murder of an innocent sailor, committed by Silver. Hamilton uses motion lines and the sound word ‘URKK’, as well as the victim’s facial expression and body language as he falls towards Jim (and the viewer/reader), to involve the reader in emotional response as Silver’s knife claims its target. In the lower panel we see Jim fleeing the scene, a tiny figure in silhouette; seen from the bird’s eye view he appears insignificant and extremely vulnerable. As Jim runs away, bent down low like a frightened animal, a leaf-less tree in the foreground appears to stretch its twisted claw-like branches down to entrap the terrified boy (Stevenson/ Hamilton 2005: 68). Most interestingly, he is running from right to left, as if he were trying to run back home. Action in picturebooks and graphic novels in Western culture usually takes us from left to right, in the direction that we read. At this point, we can interpret Jim’s adventure as having become terrifyingly real, and he runs ‘backward’ as he longs for the security of home. However, Jim himself is a complex figure in Treasure Island. He deserts his friends more than once, and on one occasion this leads him into a conflict during which he kills a pirate in self-defence. Thus, during the course of his adventure, he

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Figure 3.2  Page 68 from Treasure Island: The Graphic Novel (Puffin Graphics) by Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Tim Hamilton © (2005) by Byron Preiss Visual Publications. Used by permission of Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

becomes ethically compromised; he learns that good and evil are not simple opposites. Jim’s friends, in fact, are treasure seekers like the pirates, if wealthy and powerful ones. Jim’s final return home will not be a straightforward return to a state of childhood innocence, adult common sense and civilization; he has now learnt that adult values are questionable (the final pages of the Harry Potter series, seem to have, in contrast, a conservative message, see Chapter 8).

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Thus Treasure Island is an ambivalent text, and allows readers ‘room to speculate’, which is, as expressed by Nodelman and Reimer, an important prerequisite for an empowering apprenticeship in literary literacy: Texts that focus on adult concerns and messages take readers from the perception that home is boring to the realisation that it is safe – and forget about the original boredom. Texts that offer child readers what some adults think they want to hear focus on the excitement of being away, disregard its danger, and see home merely as boring. The more ambivalent texts refuse to deny either the excitement of being away or the boredom of being at home. (. . .) In their ambivalent expression of contrary values, such books offer readers room to speculate, space to grow in. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 200–1)

The pirate language in Treasure Island is darkly threatening and enigmatic. It should be remembered that even nineteenth-century English-language children would not have understood all of the ‘piratespeak’ of Long John Silver and his co-mutineers. This represents their exotic strangeness, and the graphic novel retains some of the authentic flavour of their language. As the studentfriendly website Shmoop expresses it: ‘His salty speech is more about creating an effect of pirate-ness than about word-for-word comprehension’ (Shmoop Editorial Team 2008). A tolerance of ambiguity is an important asset for second language studies as well as for the study of open, ambivalent literary texts (Serafini 2005: 62). Finally, the vigorous rhetorical energy and rhythmical quality of the language of Treasure Island is not surprising, as Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the most celebrated nineteenth-century poets who wrote much highly regarded children’s poetry.

Coraline Graphic Novel: A horror story in the EFL-literature classroom Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel Coraline (2008), illustrated by Craig Russell, is adapted from Gaiman’s prize-winning young adult novel Coraline (2002). Already this offers rich opportunities for comparison: we can compare a scene from the text as a novel, which particularly teenaged girls may prefer to read, with a scene from the graphic novel, and the same scene in the film (directed by Henry Selick, 2009). It should be noted, however, that whereas the graphic novel is a very close remediation of the novel, the film differs considerably. It is very helpful for the student to explore ideas for film analysis and the

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understanding of movie techniques initially with the still pictures of graphic novels: But while movies offer a stream of images and thus require a reconstruction of particular scenes in the discussion, the panels of comics can be analysed more easily as they are fixed on the page and it is always possible to return to earlier pictures if this should be necessary. (Vanderbeke 2006: 368)

The very first illustration in Coraline is an example of amplification through simplification (see Figure 3.3). The graphic novel artist Craig Russell’s simplified

Figure 3.3  FOR SALE from Coraline by Neil Gaiman © (2002, 2008), illustrated by Craig Russell © (2008). Used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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outline of the house in flat pastel colours suggests that this grand old house symbolizes something beyond itself, as if it were alive. The capitalized ‘FOR SALE’ sign, set among grey rocks in the foreground, points to an (ominously) unknowable adventure. The new home of the heroine Coraline, an apartment in this grand house, will play a major role in the story. The watchful black cat in the foreground, poised ready to run away, suggests danger and magic. As the cat watches the reader (a ‘demand’ gaze, see Picturebooks with an environmental perspective in Chapter 2), it seems simultaneously a warning and enticement to the reader to dare to enter the storyworld. Teen readers will recognize certain conventions from their horror narrative schemata, such as the connection between a black cat and witches, the spooky atmosphere of an old house standing alone on a hilltop, the secretive and blind appearance of the tall, narrow windows and one side of the house shrouded in darkness – helping them to predict significant elements of the story. The conventional symbol of ‘home’ in children’s literature, as a place of calm and safety as opposed to the excitement and danger of ‘away’ (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 199), is interrogated already in the first full-page panel. Readers, at approximately the age of Coraline, about 13 years old, have a great deal of experience in reading pictures, and may notice more than the teacher. Nonetheless, it is productive for EFL students to work initially in groups around pictures to negotiate understanding and meaning without the risk of losing face, just as for verbal texts: ‘Reading activities built up around motivating, challenging comprehension tasks that have to be performed in small groups create the intimacy condition required for many learners to signal their incomprehension to each other and to negotiate meaning’ (Van den Branden 2008: 166). Coraline is a solitary and bored protagonist, with extremely busy and rather aloof parents, who leave her to explore her new environment and visit her eccentric and bizarre new neighbours alone. Coraline discovers that her new home is creepily mirrored on the other side of a blocked-up door. Despite obscure warnings, she braves the secret passageway to this ‘mirror world’  – reminding us of Alice’s curious and grotesque adventures down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. In the mirror world she discovers she has an ‘other mother’ and ‘other father’. Despite her spooky button eyes, the Other Mother initially attracts Coraline with her mothering and enthusiastic ‘love’. At first Coraline enjoys her traditional cooking and her flattering attention. But gradually the other mother becomes more sinister – she wants to sew buttons into Coraline’s eyes. What can the symbolism of button eyes mean? Clearly this is horrific, as eyes suggest our inner depth and represent individuality, like a

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window to the soul: ‘Thus the other mother wants to replace Coraline’s eyes with uniform, black buttons not simply to deprive Coraline of her individuality (her awry look), but because “looking awry” poses a threat to this other mother’ (Rudd 2008: 164). It seems it is Coraline’s non-conformity, individuality, defiance and wildness in an adult-dominated world, with its adult demands on the child, represented in Coraline by both sets of parents, that launches her on the path of danger and horror. The obedience-demanding Other Mother reminds us of the long line of devious stepmothers of fairy tales, the cruel mother in Pullman’s His Dark Materials (2004), the stony-hearted aunt in Harry Potter, the candyproviding and child-eating witch in the gingerbread house as well as malevolent father figures such as Long John Silver. Contemporary children are offered, no less than children of the past, the chance to interrogate the flawlessness and dependability of authoritarian caregivers through these ‘other parent’ figures in their literature. Gradually, Coraline, with the help of the witchy cat, finds out that the mirror world is a creation of the Other Mother’s, to entrap her, as in a spider’s web. She realizes the Other Mother wants in some way to consume her, like the witch in the gingerbread house. When walking through the garden of the ‘other world’ (see Figure 3.4), she discovers that the further she walks the less real it becomes: ‘the trees becoming cruder the further you went. Pretty soon they seemed very approximate, like the idea of trees’ (Gaiman/Russell: 82). The original novel text is only slightly longer: the trees becoming cruder and less treelike the further you went. Pretty soon they seemed very approximate, like the idea of trees: a greyish-brown trunk below, a greenish splodge of something that might have been leaves above. (Gaiman 2002: 86)

Creating this scene in pictures, Russell uses the layout to slow down the narrative, by spreading two large panels right across the page. He draws attention to his extremely cartoon-like style in representing the unreal other world, which becomes sketchier and sketchier. Coraline appears to walk out of each panel, almost to drop out of the world. Russell has with his art and salience on the cruder and cruder trees re-created the ‘invented’ nature of the other world, thus he draws attention to the means of creating a graphic novel – his art. Where the trees are crudest, typographic experimentation is also employed (in the first panel). This suggests that not only the other mother’s world is a fiction, but also the narration (which of course it is). This is known as metafiction or selfreflexivity, and is a common device in postmodern fiction, picturebooks and

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Figure 3.4  Page 82 from Coraline by Neil Gaiman © (2002, 2008), illustrated by Craig Russell © (2008). Used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

graphic novels (see Chapter 4). Self-reflexivity helps young readers consider how texts are constructed. The storyworld of Coraline brings the terror right inside the normally safe environment of the home, making it even more disturbing. This has been identified as an example of the ‘uncanny’ – when the familiar is invaded by strangeness (Reynolds 2010: 149; Rudd 2008: 161). To Rudd ‘the fear of ­extraterrestrial aliens is relatively minor compared to the uncanny fears closer to home’

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(Rudd 2008: 164). In German, there is an extremely significant connection of terminology, from the safe and familiar – heimatlich – to heimlich with its original meaning as homely – to the now common meaning of heimlich as secretive and hidden – to unheimlich, the eerie and uncanny. This close connection between the concept of the home and the uncanny has been remarked on by Freud in an essay on the uncanny, Das Unheimliche, in which Freud points to a retrogression in meaning (Freud 1919: 303), as if the home and the ­familiar itself are uncanny. This can be so, of course, and is often encountered in much narrated childhood experience, such as Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (to which Freud particularly refers) and Burnett’s The Secret Garden. That children may need protecting even in their own home is not new, this tragedy is merely less hidden than in previous eras. Coraline seems to be telling the teenager: adult values are questionable, so don’t demand too much from adults (Coraline begins by wishing for far more attention), find your own agency with which to overcome the emotional homelessness of adolescence. Reynolds (2010: 15) maintains the ‘cultural and aesthetic wild zone at the centre of children’s literature is a space for dissenters of all kinds’. According to Rudd (2008: 160), ‘Coraline is centrally concerned with how one negotiates one’s place in the world; how one is recognised in one’s own right rather than being either ignored on the one hand, or stifled on the other’. It is pedagogically very significant how the themes in children’s literature, for example, unreliable authority figures, are continuously re-invented in different storyworlds. Adolescence is, of course, the time when children’s eyes are opened to the lack of perfection in their parents, teachers and other adult authority figures – something that the Other Mother would prevent, by replacing the eyes with buttons. Russell portrays the Other Mother as unfeminine, flat chested and bony. According to McCloud (1993: 125), angular lines are ‘unwelcoming and severe’, quite the opposite of warm, cuddly and homely. However, Coraline is radical, if not subversive, in that even the real parents, the real home and a wellmeaning policeman are all portrayed as somewhat flawed – though certainly not evil like the Other Mother. This is in contrast to traditionally didactic children’s literature, where the real mother and/or father, often no longer alive, are portrayed as perfect. Postmodern and radical children’s fiction is for this reason empowering for students, as a more realistic portrayal of authority figures is usually offered: exploring is seen as a strength, and curiosity may win the day. This pattern is repeated in Treasure Island, The Wizard of Oz and Coraline. With reference to the latter, Goss maintains ‘There is an obvious

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humanist message here about the value of independence, courage and wit’. She suggests a radical message: At the end of the story her parents have no memory of what has happened, and  while Coraline has certainly learnt to appreciate them more, and become more forgiving of their flaws (such as her mother’s lack of cooking prowess), she has triumphed as a result of her own intelligence and values, rather than because of any sort of obedience. (Goss 2009: 71–2)

Finally, Coraline has to find the inner strength to save herself as well as her parents and other child victims from the Other Mother. And Coraline is able to find that strength, and a new pleasure in existence, so that ultimately the tone is optimistic and suggests faith in young people: The light that came through the window was real golden late-afternoon day­ light, not a white mist. The robin’s-egg blue sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world. (Gaiman/Russell 2008: 154, emphasis in the original)

This suggests that the narrative of Coraline has more than mapped certain elements of the adolescent world, it has increased the perception of the protagonist in the storyworld, and, by foregrounding this, also possibly the perception of the reader: ‘art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony’ (Shklovsky 1917/1988: 20, emphasis in the original). Coraline is meant for young teen readers, but this does not mean that the artwork is simple, any more than suggesting a simple story. Both are complex and require thoughtful discussion in a community of readers. The colourful pages are aesthetically attractive in their emphasis on shapes. The composition of the page shown in Figure 3.5 reveals many patterns. Although the image of the animated hand of the evil Other Mother is horrific, the forms (parallel lines of the stairs, triangular lilac splash of light against the violet wall and the slanting entrance to the grand old house, which frames Coraline against a turquoise shadow) encourage the kind of personal engagement inviting sustained involvement referred to earlier (Perkins 1994: 83–5). The detached hand itself, gigantic in the foreground, dances in mid-air and provides an excellent example of salience, through the size, lack of colour (other than the blood-red pointed finger nails) and through the spiky shape. It is the house itself that finally defeats what is left of the Other Mother, carefully orchestrated by Coraline. She lures the Other Mother’s hand to an eerily deep well in the garden, and using an innocent-seeming dolls’ picnic as a

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Figure 3.5  Page 166 from Coraline by Neil Gaiman © (2002, 2008), illustrated by Craig Russell © (2008). Used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

disguise, causes the hand to fall down to the bottom of the well, which Coraline then immediately and securely covers up. ‘It is of note how Coraline achieves this ending; in effect by reverting to a younger self, to one that still plays with dolls. In other words, she affects an innocence she no longer possesses, performing childhood, using it as a masquerade’ (Rudd 2008: 167). Unfortunately, the film of Coraline weakens the agency of the heroine, by introducing a boy character who ‘comes to the rescue’ at this climax. In the novel, however, the adolescent state of in-between is celebrated to the end, Coraline succeeds by using her teenage courage and cleverness and, where necessary, the weapons of the child.

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Coraline is both in terms of time at a threshold (as adolescence is the gateway between childhood and adulthood), and in terms of space she is constantly in threshold situations of passages, doorways and stairways (as in Figure 3.5). Bakhtin’s term ‘chronotope’ refers to the particular time and space of a literary work, and he identifies a chronotope of the threshold: ‘the threshold and related chronotopes – those of the staircase, the front hall and corridor (.  .  .) places where crises events occur’ (Bakhtin  1981: 248). Falconer points out that the chronotope of the threshold is particularly frequent in contemporary young adult fiction. In this connection, she mentions works by Rowling, Pullman and Almond (discussed in Parts II and III), which as ‘crossover’ fiction attracts not only adolescent, but also very many adult readers: in times of fundamental social change, readers evince a heightened appetite for fictions that focus on the edges of identity, the points of transition and rupture, and the places where we might, like microcosms of the greater world, break down and potentially assume new and hybrid identities. (Falconer 2010a: 89)

A great deal of contemporary children’s fiction functions like a microcosm of the postmodern world, focusing on the rupture of metanarratives (discussed in Chapter 4). One can therefore argue that contemporary radical children’s literature is more empowering in unlocking agency in the contemporary world. Moreover, schema-refreshing canonical literature can become schemareinforcing over time (Cook 1994: 194–5), which may not diminish its literary value, but may in some ways lower its value for reader empowerment. Canonized literature has frequently become schema-reinforcing; Cook tentatively suggests the example of Jane Austen, though emphasizing that her storyworlds may have been ‘schema-breaking’ in her own time. Finally, children’s literature, as opposed to contemporary adult literature, usually provides a happy end. This might be understood as a ‘pedagogical promise’ that children still have a chance to be victorious in the battle against future challenges (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 5).

Developing literary skills with lower intermediate learners: Baum and Cavallaro’s The Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel According to the children’s literature scholar John Goldthwaite, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Frank Baum 1900) ‘was the Edison of narrative

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fantasy, finding ways of lighting it up and making it talk that no one had ever thought of before’ (Goldthwaite 1996: 211). The story offers a kaleidoscopic fantasy world, the Land of Oz, and iconic fantasy characters, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. Each character is on a quest to the Emerald City where the Wonderful Wizard rules. The quests are not so easy to fulfil: the stout-hearted protagonist Dorothy, carried to Oz by a violent cyclone, seeks to find her way home to Kansas, while the scarecrow desires brains, the Tin Woodman a heart and the Lion courage. The Wonderful Wizard turns out to be a trickster with no magic powers at all – and yet he is able to help each character fulfil their quest (after they have fulfilled daring tasks). This is because the main characters find already within themselves what they are seeking. Both the value of home (even the flat grey land of Kansas), and the importance of self-reliance and rising to a challenge are honoured in this fantasy. For this reason The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a key text of children’s literature and has significant cultural and mythopoeic meaning for North Americans. This sketch suggests The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a complex story, and indeed it is. The original text, although meeting children’s need for imaginative storytelling, is likely to be beyond their language competence in the EFL classroom. The graphic novel, however, fulfils young readers’ needs: to be challenged by literary texts, but not over-challenged linguistically, to have the opportunity to supply background knowledge (e.g. understanding fantasy conventions) and to practise top-down processing with an authentic multimodal literary text. Lower secondary-school students will already have a fantasy schema: from television, from film or from their reading. This will include witches, wizards and magic, animals that can talk (anthropomorphism) and the creation of secondary worlds either beyond the real one (such as Narnia in the Chronicles of Narnia series) or hidden in and around the real one (such as the magical world in the Harry Potter series). Before beginning The Wizard of Oz. The Graphic Novel (Baum/Cavallaro 2005), the teacher can activate the students’ fantasy schema and elicit from the students some information about their favourite secondary worlds. The students may be able to describe Narnia, with its snowy winter landscape, where spring never comes; Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the magic castle with its myriad secret rooms and corridors, dungeon and Forbidden Forest; Alice’s Wonderland, where the grown-ups are mad, and where Alice gets smaller, then bigger, then smaller again; Peter Pan’s Neverland, where there are fairies, pirates and mermaids and you never grow up. Each secondary world is reached by a magical route

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that some students may be able to identify: Narnia through the wardrobe; Hogwarts Express from platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station; Wonderland by going down the rabbit hole (Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland) and through the mirror (Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There) and Neverland by flying through the night sky as Peter Pan explains: ‘second to the right, and straight on till morning’. Whereas the term ‘fantasy’ refers to the literary genre – a fantasy film or a fantasy novel – the faculty that is exercised when the reader participates in the storyworld is the imagination. A well-crafted literary work of fiction, whether fantasy or realism, is always imaginative and therefore exercises the imagination. Extremely formulaic fiction, such as detective fiction, often known as ‘closed’ text (Eco 1989) or ‘readerly’ text (Barthes 1990), offers fewer opportunities to participate, than ‘open’ or ‘writerly’ texts, which allow the reader to co-create the text. Detective fiction by its very nature normally requires closure, as the crime must be solved. (It must be said, however, that poorly written fantasy is often over formulaic and therefore predictable). Thus, fantasy that is characterized by indeterminacy and offers writerly participation should not be considered ‘mere’ escapism. Our willing acceptance of the central convention of fantasy – that we temporarily believe in a storyworld that is clearly unreal – is known as the suspension of disbelief. An important cognitive function of creating mental models of imaginary worlds ‘may be to create greater flexibility and adaptability in unforeseen circumstances. Imaginary worlds allow experimentation with possible eventualities which the mind, locked in its routines, might otherwise not have seen’ (Cook 2000: 58). With perhaps a greater need for adaptability and creativity in the twenty-first century than has ever been known before, it is arguable that the educational function of children’s fantasy literature is seriously undervalued. Comparing texts sensitizes students to how texts work and practises visual and literary literacy. All the traditional features of the imaginary Land of Oz, with its mythical status in North America, have been retained in the graphic novel. The main characters, however, have been given a contemporary spirit with regard to their movements, facial expressions, gestures and exclamations. W. W. Denslow’s original illustration of Dorothy’s meeting with the Scarecrow in the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Figure 3.6) shows a placid Dorothy. She appears to be wondering and amazed, yet gentle, respectful and brave. Dorothy, her dog Toto, and the Scarecrow all seem to be lost in thought. Students could fill in thought bubbles for the three characters, and then create a title for the picture.

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Figure 3.6  Dorothy’s meeting with the Scarecrow, illus. W. W. Denslow (1900, public domain)

Michael Cavallaro’s contemporary Dorothy (Baum/Cavallaro 2005: 25) appears outspoken and very energetic, a dynamic modern girl. A close comparison of Denslow’s image, created to illustrate the magical story, with the equivalent page from the graphic novel, shows how in the contemporary medium the layout and juxtaposition of panels, highlighted details and dynamic visual viewpoints do not merely illustrate but rather tell the story. This can be demonstrated well in the EFL-literature classroom and seminar for ongoing teachers. The ­Denslow picture, as a traditional illustration of a particular scene, would authentically be described using the present continuous, which could be as follows: Dorothy is sitting on a wooden fence (or stile). She is looking at the scarecrow and wondering. Birds are flying past. Perhaps they are not scared of the scarecrow at all?

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The teacher can elicit Dorothy’s thoughts from the students, for instance: ‘Is the scarecrow alive?’ ‘I think he is alive!’ ‘He looks alive . . . ’ ‘Can he speak?’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘Does he need help?’

The teacher can elicit ideas about Dorothy’s dog Toto from the students, for instance: Toto is a little scared. He’s standing on his hind legs. He wants to look big and brave.

The Cavallaro panels, on the other hand, are authentically described in the present simple. This is because they show a narrative sequence. The sequence of events from any narrative, such as a film or a book, is normally retold in the present simple. Sequential art can be a helpful mnemonic for the use of the present simple, as student teachers often confuse when to use and when not to use the continuous aspect in classroom discourse. A retelling of the events on page 25 (Figure 3.7) could be, for example: Dorothy and Toto are tired. All morning they walk along the yellow brick road. The sun rises high in the sky, and Dorothy feels they need a rest. They sit down under an old crooked fence and there is a crooked scarecrow high above in the field. Dorothy looks at the crazy shadow pattern on the yellow brick road. Then Dorothy hears a voice: ‘GOOD DAY’. Dorothy looks and looks  –  she can’t see anybody. She’s very surprised, and even asks the scarecrow: ‘Did you speak?’ What a SHOCK when he answers: ‘Certainly! How do you do?’

The seven panels in Figure 3.7 are all except the first without a caption. Thus students can retell the story by creating a caption for each panel. The caption for panel two could be: Dorothy walks very far along the Yellow Brick Road. Toto walks along beside her. After several miles they are both very tired.

Most pages in the graphic novel tell stories through the juxtaposition of panels, affording excellent opportunities for practising storytelling. After a little practise in storytelling, this can be arranged in pair work. One student tells the story of the panels on a particular page. The other student listens very carefully, and must discover which page their partner is relating. The elements of graphic novels, such as panels, layout and salience, are excellent prompts for pair work and group work.

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Figure 3.7  Page 25 from Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel (Puffin Graphics) by Frank Baum, adapted by Michael Cavallaro © (2005) by Byron Preiss Visual Publications. Used by permission of Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

Spending time on a single page: Thoughtful looking A number of key panels in The Wizard of Oz, The Graphic Novel fill a whole page, for example the moment when Dorothy sets off on her journey to the Emerald City (Baum/Cavallaro 2005: 22). Lacking the fast sequence of several panels per page that is usual in graphic novels, this key landscape setting, shown in Figure 3.8, appears lonely, silent and timeless – just as Dorothy’s journey to an unknown destination appears to stretch endlessly before her. There are no sounds, just a bird’s eye view of Dorothy in the centre foreground, appearing diminutive, seen from above and behind, silhouetted against the light. The wide Yellow Brick Road, probably the most iconic feature of the story, leads up the whole page through grassy hills – towards the horizon and the evening sun

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Figure 3.8  Page 22 from Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel (Puffin Graphics) by Frank Baum, adapted by Michael Cavallaro © (2005) by Byron Preiss Visual Publications. Used by permission of Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

that gleams from behind a cloud. The teacher can consider with the students why this single panel takes up a whole page. Language can be modelled or elicited to describe the moment (frightening, a giant step, exciting, memorable, momentous, hopeful . . .). The teacher can elicit expressions to describe Dorothy (scared, brave, excited, daredevil, optimistic . . .). Group work concentrating on single graphic novel pages is most rewarding in order to fulfil the intimacy condition of face-saving negotiation of meaning

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(Van den Branden 2008: 166), as well as practise thoughtful looking, as ‘Thoughtful looking is a way to make thinking better’ (Perkins 1994: 3). The students are divided into groups of four for the following activity, designed to practise language and thinking dispositions to understand the literary text better. Each group has a Summariser, a Clarifier, an Interpreter and an Investigator (‘Reciprocal Teaching’ in Grieser-Kindel et al. 2009: 9). ●

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The Summariser describes the content of the panel, and suggests ideas for a title for this page. The Clarifier describes where Dorothy has come from and what her plan is. The Interpreter looks carefully at the picture to discover extra meanings and to predict what will happen next. Is an easy journey expected? Or danger and adventure? Is there hope of a happy end? The Investigator investigates the meaning of going west in American history. What was happening in America in 1900 when the novel was first published?

Figure 3.9 shows a page with altogether nine small panels and an intense concentration on facial expressions, and particularly the eyes of Dorothy and those of the Wicked Witch of the West. Characterization is achieved by drawing the eyes in extreme close-up: Dorothy’s eyes are naïve and innocent, the witch’s eyes appear calculating and dangerous. The sudden use of two diagonally shaped panels within an otherwise rectangular layout creates salience, highlighting the witch’s fear and Dorothy’s magical sparkling silver shoes (the ruby slippers made their first appearance in the 1939 film, the graphic novel follows the original book). The nine panels encapsulate only a fraction of the actual event that is taking place, the first confrontation between Dorothy and her opponent. While observing the very unequal adversaries, small and vulnerable Dorothy and the powerful, plotting witch, the reader must disambiguate and fill the gaps. This first meeting is made momentous by focusing on the eyes in six of the nine panels, and giving the characters speech balloons with dialogue only in the final panel. Until the last panel, communication is restricted to the non-verbal meanings spoken by the eyes, as well as the witch’s thoughts, narrated in captions. This single page shows the opportunities for creative looking and writing, as lower secondary-school students can, for example, find adjectives to describe the facial expressions, create missing thought bubbles, write a dialogue and predict the punishments the witch plans for Dorothy.

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Figure 3.9  Page 86 from Wizard of Oz: The Graphic Novel (Puffin Graphics) by Frank Baum, adapted by Michael Cavallaro © (2005) by Byron Preiss Visual Publications. Used by permission of Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc

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The Wizard of Oz and language play The patterned nature of children’s literature will be examined in detail in Chapter  5. Here we will glimpse at the language patterning in The Wizard of Oz, which functions as a webbing of words and leitmotifs, to help support or scaffold the young reader and provide cohesion and harmony. This can be seen in the following passage from Baum’s original text. On the way to the Emerald City, Dorothy asks what the Wizard of Oz is like: ‘That is hard to tell,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘You see, Oz is a Great Wizard, and can take on any form he wishes. So that some say he looks like a bird; and some say he looks like an elephant; and some say he looks like a cat. To others he appears as a beautiful fairy, or a brownie, or in any other form that pleases him. But who the real Oz is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell.’ (Baum 1982: 77)

The repetition of ‘some say he looks like’ can be a model for students’ writing. Students can write an imaginative description of the Great Wizard in completely different shapes to those he takes on in front of Dorothy and her friends, beginning each description with: ‘Some say he looks like . . .’ Moreover, scenes that are described with no verbal text but only in pictures in the graphic novel can be put into words. For example, the attack of the Hammer-Heads, with their hammer-like heads on amazingly extending necks like a jack-inthe-box, is not explained in words at all (Baum/Cavallaro 2005: 135–7). This is an excellent opportunity for groups to practise scripting together. Verbal jokes are very popular with students learning language. Puns are challenging, as they are ‘insider jokes’. The reader must know the different meanings of a polysemous word (a word with two or more distinct meanings) in order to understand the humour. This playing with meanings creates ambiguity, and thus is often used imaginatively by poets, playwrights and novelists, Shakespeare and James Joyce being particularly famous punners. Finding out the exact meaning of puns requires careful consideration, and I contend the use of a dictionary of synonyms is essential in the EFL-literature classroom. Scarecrow:  I think you’re a very bad man. Oz:  Oh dear me, no! I’m a very good man . . . I’m just a very bad wizard. (Baum/Cavallaro 2005: 118)

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Students should search for synonyms for the Scarecrow’s and the Wizard of Oz’s differing use of the word ‘bad’. Students can then find a synonym for the word ‘bad’ in the following sentences: ●

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The latest news on the cyclone disaster was very bad. The milk is bad. Who left it out of the fridge? Don’t kick your brother! Bad boy!

Altogether the students now have five meanings of ‘bad’, each with a different nuance. They should try to match the five different meanings of ‘bad’ with the following antonyms for ‘bad’: ●

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Well-behaved Skilled Fresh Good/positive Worthy/virtuous

The Lion puns on the word ‘sharp’, which has two distinct meanings in the following dialogue: Scarecrow:  Congratulate me! I’ve got my brains at last! Dorothy:  Why are those pins sticking out of your head? Lion:  It’s proof that he’s sharp! (Baum/Cavallaro 2005: 123)

Again, synonyms and antonyms can be searched for, which correspond with each of the two different meanings of ‘sharp’. The students can try writing a poem of their own, for example, a five-line cinquain around one of the themes of The Wizard of Oz. As the following example cinquain shows, creative writing of this kind can be introduced at a very early stage in second language learning: Home (one word as title) Bitter sweet (two words, describing the title) Giving, taking, fighting (three words, describing an action) East, West, home’s best (a complete sentence of four words) Safe (one word, describing the title)

Connections to the real world Fantasy always has some connections to the real world. Without such a connection, it would not be possible to comprehend the story at all, as the required

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schemata would be missing. For many young readers, researching non-fiction correlations can be very motivating, and encourages independent investigative reading. Differentiated tasks are advisable when the whole class is studying the same text, as is the normal case in intensive reading as opposed to extensive, autonomous reading. Differentiation is an important consideration due to the differing interests, abilities and readiness, and the differing cognitive styles and learning strategies of the EFL-literature students: ‘But what methods and ­possibilities do we have if we read a book together with all the students in class? Differentiation can either take place by pace of work or by providing the ­students with different forms of tasks and activities’ (Eisenmann 2013: 176). Some readers of The Wizard of Oz may, for example, be interested in exploring the history of mechanical flight. The book was published at the height of inventive endeavour to achieve the first powered flight; furthermore, the Wizard of Oz first reached the Land of Oz and later leaves it in a hot air balloon, the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. The students may also be interested in collecting words in English for natural disasters, and finding out in which countries and on which continents cyclones, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, wildfires, floods, tsunamis and famine most often occur. Some students are particularly interested in exploring non-fiction behind the fiction, and will enjoy the opportunity to research and report back. Their results will enrich and broaden the historical, geographical and environmental understanding of the EFL classroom. The study of picturebooks and graphic novels in Part I of this volume has revealed many advantages of multimodal reading material in addition to its usefulness for scaffolding, language acquisition, acquiring visual literacy and literary competences and intercultural learning. These include the following principles: ●●

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Multimodal texts can make reading multiconnected. It is the multi­ connectedness of art that ‘creates an opportunity to bridge thinking dispositions across to diverse other contexts explored in tandem with the work of art’ (Perkins 1994: 83–6). Multimodal texts can make reading a social event. Multimodal texts encourage a shared experience of reading, so that reading can become an enjoyable social experience: ‘If we know one thing about understanding and learning processes, we know that they are subject to their social context’ (Reichl 2013: 111). Multimodal texts can connect the acquisition of literacies with the experience of digital natives. Cary considers the ‘art, color, movement

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and raw energy’ of sequential art as highly motivating for developing readers in the second language classroom, and the pure magic of the ‘extraordinary march of drawings across the page, like a slow-motion movie cartoon where you could savour each frame as long as you wished’ (Cary 2004: 2). Multimodal texts make the reader co-author the text. The effect of the layout, encapsulation, the gutter and so forth is to make of the reader a co-creator, this parallels the interactive nature of storytelling. A classic storyteller describes the same effect of turning the listener into a co-creator, by slightly desynchronizing his words and non-verbal communication: In my storytelling I think I usually begin my body movement a second before the words the movement relates to. It might well be that this prompts the listener and viewer to hypothesize a meaning which is then confirmed or contradicted by the associated words and in this way the listener/viewer experiences interaction, and might even have the feeling that he or she has helped to make the story. (Wright 2013: 207–8)

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Multimodal texts can make reading a pleasure. In his discussion of graphic storytelling in second language education, Cary (2004: 107) emphasizes the need for a ‘high-interest curriculum’ in the multilingual classroom. He remembers his ‘Dick and Jane’ school reading with distaste, and writes: Reading became a deadly bore and, by extension, school too, since reading was such a large part of what went on in school. I could read, but I hated reading, and by the fourth grade I’d become the classic nonreading reader. (Cary 2004: 1)

As rapidly developing literary media, both graphic novels and picturebooks are nothing less than spectacular in the vast range of opportunities they afford the EFL-literature classroom for imaginative, creative and communicative literature and language activities. Graphic novels put forward ‘theoretical, social, aesthetic, and pedagogical issues’ (Tabachnick 2009: 2), and the ‘high literary and visual quality of many graphic novels provides the most compelling reason for the serious study of this new genre’ (Tabachnick 2009: 3). Multimodal texts will be taken up again in Part II, along with fairy tales, poetry, nursery rhymes, drama and children’s novels, whereby the texts will be examined particularly for their literary literacy affordances.

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4

Postmodern Fairy Tales: Co-constructing Meaning

Having examined in Part I the rewards of multimodal literary texts for the challenge of visual literacy in the primary and lower to mid-secondary EFLliterature classroom, Part II focuses on affordances of children’s literature for literary literacy. David Lewis has defined some key features of contemporary Western society as indeterminacy, fragmentation, decanonization, irony and participation (Lewis 2001: 88–91). While referring to all of these terms, this chapter puts forward the idea that postmodern fairy tales offer indeterminacy rather than pre-determined text reception, a development that empowers language students to make or construct meaning. Features such as irony and fragmentation tend to unsettle readers’ expectations due to a stretching and testing of norms. Decanonization, which undermines gate-keeping claims to a certain widely acknowledged body of texts as being absolute and superior, is arguably the most unsettling concept of all; yet, paradoxically, it can be liberating. With regard to indeterminacy, Lewis writes: In the postmodern world we are a lot less sure about the nature of objective reality  (.  .  .). The more we know about the world the less stable and certain it seems.  Instead of our knowledge and understanding growing steadily in a cumulative way, science and philosophy, along with other disciplines, seem to be telling us that we will never be able to be sure of anything, once and for all, ever again. (Lewis 2001: 88)

Roderick McGillis claims ‘the crucial thing is gaining authority on the part of the reader. Reading critically is a liberating activity. It is also fun’ (McGillis 1998: 204). The growing lack of belief or confidence in metanarratives (otherwise known as grand narratives or master narratives) therefore demands a balanc­ ing opportunity for empowerment through education, specifically through a literature apprenticeship, to read the world critically, constructively and

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purposefully, with the pedagogical promise of being able to influence outcomes at least to some extent and therefore have choices in life. As Reynolds explains: Much of the symbolic potential of childhood in culture derives from the fact that children have most of their choices before them: they represent potential. As a group, the fictions of childhood emphasise this view of childhood because they tend to be narratives in which the future is still an unknown and the self is in formation (. . .). (Reynolds 2010: 2)

An understanding of irony can be achieved very graphically through the multilayering of postmodern picturebooks, when there is a discrepancy between the message created by the pictures, by the layout, by the paratext and the message of the verbal text, ‘that imaginative space that lies hidden somewhere between the words and the pictures, or in the mysterious syntax of the pictures themselves, or between the shifting perspectives and untrustworthy voices of the narratives’ (Watson and Styles 1996: 2). Watson and Styles’ expression ‘untrustworthy’ is interesting with regard to literature for young readers, as this awareness of how narrative works, its potential untrustworthiness (as when the verbal and picture narrative tell different stories, or when the narrator is unreliable), can become a gentle introduction to insightful reading and critical literacy. Self-reflexivity, when the narrative draws attention to the storytelling itself, is non-mimetic, promotes mental activity and discourages a complete identification with the storyworld, and thus promotes a critical distance rather than ‘losing oneself ’ in the storyworld. Stephens writes: Thus a crucial text distinction, broadly put, is between narratives which encourage readers to adopt a stance which is identical to that of either the narrator or the principle focalizer, and narratives which incorporate strategies to distance the reader (by showing, for example, a separation between narrator-perception and focalizer-perception, as when it is obvious to readers that a focalizing character is misinterpreting an event or situation). (Stephens 1992: 68)

The invitation to the reader to a creative participation, to co-author the text rather than identify with it, may have the appearance of complexity beyond the usual limits of literature for children. Not so, according to Peter Hunt: it might be supposed that we are dealing with a sophisticated form quite alien to children’s literature. But the reverse is true; children – developing readers – live in a world which is far more conscious of and ambivalent about the relationship between fiction and reality than the world of the skilled reader, and children’s writers have responded to this (. . .). (Hunt 1992: 41)

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To generate an apprenticeship towards avid as well as thoughtful reading, we need gripping, meaningful, explorative books for young people. Tabbert and Wardetzky have studied what makes for successful children’s literature, and remind us that the intellectual capacities of children are flexible and not fixed: A book must be neither too difficult to read as far as print, layout and length are concerned, nor too difficult to understand as far as vocabulary, syntax, and facts are concerned. However, knowledge is as expandable as the imagination, and if the author takes the intellectual limits of his potential reader too seriously he might produce excellent teaching material, but hardly a children’s classic. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 5)

I see a problem with the suggestion that teaching materials must necessarily be more limited in imaginative and intellectual scope than children’s literature, however. This goes against the transactional model of education, with its preparation for higher-order thinking and co-constructing of meaning. But as a narrower imaginative and intellectual scope in EFL teaching materials usually is the case, certainly the additional study of culture-embedded authentic children’s and later adult literature can afford transformational educational opportunities, leading finally to empowerment through critical literacy. ‘Critical literacy, on the other hand, involves decoding the ideological dimensions of texts, institutions, social practices, and cultural forms such as television and film, in order to reveal their selective interests’ (McLaren 1988: 214).

Stepping-stones to co-constructing meaning I suggest three literary-literacy stepping-stones that a gradual literary appren­ ticeship through children’s literature in the EFL-literature classroom could offer. I call the first ‘engaged reading’: reading with commitment. The second will be dealt with most thoroughly in this chapter on postmodern texts: ‘participatory reading’. The final stepping-stone ‘reading against the text’ is a key skill for the arguably ultimate goal of critical literacy.

Engaged reading My first step in the development of literary literacy, engaged reading, deals with probing, socially committed texts for children. The subject matter is questioning and radical, such as in Browne’s Piggybook in Chapter 2, Greder’s The Island,

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Tan’s The Arrival, and above all the collection of short stories FREE?, which are discussed in Chapter 7. A happy ending is the norm in children’s literature (there are exceptions), but the experiences, trials and disasters along the way in many committed texts are far beyond anything the young reader could seriously wish to be confronted with in his or her own life. Nonetheless, discussing fundamentally serious issues with the aid of children’s literature is rewarding and satisfying for pre-adult readers. Important though urgency, insight and truth in realist or magic realist fiction are, ‘(w)ise authors know from fairy tales that a happy ending is not necessarily something to be dismissed as superficial – at least not for children, who deserve to be encouraged in their hopes of coming to terms with the challenges before them’ (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 5). In much engaged children’s literature a certain metanarrative that is, according to John Stephens, ‘socially and emotionally satisfying’ for children, is still largely accepted: ‘the notion that truth and justice will – or morally should – prevail’ (Stephens 2010d: 209). This metanarrative no longer exists for a great deal of serious contemporary adult literature; consequently, adult literature is less encouraging and empowering for pre-adult readers. It is a metanarrative that also scarcely exists for too many young people in their daily lives, as the hopelessness, sense of disenfranchisement and apparent lack of any stake in society that lay to a large extent behind the youth rioting in major English cities in August 2011 clearly indicates. ‘Illiteracy is a life sentence’ and ‘School shatters your dreams before you get anywhere’ are at the time of writing frequently quoted statements in the British media (Sergeant 2011). Reynolds refers to the radical freshness of children’s fictions: that correspond to the fact that their target readers are generally encountering ideas and experiences for the first time. Many children’s books offer quirky or critical or alternative visions of the world designed to promote that ultimate response of childhood, ‘Why?’ ‘Why are things as they are?’ ‘Why can’t they be different?’ (Reynolds 2010: 3)

An example of a frequently encountered pattern of critical subject matter in ­children’s literature is an abuse of power within the storyworld of those in powerful positions, such as a teacher, bully or parent. In fairy tales, those who abuse their power might be the king, an ogre, a wicked witch or a stepmother. It has been maintained that a critical dialogue with ‘all the normative voices of society – the state, the church, the court and other regulating institutions (whether just or corrupt)’ (Falconer 2010b: 165) is dialogic. Literature that rather ­concurs

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and matches the ‘official discourse’ is essentially monologic (Bakhtin  1981). Zipes writes on the literary versus the oral fairy tale: As in the oral tradition, its original impulse of hope for better living conditions has not vanished in the literary tradition, although many of the signs have been manipulated in the name of male authoritarian forces. As long as the fairy tale continues to awaken our wonderment and enable us to project counterworlds to our present society, it will serve a meaningful social and aesthetic function, not just for compensation but for revelation: The worlds portrayed by the best of our fairy tales are like magic spells of enchantment that actually free us. Instead of petrifying our minds, they arouse our imagination and compel us to realise how we can fight terror and cunningly insert ourselves into our daily struggles, turning the course of the world’s events in our favour. (Zipes 2007: 31)

Engaged reading with EFL students in the primary school can be approached with Me and You (Browne 2011, Kate Greenaway Medal short-listed), a post­ modern version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The verbal text is brief and deliberately in stereotypical middle-class Janet and John style (see discussion of Browne’s Piggybook in Chapter 2), narrated by the little bear, beginning: ‘This is our house. There’s Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and me’. The pictures of the nicely dressed bear family and their very pleasant detached house are on the righthand pages (recto). This is the privileged position; by publishing convention the first page of a book is always a recto page. There is a note of irony that appears in the verbal text when the bear family goes out for a walk while their porridge cools down: Daddy talked about his work and Mummy talked about her work. I just messed about. On the way back, Daddy talked about the car and Mummy talked about the house. I just messed about. When we got home, the front door was open. Daddy said that Mummy must have left it open, and Mummy said it must have been Daddy. I didn’t say anything. (Browne 2011)

Three pictures of the affluent bear family, all with their noses in the air, accompany the lines above. The left-hand pages (verso) are devoted to Goldilocks, who is very far from the clichéd fairy-tale princess. Her story is narrated in pictures only, with no verbal text. Whereas the bears have full-page images in colour to show the neatness and comfort of their well-ordered home and family life, Goldilocks’ story is told in much smaller pictures – four or six images crowd

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each page – with very little colour. Her clothes are nondescript, neither smart nor colourful, but her long, unkempt hair has a warm copper glow. However, the colour of her hair also distances her from a golden-haired princess, as red-haired children are still in the twenty-first-century targets of bullying at school. We can read from the pictures that tell Goldilocks’ story that she is standing beside her mother, who appears to be gazing hopelessly at the meat on display at the local butcher’s shop, when a balloon floats past. Goldilocks chases the balloon without success, through many colourless streets, which appear forbidding with their high walls, railings and broken windows. Goldilocks cannot find her way back to her mother, but discovers the very respectable house of the bears, with the door left open, see Figure 4.1. What happens next follows the traditional fairy-tale pattern (involving three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds) until the angry bears chase Goldilocks out of their comfortable home. We see her long journey back through the grey streets, through heavy rain, wind, graffiti shaped like a tornado and even snow, and still with no sign of her mother. However, there is an almost fairy-tale ending. Goldilocks spies her mother at last and runs to meet her. The final page shows a full-colour embrace

Figure 4.1  Double-page spread from Me and You by Anthony Browne © 2009, published by Picture Corgi Books (2011). Reprinted by permission of Farrar Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers and The Random House Group UK Limited. All rights reserved

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of mother and daughter, the warm red-gold of their hair ending the melancholy story on a bright note. There are 60 pictures in this 32-page picturebook. The pictures can be described by EFL students at all levels, including elementary, for example: ‘First Goldilocks tries the big bowl of porridge, then she tries the medium-sized bowl of porridge, next she tries the little bowl of porridge, and eats it all up’. Somewhat beyond the beginner level, however, narrative devices can be brought into the booktalk: how, for example, the colour and size as well as the content of the images add layers of meaning to the story, suggesting poverty versus wealth. What does this add to the traditional story? Focalization can be discussed as this varies from Goldilocks (verso pages) to the little bear (recto pages). The genres of realism and fantasy can be investigated. Goldilocks’ story is portrayed realistically, mostly in grey and sepia tones with a dark emphasis on inner-city shabbiness. The bears, who clearly live in the same city, inhabit a bright fairytale world of middle-class comfort, which seems like an island of fantasy in the drab neighbourhood. They meet briefly when Goldilocks is discovered in little bear’s bed, but are unable to communicate. Little bear narrates: ‘The girl leaped out of bed, ran downstairs and out of the door. I wonder what happened to her?’ (Browne 2011). The little bear is a quiet member of his family; nonetheless, as narrator he appears literate and able to tell a story; Goldilocks, in contrast, is voiceless, she never speaks. What meaning does this convey to the reader? Is this connected to the contrast in their social standing and education? To what extent is poverty ‘voiceless’? It would be interesting to discuss the significance of the title Me and You. As the little bear is the narrator, he is ‘me’ and Goldilocks is ‘you’. Is Goldilocks as a child of poverty ‘othered’ by the narrative, and the middle-class bear narrator represented as the norm? This picturebook teaches the importance of focalization as a narrative practice. Goldilocks too is a focalizer; her story is portrayed in vivid detail in the images, her fearful but courageous bearing shown in her body language and facial expressions. Consequently, though downtrodden in appearance, she is not represented as other, but as the protagonist of her own story, and wins the reader’s sympathy and respect. A shabby silent distressed girl as equal protagonist to the middle-class male may well be empowering for many readers of this picturebook who are themselves vulnerable, for ‘critics have argued that never seeing someone like themselves in a leading role may affect readers’ expectations about life. The effect on young readers, in particular, may be considerable’ (Mikkelsen and Pinsent 2001: 77).

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Disney films frequently remediate a fairy tale; however, they are seldom dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense. One way of reading the Grimm bothers’ fairy tale Rapunzel may be to highlight the destructive power of over-possessive and selfish ‘love’, a theme children need to begin to understand due to the many current discussions (and occurrences) of child abuse, which happen most commonly within the extended family circle. This can be handled more sensitively in class when woven thematically within a story. The witch locks 12-year-old Rapunzel, the ‘daughter’ she cruelly stole at birth from simple people, in a high tower in the middle of a wood. The tower has neither door nor stairs, but merely one small and very high window (Brüder Grimm 1857). Despite the many obstacles, the child of poverty, Rapunzel, ends by marrying a prince. Figure 4.2 shows a

Figure 4.2  Page 6 from ‘Rapunzel’ in Fairy Tales by Janice Bland © (2008), illustrated by Elisabeth Lottermoser © (2008). Reproduced by permission of Schulbuchverlage Westermann, Braunschweig Germany

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simple rendering of the Grimm version, suitable for young learners (Bland and Lottermoser 2008). Tangled (2010), the contemporary Disney version of Rapunzel, clever and entertaining though it is, is monologic rather than dialogic in its final spectacular celebration of the status quo in the kingdom, and weakening of the theme of selfishly possessive love. In this version, Rapunzel is not a child of the common people, but a royal princess stolen at birth. She is locked in a tower not by a jealous witch-mother, but rather because her golden hair has the magical power to restore youth, a power the wicked sorceress Mother Gothel intends to keep all for herself in order to stay forever young. The new Disney Rapunzel is strongly focalized through the point of view of the two main characters: Flynn Rider and Rapunzel. In addition, Flynn narrates the beginning and ending of the film, an example of first-person voice-over narration adding an ironic counterpoint in film, much as the images in picturebooks are often an ironic counterpoint to the verbal text. The focalization almost compels the viewer to identify empathetically with the appealing hero and heroine and powerfully draws the viewer into the storyworld of Rapunzel’s flight to freedom. Rapunzel herself is a courageous heroine, who regains the agency denied to her by the sorceress, and is eventually reunited with her loving royal parents, by her own devices as well as with the aid of Flynn. Thus, finally the status quo in the kingdom is restored. There is a delightful comedy thread, a dynamic new Disney animal character that pleases boys and girls equally, the horse Maximus. However, the Grimm version of Rapunzel is told with the external perspective of an authorial narrative situation, with no particular focalization. This leaves the interpretation of the canonical fairy tale open. Two or more versions of the same fairy tale can profitably be studied in order to achieve an array of possible interpretations. Students in their early teens, particularly the boys, may consider a fairy tale as an object of an EFL-literature classroom childish. In fact, fairy tales were not originally told specifically for children (Darnton 2001). The Grimms wrote several versions of their tales; the first publication (1812) was likewise not aimed at young readers. In their first version, Rapunzel becomes pregnant while still in the tower, and reveals the amorous nightly visits of the prince by innocently asking her witch stepmother why her clothes are becoming so tight they no longer fit, at which the witch flies into a fit of jealous rage. The Disney version Tangled is easy to enjoy and consume, by which is meant an uncritical viewing. The character of Flynn Rider, a story-telling, swashbuckling orphan, was created by Disney to appeal to a male audience. A comparison of this film version with the canonical

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version of Rapunzel, however, affords the opportunity for a serious discussion of the differences in the plot, the characterization and focalization, the role of the setting, literary devices such as repeated plot motifs that lend cohesion to the  text, and of course a discussion of possible thematic interpretations and how this varies strongly between the versions. An engaged read on gender stereotyping at school, which embraces Rapunzel as a symbolic intertext, is Anne Fine’s Bill New Frock (1990). This is a thoughtprovoking fiction on sexism, though as the tough young schoolboy Bill wakes up one day as a girl, clearly there is a great deal of hilarity involved. It is a magic realist fiction in that his environment does not seem to notice his metamorphosis. At an early stage in the school day, Bill comments on the story they are reading: ‘ “I don’t see why Rapunzel just has to sit and wait for the Prince to come along and rescue her,” explained Bill. “Why couldn’t she plan her own escape?” ’ (Fine 1990: 20–1). However, the subject position forced on him due to the ‘pretty pink frock’ soon changes his perspective: (Bill Simpson) knew that, whatever he said and whatever he did, this awful day would just keep sailing on in its own way, as in a dream. A curse was on him. A pink curse. He was, of all things, haunted by a pretty pink frock with fiddly shell buttons. He might as well give up struggling. Like poor Rapunzel trapped in her high stone tower, he’d just sit quietly, waiting to see what happened, hoping for rescue. (Fine 1990: 40)

The stories I have introduced invite the reader to engage critically with class (Me and You), and gendered subject positions (different versions of Rapunzel and Bill’s New Frock); at the same time, these are delightful tales for the EFLliterature classroom.

Participatory reading The second step I propose, participatory reading, is dealt with in some detail here, as well as recurring in later chapters; there is clearly an overlap between the categories, which are not meant to be hierarchical. The metafictional and intertextual elements in postmodern fairy tales are features that underline the fictionality of fiction, help reveal how the narrative works and demand a thoughtful reading of the composite text. The playfulness of the text accentuates the participation of the reader as co-creator. Metafictional texts are ‘highly self-reflexive and deliberately seek to disrupt the suspension of disbelief in the reader’ (Bird 2010: 208), they ‘demand a more writerly engagement from the

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reader, opening up meaning as opposed to shutting it down’ (Bird 2010: 209). Similarly, intra- and intertextuality recognizes that meaning develops from the questioning, dialogical relationships within and between texts. In picturebooks there are often traceable intertexts, identifiable even for young readers. Books no longer have a clear beginning and ending – they abound in epitext (Genette 1997). They may refer to pretexts of children’s literature, children’s myths, rituals and the formulaic language of oral culture. As such they are a part of the broader culture of childhood and can become a major component of intercultural learning for EFL students. An early and well-known example of placing a picturebook in the centre of the semiotic world of childhood is Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s Each Peach Pear Plum (1978), a book that cannot be enjoyed without some preknowledge of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. An extended understanding of intertextuality refers to the relationship between texts and their wider cultural contexts. With regard to postmodern fairy tales, this includes playing with and disrupting the linearity of narrative, which would seem to have been influenced by the wider cultural context of multimedia. For Gunther Kress, referring to how the world is now more shown than told, with the screen being the dominant site of texts, ‘the task of the reader of the new page, and of the screens which are its models, is to establish the order through principles of relevance of the reader’s making, and to construct meaning from that’ (Kress 2003b: 149). Robyn McCallum writes on parodic forms of intertextuality, or the ‘fractured fairy tale’: In such stories, the narrative is typically organised so as to foreground the formulaic structure of fairy tale characterisation and outcomes in particular – common strategies for example include retelling the story from another character’s point of view, retelling the story as an epilogue for the traditional version, or switching the gender of a central protagonist. In general, such overt forms of parodic intertextuality can have three main effects: they can foreground the ways in which narrative fictions are constructed out of other texts and discourses; they can indicate possible interpretative positions for readers; and they can enable the representation of a plurality of voices, discourses, and meanings. (McCallum 2008: 181)

Lauren Child’s Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? (Child 2002, Kate Greenaway Medal short-listed) is a picturebook that can be placed at the extreme end of the spectrum of traditional to postmodern fairy tales. It begins ‘Herb loved storybooks. Although he wasn’t a very good reader, it didn’t matter because he could tell a lot from the pictures’ (emphasis in the original). This reliance on

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pictures reflects modern reading where ‘part of the “communicational load” of a message goes to the image’ (Kress 2003b: 151). Child’s work illustrates what Kress calls the ‘visuality of writing’: Increasingly, written elements are used in compositions of a visual kind as visual elements in the first instance. The affordances of fonts as images are being used more and more. The latent visuality of the graphic medium of writing will become more and more foregrounded (Kress 2003b: 151, emphasis in the original).

In Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? the type font and layout always have semantic relevance. The writing becomes untidy when the boys are busy ‘untidying things’, and the text almost gets lost when ‘Herb had trouble even finding his bed’. The first intertext, an incursion into Goldilocks and the Three Bears, has the font varying according to the size of the bears, large, small and mediumsized. The next intertext, Hansel and Gretel, has gothic font for words uttered by the fairy-tale children. Although the typographic contribution to meaning may simply disturb a swiftly reading adult reader, for a young reader an increased mental activity as well as additional sensory and cognitive anchoring of meaning is involved when the usual preset reading path has been tampered with in this unsettling way. As this slows down the reading process, it is an advantage rather than a distraction to the L2 and EFL reader: ‘the qualities of the picturebooks are revealed by repeated, patient and close looking and analysis, by sharing readings and responses with others and by keeping an open mind’ (Graham 2005: 224). Furthermore, the expressive typographic experimentation can stimulate the negotiation of interpretation and meaning. Child’s use of collage combines real-world materials with a fictional story­ world, reality with illusion, thus playing with readers’ perceptions, according to O’Sullivan: Collage gives a flatness to the image that draws attention to its constructedness. (. . .) By creating images out of several different materials – such as fabric over a line drawing over a watercolour background – Child draws attention to the image’s materiality and forces the reader to perceive it as two things at once: both a human figure and an artwork. This polysemy again recalls children’s imaginative play, where one object can stand in for another. (O’Sullivan 2008: 48, emphasis in the original)

Child uses an uninhibited abundance of textures and techniques, suggesting a theme of excessive liberty. The protagonist Herb appears to embody this license.

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Herb does not look after his books, which is a disadvantage for him when he falls into one of his own books, a book of fairy tales. For he finds his activities of the previous year ‘when he was much, much younger’ have interfered with and disrupted the traditional fairy tale patterns. Herb travels through several tales, meeting a furious Goldilocks, a ‘shrieking thing’ whose text always shouts out at the reader in bold capital letters. He then lands in the middle of a palace ball (Cinderella is another intertext). The queen is enraged as her throne is missing, and because she and the other aristocratic ladies have each a moustache ‘drawn on in biro’. Discovering the intruder Herb, the queen, whose text is in an elaborately curly font, shouts ‘Oh, so you’re the doodler who ruined my looks, (. . .) And where’s my throne, you . . . you scissor-snipper?’ (Child 2002). Herb remembers he had ‘cut out the royal thrones for a model spaceship that he and Ezzie were making’. Herb has entirely disrupted the expected progress of the Cinderella story. He finds the ‘wickedly mean stepmother and her ugly daughters’ apparently hanging from the ceiling, and their words are upside down too. The mean stepmother guesses correctly: ‘could it be that some vile good-for-nothing child tore out our page and put it back upside down?’ (Child 2002). ‘By simply compelling readers to turn the book around and back as they read each line of dialogue, the upside-down pages make readers very aware of the book’s artifice and artificiality’ (McCallum 2008: 187). This foregrounding of the created make-up of the book encourages readers to think beyond the story, to consider how the narrative has been assembled and to what effect. These are important considerations for literary literacy. The fixed structures or building blocks of conventional fairy tales afford the pleasure of familiarity to the young reader, who is able to participate: ‘The fairy tale is a mental game, the rules of which are easily grasped and increasingly mastered by the child, and it is this mastery that he or she thoroughly enjoys’ (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 9). The meaning is enhanced for the younger child when he or she is immersed in traditional associations, and for the older child when traditional associations are upset. In The Pleasures of Children’s Literature, Nodelman and Reimer list 22 of the delights of literature for young people. Referring to Roland Barthes’ terms for the pleasures of literature: plaisir, translated as pleasure, and jouissance, translated as bliss (Barthes 1975: 14), they differentiate between the pleasure of the comfortable and familiar and the bliss of the unexpected and new: the comfort-making ways in which the texts fulfil expectations and the blissmaking ways in which they defy them. If the experience of literature is genuinely

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transactional, it always represents a meeting point of what texts invite from readers  and what readers do in response to the invitation. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 24)

Two of the twenty-two listed pleasures are particularly relevant for the discus­ sion of postmodern fairy tales leading to participatory reading: ●●

The pleasure of formula – of repeating the comfortably familiar experience of kinds of stories one has enjoyed before.

The last of these is obviously a concentrated experience of plaisir. There is also a pleasure opposite to that of formula – something more a matter of jouissance: ●●

The pleasure of newness – of experiencing startlingly different kinds of stories and poems. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 26)

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? as a fragmented and distorted postmodern fairy tale is both pleasing and challenging. There is the pleasure of redis­covering the fairy-tale intertexts Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Puss-in-Boots and Cinderella, promoting many story-telling opportunities in the EFL-literature classroom for children about the age of 12. There is, in addition, the mental challenge created by the text with its resistance to rules and its playful excess. The narrative metalepsis sends the reader back  and forth between embedding and embedded storyworlds, and the reader is obliged to take ­anarchy on board in order to join in and co-direct the game. All of Child’s picture books are similarly engaged in a constant play with conventions, examining and subverting how texts are constructed and read. They are books in which boundaries – between texts, within texts and between readers and texts – are constantly being breached. Their approach is one of playful spontaneity and exploration, giving the impression not just of a text being created anew with each reading, but of a genre being continually reimagined. (O’Sullivan 2008: 52–3)

Silvia Pantaleo found that of 37 eight- to ten-year-old Canadians who read and wrote evaluative comments on Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? ‘Approximately one-half of the students wrote about the fractured nature of the stories, the level of character interactivity, the unusual engineering features, the typographic elements’ and most students commented on the illustrative style (Pantaleo 2008: 145). Clearly, the metafictive devices have encouraged a critical attitude

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to the reading of this book in young native-speaker readers. In an extended study with 78 children, Pantaleo concludes: Child’s text, like other postmodern picturebooks with metafictive devices, contributes to readers’ aesthetic appreciation of literature; visual literacy competence; and literary and literacy understandings, including the development of a repertoire of narrative structures and the facilitation of higher-level thinking skills. (Pantaleo 2009: 59)

Here are some of the words of the young readers: ‘I think this book is sort of funny because the words go up and down and around. (. . .) This book is excellent because of all the detail.’ (nine-year-old boy) ‘It’s very creative when you have to read upside down in this book.’ (nine-yearold boy) ‘I loved the illustrations in this book. I never get tired of their collage-like appearance. I loved how the author/illustrator made the words part of the picture.’ (ten-year-old girl) ‘I think it’s neat how the stories changed because of the things Herb had done.’ (ten-year-old girl) (quoted in Pantaleo 2009: 53–8).

In the EFL-literature classroom, this book would in most contexts be read with slightly older students, with already several years of learning English behind them. In their study on the success of children’s books, Tabbert and Wardetzky concluded that the idea of ‘Cognitive Regression’ contributes to the success of fairy tales among older children: Children do know that the world view of the fairy tale is inappropriate to the world around them. (. . .) the very return to an earlier level of thinking yields an awareness of superiority and increased mental ability. The difference is experienced with pleasure. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 12)

I consider the conclusions of Pantaleo’s research with native speakers to be very far from irrelevant for the EFL-literature classroom. Like many authentic texts, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? has some quite tricky language; but informed guessing, investigating (by choice) or skipping unknown lexical items is a normal process of reading, and quite essential for the development of a skilled reader. Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? has the advantage that it includes the kind of amusing dialogue that EFL students enjoy emulating, like most successful contemporary authentic texts for children. A very chaotic fairy godmother is

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summoned by Cinderella to help Herb escape from the Big Bad Book. She is initially reluctant, and she poses some questions: ‘Well let me see . . . A . . . Are you my fairy godchild? No, you are not. I don’t do boys; only girls worst luck. B  .  .  .  What do you expect when you go about scribbling and snippering and generally causing mayhem? This is no way to treat a book you know! And C . . . jumping into other people’s stories, really is very rude.’ (Child 2002, emphasis in the original)

Some of the students will be sufficiently motivated to take the trouble to discover the meanings of unknown expressions, and to share with their peers during group work. However, it must be noted that the children in Pantaleo’s research spent ‘80 minutes each morning for nine weeks’ on postmodern picturebooks (Pantaleo 2009: 50). Currently, it is unlikely that this amount of time would be allotted to a literature apprenticeship in the lower secondary EFL classroom. However, a less-intensive project over a longer time span could also produce extremely interesting results for literary and critical literacy. Emphasizing how postmodern strategies in picturebooks encourage a questioning and participatory engagement in the narrative, McCallum concludes: An important component of early critical literacy is a metacognitive and meta­ linguistic awareness of language and texts. (. . .) Such engagement may potentially expand an audience’s knowledge of what stories are like, how they work, and how they might be played with, changed, and retold, and potentially how new stories might be written. (McCallum 2008: 191)

It is not surprising, given how very participatory metafictive postmodern texts are, that they lend themselves very well as inspiration for creative writing. I will discuss a further postmodern fairy tale in Chapter 5 on creative writing: Snow White in New York (French 1986).

Reading against the text I propose as the third step in the development of literary literacy ‘reading against the text’ or resisting reading, by which is meant discovering implicit ideologies and the uncovering of unequal power relations. This stepping-stone

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is the most challenging, and a pivotal contribution to the educational goal of critical literacy. As such, reading against the text is discussed again in Part III, particularly with regard to Harry Potter. Reading against the text (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 156) means discovering how certain worldviews have been, usually subconsciously, imported into a text. Classics of children’s literature are often read and enjoyed quite uncritically, as indeed are classics of adult literature. However, we can study absences, for example we can look at the gender distribution in anthropomorphic tales from Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) to Donaldson’s The Gruffalo (1999). The almost total absence of female animals is striking, strongly suggesting that the male gender is the norm, and the female is peripheral and inferior, or ‘other’, to use the anti-imperialist terminology of Edward Said (1978). Contemporary texts are likely to reflect our own ideology, especially if the author is from a similar cultural community to our own, which makes the identification of bias particularly difficult: ‘Human beings are inevitably inclined towards certain attitudes, and authors often reveal theirs by uncritical acceptance of opinions held by the majority of their contemporaries. Children’s books are as likely to be biased as any other literature’ (Mikkelsen and Pinsent 2001: 75). Reading texts critically, detecting their ideological stance, can also be a source of pleasure, satisfaction and empowerment. This is expressed by Nodelman and Reimer: But remember that even formulaic texts have the potential of offering a form of jouissance for a reader who chooses consciously or unconsciously to resist them or even simply to be aware of how the texts go about inviting specific forms of response: • The pleasure of seeing through literature – of realising how poems or stories  attempt to manipulate one’s emotions and influence one’s under­ standing and moral judgements in ways one may or may not be prepared to accept. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 26)

An opportunity for pleasure in seeing through literature is examined here with George and the Dragon (Wormell 2002). The picturebook has magnificently vivid pictures, with the appeal of dramatic mountains and dark caves, an enormous, luminous blood-red dragon (almost always extended gigantically across a doublepage spread), a many-towered castle and a traditional princess. The pictures call to mind myths and traditional stories enjoyed by most children; even the title involves intertextuality as an enriching device. The simple story, just one sentence per page, tells of the defeat of the dragon by George, a humble mouse.

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In children’s literature, the smallest creatures often possess heroic qualities, providing the child reader with a role model within reach. Their heroes and heroines are vulnerable, yet they show creativity, resourcefulness and resilience: they undertake the most formidable quests and overcome the most daunting obstacles. This small versus big polarization in children’s literature should be added, I suggest, to the polarization we are familiar with from fairy tales: heroic prince versus horrible dragon, beauty versus beast. Children have a special need for the simple dynamic  of  this process insofar as it might propel them to overcome not only their anxieties, but also their inferior status in a world run by adults. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 3)

George and the Dragon is not postmodern or metafictional, it is a conventional fairy tale picturebook with imposing and very clear illustrations. It can be employed with children as early as the first grade, in their first year of EFL. For these very young learners, the brief verbal text can be shortened still further as the pictures are aligned or parallel to the verbal text and thus support and duplicate its meaning, which is quite the usual case in conventional picturebooks. For this chapter I propose, however, a reading against the text with significantly older learners, 10- or 11-year-olds, in the EFL-literature classroom. I suggest a ‘hands on text’ approach to illustrate the idea of subverting a text, as students of this grade will be unused to this concept. An interesting exercise in visual literacy is to show that pictures, like words, can be open to different interpretations. In the original story of George and the Dragon, the villain (fierce and terrible dragon) and hero (mouse) are both male. The kidnapped princess, who is central to the story, has a non-speaking role; she is lovely and helpless, with neither name nor voice. Whereas the mouse and the dragon are comprehensively characterized, the princess is given no personality features at all through the authorial narrative situation. Together with the children, the teacher can invent an entirely different story to the pictures. The dragon may become female, lonely and clumsy rather than male, fierce and dangerous. In seeking friends she accidentally destroys the castle wall. She kidnaps the princess in her desperation for a playmate. But the princess in this version is resourceful and knows how to use the services of her clever pet mouse, George. Below is part of a reworking of George and the Dragon to become George and the Lonely Dragon, which I re-created together with fifth-grade EFL students, using most of the original pictures while subverting the story. The following text

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accompanied the first seven openings of George and the Dragon (there are 16 openings altogether): Far, far away in the high, high mountains in a deep, deep valley there was a dark, dark cave. And in the dark, dark cave there lived a lonely dragon. Her name was Ullalone. Ullalone could fly higher than the mountains and higher than the clouds. She could fly higher and faster than the birds in the sky. But oh dear! Ullalone played with fire when she felt sad and lonely. Ullalone loved to play. She wanted to play with the knights and ladies in the castle. But sometimes she smashed things by mistake. So whenever she came to visit, the knights screamed and rode away. The King and Queen hid. Ullalone was a sad, sad dragon. Most of all, Ullalone wanted to play with the princess in her dark, dark cave. She was so lonely! So Ullalone picked up the princess in her claws and flew away. The princess was very scared. ‘But the flying was wicked and wonderful!’ said the princess.

Transforming the conventional picturebook leads to a transactional reading. Writing new narration and dialogue, creating a different story to the pictures, reveals that the pictures are not ‘real’. In this way we are preparing children for a study of questions of validity and ideology with regard to the visual media that surround them (television, film, advertising, drawings, diagrams, icons, photographs, videos, sculpture and paintings). To Nodelman: the words in picture books always tell us that things are not merely as they appear in the pictures, and the pictures always show us that events are not exactly as the words describe them. (.  .  .) Close attention to picture books automatically turns readers into semioticians. (. . .) the more both adults and children realise the degree to which all representations misrepresent the world, the less likely they will be to confuse any particular representation with reality, or to be unconsciously influenced by ideologies they have not considered. (Nodelman 1996: 123)

Learning to read literature critically step by step is conducive to pleasure (becoming an autonomous learner and discovering reading secrets), supportive of intercultural competence and fulfils vital educational goals. Children can become aware quite explicitly that there is no more only one way to interpret words or pictures than there is only one way to translate from one language to another. This gives children some independence from the authority position of the teacher, and some command over their own learning. Peter McLaren warns us that literacy does not mean ‘learning to read advertisements in order to become a better consumer’ (McLaren 1988: 232), rather it is an awareness of how text may influence and manipulate the reader/viewer.

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Gaining confidence as perceptive ‘gap’ readers with literary texts Postmodern picturebook fairy tales are characterized by a provocative tension between the different modes, images and verbal text, and also between the pretext and postmodern rewriting. This creates ‘information gaps’ in the content, which the perceptive reader fills, the composite message being only in the head of the reader; Jane Doonan calls this mental model the ‘composite text’ (Doonan 1993: 83). Due to their more developed cognitive skills, slightly older L2 students can gain confidence in being perceptive and confident ‘gap’ readers despite their limited English. Additionally, due to the multilayered nature of postmodern literature, these texts often address a wide range of implied readers: ‘All in all, these new books encourage a critical, active stance that celebrates a diversity of response rather than univocal interpretation’ (Sipe and Pantaleo 2008: 5). It is of great consequence for the EFL-literature classroom, though scarcely known in the EFL teaching context worldwide, that postmodern graphic novels, fairy tales and postmodern picturebooks ‘engage with polymorphous cultural forms and (. . .) address an older audience’ (Stephens 2008: 89). Jill May has made the same point, referring to children’s literature more generally: Most authors, however, do not purposely tell their audience how to respond. And they don’t label their stories as ones written for a particular audience. It is to their benefit not to direct their text at one particular group of people. After all, children’s books are read by adults and children, so the books do not have one audience. As texts with dual (or multiple) audiences, children’s stories hold more than one meaning. The theme, or central idea, may be perceived in different ways. (May 1995: 55)

In addition, the narrative can be polyphonic due to the circumstance that ‘(a)uthors who write for children inevitably create a colloquy between past and present selves’ (Knoepflemacher and Myers 1997: vii). Much of schooling is a pursuit of closure. Teachers seek answers to questions and students seek to predict and satisfy the teachers’ expectations. However, postmodern texts do not necessarily satisfy expectations at the close, nor do they allow all questions to be answered. But they often stimulate a dynamic approach to literary discussion and a joint attempt at meaning making, as readers attempt to complete the patterns they perceive. Coles and Hall describe postmodernism as an often-disputed area of literary and cultural study:

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One feature likely to be undisputed though is its rejection of unity, homogeneity, totality, and closure. But it is often these concepts which underpin the school teaching of texts (. . .). To step back from this position involves rejecting the pursuit of ‘true’ meanings. It requires the teacher to cede to pupils a degree of authority over the text. The postmodern perspective is a questioning one. (Coles and Hall 2001: 114)

The metaphor of the ‘gap’ is significant for the EFL-literature classroom, echoing the well-established ‘information gap’ of the language classroom. Too many display questions lead to restless students; when asked genuine questions, however, young learners are attentive and motivated to supply an answer. Although we cannot demand a single ‘correct’ interpretation when dealing with open and ambiguous literature, the expectation of fixed meanings would still appear to reign in the conventional EFL-literature classroom with canonical texts. Rather than expecting answers pre-determined by the teacher (and the study notes he or she may be using), I argue we need to empower readers, encourage them to invest processing effort and fill the gaps within and between texts with their own meanings. This requires mental effort, and moreover: ‘This is not a comfortable pedagogy for it removes certainty from the teacher and the learner. The teacher is not the final arbiter of knowledge or does not determine the meaning of the text’ (Hall 1998: 187, emphasis in the original). However, this pedagogy can also be empowering for teachers, who do not need answers to every question. A co-operative act of discussion discovers far more about a literary text than a single reader could alone, so that ‘by pooling our thoughts we extend our individual ability to think’ (Chambers 2011: 110). Teacher education is instrumental for preparing and giving the support needed for a ‘deep thinking approach’: Classrooms which are characterised by talk and discussion and by questions and questioning need to be managed and orchestrated yet remain clearly focused on learning objectives. Teachers’ existing craft knowledge can be threatened as they struggle to implement this more constructivist environment. (McGuinness 1999: 4)

Many certainties are naturally lost during adolescence. Unsurprisingly, the more networked the world becomes, the more holes appear in the sum of human understanding. In the past, there seemed to be a high degree of certainty; today there is often helplessness and insecurity. We can observe this fragmentation, this dissolving of boundaries and hybridity – such as transcultural identity – in most

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contemporary cultural texts, particularly in global multimedia, postcolonial literature and film. The benefits could be that indeterminacy and ambivalence attune us to different perspectives and to diversity. Accepting diversity would have us move out of our safe spheres and into the gaps where differences may be realigned, known as third spaces (Bhabha 1992) or third places (Kramsch 1993). Indeed, it has been suggested that the relationship between children and adults, as represented in much classic or conventional children’s literature, is similar to the unequal power relations, the silencing of certain voices, described in postcolonial theory. For children from a less-privileged background, unanalysed unequal power relations may be a life-long hindrance to any satisfying contributions they could make in their society. For this reason, helping all students analyse and articulate sociocultural issues with the aid of multiple literacies should be a central educational concern, and may help prepare them for an inevitable and sometimes devastating loss of orientation that occurs at the latest during adolescence. A suitable text characterized by indeterminacy is the postmodern picturebook Into the Forest (Browne 2005). It begins when a first-person narrator discovers his father has disappeared overnight. As we have often seen before, most of the meaning is in the pictures, to be discovered by the reader. At the top of the third page there are just three words: ‘I missed Dad’. The picture shows the boy writing notes for his Dad, there are 11 of his messages on the table and we can see others already stuck on the wall, the television, on the bin and on the door, each note with the words ‘Come home Dad’. The boy’s Mum asks him to take a cake to Grandma, and tells him ‘ “Don’t go into the forest,” said Mum. “Go the long way round.” ’ However, the boy chooses the quick way, ‘I wanted to be home in case Dad came back’ (Browne 2005). In the forest the boy has some highly ambiguous meetings with characters from well-known fairy tales, all of whom seem to reflect the boy’s dejection and helplessness. The boy is no more able to help the fairy-tale characters than he is able to help his family or to understand why his Dad has gone. The boy meets Jack, of Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel, and many more fairy-tale motifs hidden between the trees, such as the beanstalk, the three bears, an axe, the Gingerbread House, a cage, a glass slipper, a pumpkin, a spinning wheel, a wolf, a prince on horseback, Rapunzel’s tower and Little Red Riding Hood’s red coat. The forest pictures are shadowy, enigmatic and threatening, yet they invite the reader to search for evermore half-hidden secrets. Postmodern picturebooks for school children often reflect a rather scary world. This links what children know with what they partly know and fear about the world; stories are a way of shaping confusing

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observations. True to the pedagogical promise of children’s literature, there is a fairy-tale ending, the terrified boy at last finds Grandma’s cottage; and there he also finds his Dad. Confidence on the part of the learner in the EFL-literature classroom needs to go hand in hand with confidence on the part of the teacher. McGuiness stipulates on the subject of ‘Thinking Classrooms’ that the ‘more successful approaches tend to have a strong theoretical underpinning, well-designed and contextualised materials, explicit pedagogy and good teacher support’ (McGuinness 1999: 1).

Empowerment with fairy tales as ‘utopian’ texts Fairy tales belong to folk culture, exist in different retellings and demonstrate admirably how stories may mean different things to different people in different cultures at different times. ‘Comprising a structure that is both permanent and flexible, fairy tales allow for different adaptations while remaining recognisably self-identical’ (Neemann 2005: 157). There are a small number of recurrent patterns, which aid recall for the teller and listeners, and a wish-fulfilment ending – a highly satisfying outcome for the younger reader. Due to the unspecified nature of time in fairy tales (‘Once upon a time . . .’) and place (‘In a deep, dark wood . . .’), there is much opportunity for the reader to participate in the storyworld, for ‘stories centring on wish fulfilment are likely to have an even higher amount of indeterminacy than stories aiming at an interpretation of reality’ (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 5). I suggest this is another kind of amplification through simplification, previously discussed with reference to the significance of the simple and abstract cartoon style in Chapter 3. Zipes describes the significance of the ‘no place’ of fairy tales: The once upon a time is not a past designation but futuristic: The timelessness of the tale and lack of geographic specificity endow it with utopian connotations – utopia in its original meaning designated ‘no place’, a place that no one had ever envisaged. We form and keep the utopian kernel of the tale safe in our imaginations with hope. (Zipes 2007: 4)

The gaps between the numerous versions of fairy tales are as rich in significance as the tales themselves. Therefore, we impoverish the EFL-literature classroom if we omit fairy tales altogether, and allow the popular Disney versions to eclipse all others, a phenomenon known as Disneyfication ‘with its predominantly white, middle-class American values and celebration of a rather artificial

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and sentimental status quo’ (Rudd 2010a: 168) and the ‘saccharine, sexist, and illusionary stereotypes of the Disney-culture industry’ (Zipes 2007: 25). Beyond the animated film versions, there are canonized versions, feminist versions, ironic postmodern versions and ancient versions of pre-literate cultures. A comparison of different versions in the EFL-literature classroom offers abundant ‘gap’ potential and illustrates there are no absolute meanings in texts. The following is a version of Little Red Riding Hood, based on an oral French folktale (Darnton 2001), which I have written as a brief script for Readers Theatre with EFL students (see Coger and White 1973). The oral tale pre-dates the Grimm version and ends variously but always differently to the canonized version. Narrator Once upon a time there was a girl called Little Red Riding Hood . . . Jacob Wait! I am Jacob Grimm. And this is my brother . . . Wilhelm Wilhelm Grimm. Everybody here must already know Rotkäppchen! Jacob I’m sure they have read our little book of fairy tales. Wilhelm Rotkäppchen is a favourite. All over the world, children love . . . L R R H But it isn’t fair. You changed my story. Narrator The story of Little Red Riding Hood is old . . . Mother Hundreds of years older than your books. L R R H We are French. Mother We are very poor farmers . . . L R R H . . . and we too can tell stories! Narrator Listen now to our tale of Little Red Riding Hood (who curtsies), a basket of bread and milk (Mother takes the basket), a wolf and a long piece of string. (Wolf bows, looks at Little Red Riding Hood hungrily and takes the piece of string from the narrator.) Mother Little Red Riding Hood, take this basket to your Grandmother. She is ill, and cannot leave her bed. Go quickly through the forest. L R R H Yes Mother. Mother (to the audience) I hope my daughter will be safe in the forest! L R R H (to the audience) It’s wonderful to get away! Narrator The little girl works hard all day in the fields, and sews at night. Wolf Where are you going, little girl? What is in your basket? L R R H I’m taking some bread and milk to my grandmother. I must not stop to talk to you. Wolf I’ll race you to the cottage. I’ll take this path, you take that one. L R R H (to the audience) Excellent, a race! I will get there faster! Narrator But the wolf sped through the forest very swiftly . . . Wolf She is a silly girl. I will have no trouble with her.

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Narrator . . . and reached the cottage first. Wolf (to the audience) I ate up the grandmother. She didn’t taste good. Narrator The wolf put on the grandmother’s clothes and climbed into bed. L R R H (knocking) Grandmother! Can I come in? I have some bread and milk for you. Wolf Yes, my dear. I’m so happy you are here! L R R H Poor Grandmother! You look so ill! Wolf Come here to me, and I will feel better! L R R H Poor Grandmother! What a big nose you have today! Wolf All the better to smell the bread you bring me, my dear! Put the basket on the table. L R R H Poor Grandmother! What big round eyes you have today! Wolf All the better to see you with, my dear! Take off your things! L R R H Poor Grandmother! What enormous hands you have! Wolf All the better to feel you with. Climb into bed. I am warm and you are cold. L R R H Grandmother, I must get out of bed again. I need to go to the toilet. Wolf You can do a little pee in the bed, my dear. L R R H It’s much more than a little pee. Let me out, quickly. Wolf The forest is so dangerous. I’ll tie this string to your arm, and then I’ll know you are safe. L R R H (to the audience) The wolf is an idiot! I’ll tie this string to a tree. He won’t notice I’ve gone. Wolf (pulling the string) Little Red Riding Hood! Why are you taking so long? Are you making a mountain out there? L R R H Mother I’m home! Come in quickly and shut the door! The wolf is after me! Wolf (very disappointed) Little Red Riding Hood has escaped! I have lost, and she has won! (Bland 2009: 21–2)

After hearing this, based on an ancient version, students should be encouraged to tell the versions they know. ‘Inevitably there are gaps and disputes among the students who retell the tale. All the better, because we want to show there is no such thing as a definitive version’ (Zipes 2004: 118). Why is there a hunter to rescue Little Red Riding Hood in the nineteenth-century version, when in some versions of the older oral tale she can rescue herself? Why has the Grimm version become canonized, the most accepted? Discovering the implicit ideology in literary texts helps children understand the ways the role of women have changed in Europe – perhaps more clearly than history lessons can. In the harsh early French agrarian community, girls had to learn to fend for themselves. In the nineteenth century, it was generally considered that young women could not

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and should not fend for themselves. When the tales were written down, the nonliterate, mostly female tellers lost their voice: The voices of the nonliterate tellers were submerged, and since women in most cases were not allowed to be scribes, the tales were scripted according to male dictates or fantasies (. . .). Put crudely, one could say that the literary appropriation of the oral wonder tales served the hegemonic interests of males within the upper classes of particular communities and societies, and to a great extent, this is true. However, such a crude statement must be qualified, for the writing down of tales also preserved a great deal of the value system of those deprived of power. The more the literary fairy tale was cultivated and developed, the more it became individualized and varied by intellectuals and artists, who often sympathized with the marginalized in society or were marginalized themselves. The literary fairy tale allowed for new possibilities of subversion in the written word and in print; therefore, it was always looked upon with misgivings by the governing authorities in the civilisation process. (Zipes 2007: 7)

Parody and ‘playing havoc with all the old certainties’ Fairy tales are frequently parodied as a way of questioning contemporary value systems, for example celebrity-driven culture and its consumption. Parody is inherently metafictive as it involves a refusal to accept as natural and given that which is culturally determined and conventional. As a literary device it is usually associated with satire and ridicule and may thus seem an unlikely trait to find in children’s picturebooks, but in fact picturebook makers often lean towards this particular mode. (Lewis 2001: 97)

As some of the fixed conventions and themes of the fairy-tale genre are universally known already to children, it is possible for children’s writers to imaginatively subvert and parody them. This starts gently for a very young audience, as in, for example, Cinderella’s Rat (Meddaugh 1997). This tells of a rat that was transformed into a ‘coachboy’, to accompany Cinderella to the ball. His adventures and mishaps take a new twist when a wizard tries to transform his rat sister into a girl, having been wrongly informed that she really is a girl bewitched into a rat by a powerful spell. As the lively and vivid pictures tell the whole story, the verbal text, narrated by the rat/coachboy, could be shortened for the primary EFL-literature classroom. The same theme is taken up for confident readers in Philip Pullman’s I Was A Rat (2000), which could be read in the mid-secondary-school EFL-literature

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classroom, both as a gripping and amusing tale and as an introduction to aspects of literary literacy, including postmodernism, intertextuality, parody, setting, point of view and an authorial narrative situation. Pullman’s story also takes Cinderella as its source text, but this time with an omniscient narrator. The narrative is so thoroughly interwoven with parody and satire that this provides the recurring pattern that lends the short novel coherence, as well as humour deriving from the absurdity of numerous opinionated ‘authoritative’ voices. The narrator takes us to diverse settings and diverse characters with a strong point of view, expressed both in the ample dialogue and in the narration – the narrator knows their thoughts – a rich exemplification of a polyphonic or many-voiced narrative (Bakhtin  1981). A child in a pageboy uniform arrives unexpectedly on the doorstep of an old and childless couple, Bob and Joan. Bob is a cobbler and Joan a washerwoman, the traditional trade of fairy tales. The parody, however, is directed against contemporary Britain. The fact that the ‘newly created’ boy cannot understand layers of meaning repeatedly reveals just how layered meaning is, and how it can be manipulated by bureaucrats, scientists and particularly journalists. The naive couple Joan and Bob are the focalizers for most of the narrative, and they gradually learn about the slipperiness of language, and the absurdity of trying to live by conventionalized rules when faced with an unexpected and inexplicable situation (a rat bewitched into a boy). Many metanarratives are overturned, beginning with the concept that people in authority know best. The old couple take their ‘found’ boy to the City Hall, but are informed: ‘There’s nothing we can do about found children. We deal with lost ones’ (Pullman 2000: 22). No institution is able to provide any useful help, and the problems are compounded when a newspaper campaign erupts. The boy is kidnapped by unscrupulous fairground exhibitors, then helped to escape by the leader of a gang of boy thieves, who want the now underfed and starving ‘Rat-Boy’ to wriggle through the windows of rich houses, recalling Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger. The main target of parody in I Was A Rat is British tabloid journalism. Whole pages are ‘reprinted’ from a newspaper entitled The Daily Scourge. The brief novel includes altogether 13 pages of scandalous newspaper reporting (this is slightly reduced in a later edition), but the connection between The Daily Scourge pages and the unfolding story only becomes transparent towards the end. The first inserted newspaper cover story recounts a royal love story ‘LOVE AT THE BALL by our Court Correspondent’ (Pullman 2000: 5) as a part of the peritext, a postmodern contextualizing strategy. The peritext (Genette 1997)

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includes all the matter of a book that is exterior to the story itself, so for example the end-papers of a picturebook often comment on the book’s theme. Pullman’s fictional newspaper cover story anticipates the Cinderella theme, recalls the Charles and Diana drama and suggests a ‘non-fictional’ context to the narrative. The following articles are interspersed in the story: ‘PALACE MAKE-OVER’ on the royal wedding (Pullman 2000: 32), then ‘SIX OF THE BEST’ and ‘THE SCOURGE SAYS: KEEP ON WACKING!’ (Pullman 2000: 45) – the tabloid is in favour of continuing caning in schools. This is highly topical, as the cane was legal in secondary schools in England and Wales until 1987 and in private schools until 1999, the date of the first edition of Pullman’s tale. The next headline is ‘THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR!’ (Pullman 2000: 70), followed by ‘CRIME UP AGAIN’ and ‘A MORAL VACUUM’ (Pullman 2000: 110–11) – when the gang of child thieves has been apprehended. The parody on these two pages becomes particularly many-voiced, as the Home Secretary is quoted: ‘I blame the teachers’, a teachers’ leader is quoted ‘I blame the parents’, a parent is quoted ‘I blame the church’, the Archbishop is quoted ‘I blame the government’ and The Scourge adds its voice: ‘BLAME THE KIDS!!!’ At this point in the main narrative, the existence of the ‘Rat-Boy’, who looks like a vulnerable but otherwise normal 9-year-old boy with an extremely unusual appetite, is discovered by the press. The Scourge takes up the case with ‘MONSTER FOUND IN SEWERS’ (Pullman 2000: 119) followed by a Special Supplement on the Monster, further furious headlines including ‘EVIL BEYOND BELIEF’ (Pullman 2000: 132) and finally ‘MONSTER CONDEMNED’ (Pullman 2000: 151). The tale ends happily on one level, but without closure on another, when at last one person with authority is prepared to listen to Bob and Joan, who have desperately been trying to save the little boy from ‘extermination’. This is no other than the fairy-tale princess herself, who, in a clear allusion to Diana, Princess of Wales, wishes that both she and the boy could return to their former quiet lives, before their transformation. This they cannot achieve. However, the princess is able to save the little boy, as reported by The Scourge: ‘MIRACLE OF PRINCESS AND “MONSTER” ’ (Pullman 2000: 170). Much contemporary children’s literature is dialogic (Rudd 1994: 93), so also I Was A Rat is dialogic in its ongoing critical dialogue with contemporary British culture and with its pretext Cinderella. I Was A Rat is furthermore dialogic in the way it interrogates and caricatures figures of authority both in how they are represented, and also by the way the boy who was a rat continuously misinterprets them. The Daily Scourge prints: ‘The traditional family is under threat. Family values have crumbled away. Changing work patterns, taxation, and violent

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entertainment are playing havoc with all the old certainties’ (Pullman 2000: 110). Pullman’s child-friendly postmodern parody plays havoc with many ‘old certainties’, and with good reason.

The literature canon and schema-refreshing discourse But are there grounds for including both canonical and postmodern fairy tales in the EFL-literature classroom? Decanonization, one of Lewis’s key features of the postmodern condition, suggests a rejection of metanarratives as ‘revealed truths’ in favour of relativism: ‘Fewer and fewer people believe wholeheartedly the overarching stories we tell ourselves about ultimate values, truth, progress and reason because the authorities that underwrote such stories – the church, rationality, science – are no longer viable’ (Lewis 2001: 89). This loss of absolute faith in many metanarratives is mirrored in postmodern literature, and the most frequently subverted and parodied genre is the fairy tale, for the very reason that the canonized fairy tale has some fairly fixed conventions that can be mocked, and that are well known in different cultures (Lewis 2001: 97). For EFL learners at the transitional stage from primary to secondary school, postmodern retellings of fairytales offer a challenging unsettling of expectations. As the beginning of The Frog Prince Continued (Scieszka and Johnson) shows, the Princess may marry the Prince and yet they do NOT live happily ever after: The Princess kissed the frog, He turned into a prince. And they lived happily ever after . . . Well, let’s just say they lived sort of happily for a long time. Okay, so they weren’t so happy. In fact, they were miserable. (Scieszka and Johnson 1991)

Thus the metanarrative of the fairy tale ‘they lived happily ever after’ is gently interrogated. The picturebook The Paper Bag Princess (Munsch and Martchenko), which centres on a brave and resourceful princess and her rescue of a superficial and ungrateful prince, ends: ‘Ronald,’ said Elizabeth, ‘your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince, but you are a bum.’ They didn’t get married after all. (Munsch 1980)

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This creates an interesting discussion among students – is this a happy ending? The schema for a happy ending in fairy tales is generally a wedding and ‘they all lived happily ever after’. Does this picturebook change, for some children, the concept of what constitutes a happy ending? Although the final picture of the princess dancing alone into the sunset suggests a happy ending, students (even student teachers) are quite resistant to accepting it as such. This ‘jolt’ is known as schema refreshing, and is an important attribute of literary discourse: ‘Discourse which is acclaimed as “literary” is often of this “schema refreshing” type, and it is this that accounts for the high value placed upon it’ (Cook 1994: 11). However, when Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first published their fairy tales, a wedding between a commoner and a prince (as in Rapunzel and Rumpelstilzchen) was at least radical and wish-fulfilling, if not schema refreshing. What counts as boundary breaking or schema refreshing changes over time, as the sociocultural boundaries change. Cook describes how schema-refreshing discourse can become schema-reinforcing: Literary discourses which were once schema-refreshing become schema­reinforcing. (. . .) This tendency of new form and content to become not only accepted but conventional, leads to a lack of fit between the literary canon and the category ‘schema-refreshing discourse’. This is hardly surprising, as the canon tends to be defined, not for specific readers, but for – and by – a dominant social group speaking in institutions at a particular time in history. The concept of schema-refreshing discourse, on the other hand, must be related to as many varia­tions as there are between epochs, individuals, and social groups. (.  .  .) Educational institutions, however, have a tendency to be a step behind. They canonize what was once (and exclude what is currently) schema-refreshing. (Cook 1994: 194)

This is a strong argument for widening the canon of school literature, but not for entirely abolishing it. The theory of cultural capital demonstrates how our exceptionally valorized cultural artefacts are raised up by institutions such as galleries and museums, universities and schools, the media and libraries rather than by any intrinsic superiority (Bourdieu 1984). Clearly, social-class differences are involved in such value judgements, and the Ideological State Apparatuses (Althusser 2001), to which the institution of education belongs, help maintain the existing order and its inequalities of power and opportunity. Therefore, it is highly useful for our young EFL-literature students to also know the canonized versions of fairy tales, as well as, at a later stage, adult canonical literature. Jack Zipes maintains that this has nothing to do with an innate superiority of the canon, but means instead:

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that it is important to be knowledgeable about icons and social codes to navigate one’s way through institutions of all kinds and to be able to use them to one’s pleasure or advantage. In part, to become the story teller of one’s life means that a young person must learn how to use, manipulate, and exploit social and cultural codes, especially linguistic and semantic ones, so that she or he will be able to contend with the constant bombardment of signs, often commercial and propagandistic, that occur every day. (Zipes 2004: 115)

Fairy tales are particularly useful in the EFL-literature classroom because ‘the basic quality of fairy tales is that they are capable of taking on so many different meanings’ (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 318), and thus fairy-tales and their retellings can demonstrate the polysemous nature of literature. Furthermore, with the many versions of fairy tales available, children ‘aren’t likely to be indoctrinated into the values of any one of them. They will have a large menu from which to choose and thus more possibility of determining their own values’ (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 313).

The motivational power of excess First and foremost, it is necessary to motivate children to read at all. In this respect, the sparkling, larger-than-life characters of fairy tales can help. It is the excessive nature of the characters and the wonder of their stories that makes them so appealing: Rapunzel with golden hair so long that a wicked witch, and a handsome prince, can climb up the tall tower using her hair as a rope; a slimy frog, an ugly beast and a great bear who transform into handsome princes; Sleeping Beauty who sleeps for one hundred long years surrounded by impenetrable forest and Jack who climbs a beanstalk so high it reaches up into the clouds. Ideally, these characters first become familiar to children at a young age, when they experience intense pleasure in sharing stories in a friendly and familiar setting. Later the characters reappear like old friends in book titles and films, on the internet and on children’s clothing, in picturebooks and in fantasy fiction for older children. According to Lewis, postmodern literature is very often characterized by excess: it may take the form of any kind of gigantism that upsets our expectations. Interestingly, picturebooks often have an ‘over the top’ quality. They frequently involve a stretching and testing of norms – linguistic, literary, social, conceptual and ethical as well as narrative. (Lewis 2001: 95)

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Of the countless examples of excess in Harry Potter, the funniest are probably those that are ‘over the top’ rather than completely fantastical, such as the screaming letters called Howlers furious parents can send their children. Excess is grotesquely humorous and at the same time it is a natural game for children, a testing of how far you can go at a life stage when the conventionalized adult rules are not yet completely understood. Probably for this reason, it is also a feature of children’s own writing. Reading, responding and creative writing are mutually supportive activities; this will be explored in Chapter 5. The samples of writing in Figures 4.3 and 4.4 are by children who are only at the very beginning of functional literacy. They illustrate the motivational power of a familiar fairy-tale

Figure 4.3  Sample of writing (Maxi)

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Figure 4.4  Sample of writing (Steffen)

character (the ugly monster troll) to encourage responding to stories through writing. A group of first and second graders were given a picture from the fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff (Bland and Lottermoser 2008) to colour in. The speech bubbles were empty, the children were given complete freedom how to fill them; they were invited to colour, draw or write a few words of dialogue as they chose. As they had heard the story only once, they could not remember the actual dialogue spoken in the storytelling. If they wished to write, they would have to themselves contrive the words the little goat spoke to the troll. Most of the children in the group felt a strong urge to fill the speech bubbles with writing rather than drawing.1 Six-year-old Maxi (Figure 4.3) could scarcely read or write in his mother tongue (German). Yet he was so motivated to insult and mock the troll that

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he achieved success. He wrote first a scatological insult in German ‘AA Po’. A child (Little Billy Goat Gruff) challenging a stronger adult (Troll) is the essence of carnivalesque and was a powerful incentive to Maxi. His next words were ‘Monster!’ a word that is the same in German and English, followed by the English insult ‘Silly’. Seven-year-old Steffen (Figure 4.4) shows clearly how children are motivated by excess. Steffen was extremely inventive with his minimal L2 skills. After just a few English lessons, he was able to give Little Billy Goat Gruff plenty to say. Steffen wrote ‘I’m very little’ in the speech bubble – using tiny handwriting, he managed to repeat ‘very’ no less than 31 times. The playful lack of constraint shown by Maxi and Steffen, apparently calling expectations into question, is natural to children. It is a developmental echo of the freedom children use in L1 acquisition, as Kress and van Leeuwen express it: All linguistic form is used in a mediated, non-arbitrary manner in the expression of meaning. For children in their early, pre-school years there is both more and less freedom of expression: more, because they have not learnt to confine the making of signs to the culturally and socially facilitated media, and because they are unaware of the established conventions and relatively unconstrained in the making of signs; less, because they do not have such rich cultural semiotic resources available as do adults. (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006: 9)

Thus, though novice language learners are extremely limited with regard to their linguistic resources, their lack of confinement to established conventions gives them freedom that they exploit with pleasure. This freedom of expression is conspicuously lacking as a feature of graded readers or EFL textbooks, but is an essential feature of postmodern children’s literature. Consequently, using postmodern picturebooks as the ideal primary texts of childhood (Styles and Noble 2009: 120) encourages playful experimentation in the EFL classroom. With careful teacher scaffolding, negotiation of understanding and interpretation can also be practised; and ‘When children experience that they are able to express themselves within the new language context, the feeling of success leads to motivation and more self-confidence, which are essential requirements for foreign language acquisition’ (Ramke 2011: 10). David Wiesner’s The Three Pigs (2001, Caldecott Medal Winner) is introduced next as a remarkable example of an excessive postmodern picturebook on a fairytale theme. At least some students in an EFL-literature classroom (upper primary or lower secondary) will know and remember the canonized version of The Three Little Pigs, and be able to retell the tale to their peers. The cover of Wiessner’s

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very unusual book shows an extreme close-up of three pigs, realistically drawn, that appear anything other than ‘little’. Children’s responses to this picturebook have shown how they are highly interested in the details and meanings of the illustrations. A 6-year-old student in a case study in the United States, remarking on the size of the pigs, suggests a new title for the book: The Three Grownup Pigs. The class goes on to discuss the illustration on the title page: Norman:  They’re, they look like real three pigs. And in the other stories, the other pigs didn’t look a lot like real pigs. Morgan:  They’re pigs like animal pigs and the other ones are like people pigs. Teacher:  There are animal or people pigs, oh, what do you mean by people pigs? Steven:  Like they walk on their two feet. They talk. Mandy:  And they wear clothes. (Sipe 2008c: 225, emphasis in the original)

If children in the first grade are already interested in distinguishing anthropomorphized characters in their books from more realistic animal characters, then clearly we can expect an interesting discussion on characterization with older EFL students. For Wiesner’s The Three Pigs implies multiple audiences, in that it can delight and cognitively engage sophisticated readers too. There are at least three intertexts to The Three Pigs, each forming an inner or embedded storyworld. Apart from the well-known fairy tale, the nursery rhyme ‘Hey ­Diddle Diddle’ makes an appearance and a traditional tale with a dragon-slaying prince also plays a role. The three pigs quickly learn to move from story to story, whereby their travels between the stories form an embedding or framing storyworld. They are amazed to discover that their physical appearance also changes to fit in with the particular illustration style of each story. When they are in the framing storyworld, apparently outside the stories, they are extremely realistically drawn; in the story of the dragon they become romanticized sepia line drawings. However, when in the nursery rhyme, they are crudely flat and ­cartoon-like, which the pigs appear not to like at all. ‘See the colors they are. They’re turning like marker colors’ a child comments in the case study (Sipe 2008c: 225). This is an excellent opportunity for a wider discussion of the different kinds and quality of illustrations in picturebooks, and a comparison with the over-simplified outlines and flat, saturated colours of the generic animals and household objects that are typical of EFL textbooks for primary-school children. Krashen differentiates context as over-determining, under-determining and partly determining (Krashen 1999: 12–14). The pictures in EFL textbooks for young learners are nearly always over-determining, stylized, stereotyped and

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crude illustrations, limiting a creative response. People, objects and settings, such as families, toys, food, furniture, pets and landscapes, are mostly reduced, simplified and drastically ‘tidied up’. An imaginative response is blocked, as the pictures are almost universally bright, yet reduced to sameness. Complex, naturalistic, untidy, ambiguous and thus partly determining contextualization is strictly avoided. The more challenging partly determining context, found in complex picturebook illustrations, requires a creative participatory reading, requires imaginative learner input in order to bridge the gaps and finally requires acceptance of ambivalent response. The most excessive characteristic of The Three Pigs is the use of space in deconstructing, extending and finally reinventing the story. This is done in the framing storyworld, by the energetic pigs themselves. The subversion of the story begins as an accident, when the wolf, instead of merely blowing the straw house down, blows the first pig right out of the story and towards the reader into a liminal space beyond, see Figure 4.5. This is known as ‘ascending’

Figure 4.5  Illustration from The Three Pigs by David Wiesner © (2001). Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved

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metalepsis (Pier 2005: 304), and has the effect of bringing the character very close to the reader. This closeness is compounded in the picturebook narrative by the hyper-realistic illustration style of the pigs when they are in the framing storyworld, and the extreme close-up on the page just before the pigs discover the ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ rhyme. The enormous head of one of the pigs fills the page and invades the reader/viewer’s space and seems to contact the reader: ‘I think . . . someone’s out there.’ The journey of the three pigs continues in ever more fantastic ways. When all three pigs are outside the story, they fold one of the pages of the story they have escaped from into a paper plane and fly away. They leave their framing world and land in other stories, known as ‘descending’ metalepsis. In the new story, the illustration style becomes less life-like; the reader is distanced from the pigs once again. The wolf, for unexplained reasons, cannot escape the embedded story and therefore cannot draw close to the reader. He is seen to be puzzled by the events, especially when the pigs fold up the very page he is on for their flight. He appears to be imprisoned by the page, his paws push against the edges, but he is unable to escape. We can only guess his thoughts, however. He never becomes ‘real’ and he has no speech balloons. The story text continues relentlessly ‘he blew the house in . . . and ate the pig up’, but the pigs have disappeared and the wolf is left with no dinner and in total confusion. For some students, this may be the first experience of a book where the pictures so blatantly contradict the verbal text. This can be explained as irony, for the text is saying one thing but the pictures mean something else. There is plenty to talk and write about in the EFLliterature classroom, a book as complex as this one needs to be revisited from different angles. There are numerous opportunities for creating the dialogues between the confused, amazed and puzzled characters, so very much happens in the pictures and with very little verbal comment. The wolf ’s story is entirely blank, and could be re-created by the lower secondary-school EFL readers creating their own comic strip from the point of view of the wolf. The graphic devices have connections to comics and film (with the pigs’ brief speech balloons, extreme close-ups and salience). An almost entirely blank double-page spread creates salience to highlight the pigs’ flight to freedom. They cross the wide, empty spaces between the stories. What does a completely white page in the middle of a picturebook suggest to the students? Freedom? Emptiness? Opportunity? Adventure? Outer space? The possibilities of interpretation in such ambiguity are, of course, endless. Asking students to create their own titles for pages such as these is a task that requires thought and interpretation, and can lead to interesting comparisons when they defend their chosen titles. The three

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pigs’ flight to freedom on the paper aeroplane continues across four double-page spreads, with minimal speech bubbles: merely the sound words ‘Wheeeeeee!’ and, as they come in to land, ‘Uh-oh’. This is an excellent opportunity for creative writing to the children’s own pictures: drawing and describing the largely unseen flight of the three pigs. They may fly around a clock tower, under a bridge, up into the clouds, over a mountain, down a waterfall, across a river, along a railway track and through a tunnel. They may fly in and out of the children’s favourite storyworlds, with speech balloons and possibly with quotations from other books. They may fly across the ocean to meet animals from other continents. As Wiesner’s four double-page spreads show very little, the children must invest their own creativity and imagination to cross this excessive and yet, with ingenuity, eminently bridgeable gap. These postmodern elements engage the reader/viewer powerfully. The reader/ viewer has a clear mandate; think about this story, relate this story to other reading experiences, manipulate the story so it makes sense. Do not be shy, be a coauthor. Feel free to play with the story, add to it and alter it! (Goldstone 2008: 120)

The register of the narration also changes between the different intertexts. Secondary-school EFL students can consider what characterizes the language of the ‘Dragon and the Golden Rose’ story (invented title) as dignified, elevated and romantic: ‘High on a hill there lived a great dragon, who stood guard over a rose made of the purest gold.’ How might this be expressed in a contemporary story? The register of the dialogue reflects the different stories too; this becomes comical when the characters leave their stories, and the people prose of the pigs is contrasted with the elevated prose of the dragon: ‘Many thanks for rescuing me, O brave and noble swine’, to which the pig answers succinctly ‘Don’t mention it’ (see Figure 4.6). Eventually, the pigs feel homesick for their well-crafted house of bricks and decide to return home. They rebuild their storyworld by re-assembling the very letters of the traditional story to write their own ending, which includes the dragon and a cat escaped from the ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’ rhyme: ‘And they all lived happily ever after’. The final example of excess in a postmodern fairy-tale presented here is Raymond Briggs’ Jim and the Beanstalk. Jim, unlike his predecessor Jack, tries to help the aged giant he finds in a castle at the top of the beanstalk. The giant tells how Jack ‘stole some of my father’s gold and took our golden harp and our golden hen and I’ve never really been happy since. And I’m old too. I can’t even see to

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Figure 4.6  Illustration from The Three Pigs by David Wiesner © (2001). Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved

read my poetry books because the print is too small’ (Briggs 1970). As a fairy tale, there is a pattern of three involved; Jim organizes three kinds of aid for the giant: excessively enormous reading glasses, excessively gigantic false teeth and an excessively colossal wig. This involves three times taking the measurements with a huge measuring tape; Jim even climbs into the giant’s mouth to measure for the false teeth, and up onto the giant’s bald head to measure for the wig. There is a refrain: The Giant gave Jim a gold coin, and Jim climbed down the beanstalk as fast as he could, holding tight to the coin. He showed the coin to his mother, but before she could say anything he ran off to the oculist (dentist/wig-maker). The oculist (dentist/wig-maker) could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the giant gold coin, but he set to work straight away. He worked all night, and in the morning the glasses (teeth/wig) were ready. Jim carried them home. Then he tied them on his back and climbed up the beanstalk. (Briggs 1970)

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The illustrations all reflect the mammoth and hilarious undertaking of providing the giant with these immense aids. The theme of the picturebook, support for the elderly, is significant for engaged reading; however, in the EFL-literature classroom, the students should also consider the patterning that lends the book cohesion. This is to be found in the language, such as the refrain quoted above, it can be found in the enterprising way Jim thrice organizes the giant’s assistance, and in the humour of the excessive reactions of the passers-by as Jim transports the giant’s new glasses, false teeth and curly red wig. There is much detail to discover; in Figure 4.7 for example, when Jim

Figure 4.7  From Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs (Puffin 2003). © Raymond Briggs, 1970. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd

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carries the monstrous false teeth home, people fall over, hats fall off, a lady drops her handbag and all the contents fall out, boys point and laugh, a cyclist falls off his bike, cats and dogs run away, men shout and scream and people stare out of their windows. Humour is one of the most inviting ingredients in children’s literature (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 3).

An exemplar for teacher education: Scieszka and Smith’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf Metafictive postmodern picturebooks are ideal for group reading in teacher education, as they demand active participation and can exemplify the challenge posed by enigmatic, pluri-significational texts. There is a hurdle that should be overcome by the future generation of teachers in the EFL-literature classroom: Schools have tended to imbue written texts with ultimate authority and to promise academic success to those learners who can ‘unlock’ their meaning with dictionaries, grammars, and other reference books. Students do not generally view themselves as ‘constructing’ meaning as they read: they believe they ‘find’ the meaning enclosed in the text. (Kramsch 1993: 200)

Moss, referring to Jacqueline Rose (1984), suggests that the gatekeepers of children’s reading, which could be publishers, teachers, librarians and family as well as many authors, may have a hidden agenda in their promotion of a more conventional kind of children’s literature, with a static construction of children and childhood: the tendency is for adults to promote closed rather than open texts for children, to cut the child off from the experiment lest it should be dangerous and to deny metafiction because it turns the reader into a self-conscious collaborator rather than an easily manipulated consumer. (Moss 1992: 47)

Scieszka and Smith’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf is a picturebook that can teach the reader/viewer about how fiction works through focalization (the total empathetic absorption encouraged in a conventional book is disrupted in this metafictional narrative), how pictures can work in manipulating the viewer and how the choice of language can contribute to this manipulation. This picturebook is a first-person narrative: ‘I’m the wolf. Alexander T. Wolf. You can call me Al. I don’t know how this whole Big Bad Wolf thing got started, but it’s all wrong’ (Scieszka and Smith 1989). The wolf tells and shows the story from his

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figurative point of view. The reader is made aware of his unreliability, particularly through the images, which reveal the constructedness of the wolf ’s vision, as he turns the pigs into the villains in a retelling of the traditional tale. He protests his innocence: the destruction of the pigs’ houses was not due to his appetite, but rather to the foolishness and unneighbourliness of the three little pigs: So I went next door to ask if I could borrow a cup of sugar. Now the guy next door was a pig. And he wasn’t too bright, either. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean who in his right mind would build a house of straw? (Scieszka and Smith 1989)

Details have slipped into the images that betray A. Wolf ’s real intentions with regard to the little pigs. Discovering all of these details requires careful re-readings of the pictures, comparison of findings and associations and revisiting the verbal text for discrepancies and contradictions. In every image, the wolf pictures himself as smartly dressed, with a bow tie, intellectual glasses and the tiniest of teeth. After accidentally ‘sneezing’ down the straw house, the wolf appears as if in the sky, innocently haloed in golden dust, like a rococo angel floating in swirling clouds. The little pig has materialized from the destruction appetizingly pink, like a jellied dish, right in the centre of the flattened straw house. Next the wolf shows us the house of sticks as if built by an environmental vandal. All of the surrounding trees have been felled, and remain as ugly stumps or branch-less trunks; the saw is still lying near the house of sticks on the bare, unfruitful earth. The ‘cultural voice of a speech community’ (Kramsch 1993: 129) can be discovered by well-chosen authentic texts. The language of the narrator A.Wolf is extremely rich in formulaic sequences, also known as chunks, multi-word units, collocations, idiomatic expressions and phrasal verbs, figurative, non-literal routines, conventionalized forms, ready-made utterances, semi-prefabricated routines, ready-made utterances, morpheme equivalent units or MEUs (Schmitt and Carter 2004; Wray 2002, 2008). Formulaic sequences are: a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar. (Wray 2002: 9)

An understanding of the relevance of formulaic sequences for second language acquisition is indispensable for approaching intercultural communicative competence. Although the exact definition of formulaic sequences is problematic,

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at least the following chunks of language from the picturebook The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! would be included: Everybody knows the story / at least they think they do. / I’ll let you in on a secret. / Nobody knows the real story. / nobody has ever heard my side of the story. / You can call me . . . / this whole (. . .) thing / it’s all wrong. / it’s not my fault / That’s just the way we are. / But like I was saying. / This is the real story. / Once upon a time / I ran out of sugar. / I went next door / Can you believe it? / I mean / who in his right mind would (. . .)? / are you in? / I was just about to go home / I felt a sneeze coming on. / And you know what? / dead as a doornail. / It seemed like a shame / I was feeling a little better. / you’re not going to believe it / Wolf ’s honour. / the brains of the family / No answer. / Get out of here / Don’t bother me / Talk about impolite! / What a pig! I was just about to / I go a little crazy. / I was making a real scene. / The rest is history. / they jazzed up the story. / That’s it. / I was framed.

This rich use of formulaic sequences – that second language learners will also acquire whole if there are sufficiently frequent retellings or re-readings of the story – may well be an attempt on the part of the narrator to manipulate the reader/listener. This is ironic, because the pictures give away the wolf ’s duplicitous intentions, as noted earlier. Alison Wray writes on the use of formulaic sequences: Although the speaker’s capacity to direct the hearer into formulaic decoding might seem altruistic, in fact it promotes the speaker’s own interests. By choosing formulations for which the hearer is likely to have holistic lexical representations, complete with pragmatic and cultural associations, the speaker can exercise control over how the hearer interprets what is said, and minimize the chances of a different interpretation from the intended one. In short, MEUs offer a means for the speaker to influence the thoughts of the hearer, and in this way they can be viewed as one of several solutions to a non-linguistic problem: how to get what you want. (Wray 2008: 20–1)

Literary texts for children such as folk tales and nursery rhymes form part of the memory of a speech community. ‘More than any other text, it is said, the piece of literary prose or poetry appeals to the students’ emotions, grabs their interest, remains in their memory and makes them partake in the memory of another speech community’ (Kramsch 1993: 130). The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf teaches how multi-layered the memory of a speech community is, including traditional stories, formulaic language and familiarity with archetypes, upon which the irony rests in this particular book.

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Student teachers can be invited to briefly tell the traditional folk tale ‘The Three Little Pigs’. The student teachers then listen to the story, while examining the pictures. The following tasks can be given to the students, divided into four groups, to work on while listening, and after listening: ●●

●●

●●

●●

Group one tries to identify and write down formulaic sequences. Group two collects signs in the illustrations that suggest that this is a biased version of the traditional tale. Group three creates a design for the title page. Group four prepares and delivers a dramatic reading of the traditional refrain of The Three Little Pigs, which forms part of the memory of the English-speaking community in a very literal sense. They should work on enunciating clearly (e.g. will  infinitive, ‘Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down’): The Big Bad Wolf knocked on the door: ‘Little pig, little pig, please let me come in!’ Little Pig answered: ‘No, no, no, I won’t let you in, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin!’ ‘Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!’ So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down and ate up the little pig.

Teachers do need to rehearse speaking clearly yet fluently. Even frequently occurring sequences and patterns such as ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff ’ (further examples: He’ll come and he’ll go / I’ll work and I’ll work) are easily missed by language learners, as the ability to discriminate sounds in a second language is much less sensitive than in the first, where the system was primed at infancy, when the neural ‘stuff ’ was at its most plastic. Because so many grammatical distinctions such as verb endings; auxiliaries; articles and prepositions are phonologically reduced in naturally occurring talk, it is often difficult to pick them out. (Thornbury 2008: N/A)

Creative writing assignments could be ●●

●●

●●

Retell the story as the pigs’ mother; Retell the story as the wolf ’s granny; Organize a press conference with the third little pig.

The aim is for the student teachers to become acquainted with a complex picturebook as both a literary and a cultural text. The emotional resonances of story, which include conflict, tension and resolution, combined with the aesthetic pleasure in verbal and visual text and intellectual satisfaction when the story is

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narrated from a different point of view, allow the cultural, literary and language input to become both more easily demonstrable and more easily memorable. In this chapter I have suggested three stepping-stones to literary literacy: engaged reading, participatory reading and reading against the text. These will be taken up again in later chapters. I have argued that postmodern texts, specifically fairy tales, can support student empowerment in the EFL-literature classroom by helping to explode certain metanarratives, including the convention that there is a definitive canon of literature.

Note 1 Figures 4.3 and 4.4 show data I collected in February 2007 during an action research project in a primary school in Essen, Germany, with 14 children aged between 6 and 8, who did not yet have English as part of their regular curriculum.

5

The Poetry of Children’s Literature and Creative Writing

The previous chapter examined uses of fairy tales, which derive originally from oral culture, for meaningful literary literacy in the EFL-literature classroom. In this chapter, I argue that the playful language of children’s culture, which includes children’s literature, is a challenge to perceived language/literature and oracy/literacy dichotomies. I demonstrate the ludic quality of children’s literature, drawing examples from narrative texts, picturebooks, poetry and nursery rhymes. The critical investigation of language in children’s culture suggests a wide relevance for the EFL-literature classroom, from scaffolding in classroom discourse, to the performance of identity, to the lyrical, indeterminate writing style of radical children’s literature as a non-patriarchal and empowering discourse. My study includes creative writing and creative oracy with ongoing nonnative speaker (NNS) teachers both as themselves advanced learners and as apprentice teachers of children and teenagers: Young learners see teachers as their models, so, teachers themselves must be prepared to experiment with creative experiences and have the chance to demonstrate the courage of being creative, of feeling what it is like to go through the creative process and the associated difficulties. (Fleta and García 2013: 197)

The early language of childhood and above all children’s literature is repetitive and playful, and in this sense closer to poetry than to information texts (Rosenblatt 1982: 271), as repetition is atypical in non-literary discourse (Toolan 2008). Yet, what exactly is non-literary discourse? Geoff Hall calls ‘literariness’ a matter of degree rather than kind: ‘Literature is made of, from and with ordinary language, which is itself already surprisingly literary’ (Hall 2005: 10). Important though verbal instructions are for children, such as how to bake a cake or craft a Christmas angel, children’s literature has exceptional advantages both for second

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language acquisition due to its closeness to children’s oral culture and for literary literacy due to its closeness to adult literature, which also profits from the power of repetition. According to Ellis, language learning is characterized by ‘Mindful repetition in an engaging communicative context by motivated learners’ (Ellis 2002: 177, emphasis in the original). Cook (1997: 230) concludes that with ‘literature, more than any other discourse, we see the fallacy of positing attention to form and to meaning as alternatives’. Thus literature, being highly patterned, should be linked to language learning: So one answer to the recurrent questions ‘what makes literature literature?’ and ‘What is fundamental to the poetics of literature?’ is, I believe, that literature exploits and privileges repetition – kinds of repetition, or repetitions with kinds of difference, but repetitions all the same. I think it is not difficult to characterize many literary schemes and tropes, for example, as forms of repetition: rhyme as partial phonic repetition, rhythm and metre as repetition of pulse or beat, assonance and alliteration as consonantal and vocalic repetition, and so on. (Toolan 2008: 3)

The continuum from children’s oral culture to children’s literature is manifested in the patterned language. Arizpe and Styles consider the oral dimension of children’s literature to be particularly undervalued, they include storytelling, poetry and drama when they state: ‘(c)hildren’s literature as a field of study is widely marginalized in academic circles, but certain aspects of it are doubly neglected, being less popular, less widely known and less highly regarded than other areas’ (Arizpe and Styles 2010: 126).

Children’s oral culture: A challenge to the language/literature dichotomy Children’s language play – their predilection for rhythm, rhyme and alliteration and (naughty) puns – reveals a love of language patterns. Rhythmical repetition attunes and emotionally involves the participants – involves them as chantlike child-directed speech does (the highly repetitive and patterned mother to infant discourse) and grips and engages them just as music can grip and engage the listener. Vigorous nursery rhymes, with their thumping, tapping and bouncing rhythms, abound in children’s culture. Patterns and pattern recognition are essential for the universal human activity of music: ‘Music is ubiquitous in human culture. We know of societies without writing, and even without visual art – but none, it seems, lack some form of music’ (Ball 2010: 2).

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Clearly, pattern  recognition is also essential for language acquisition and acquiring literacy: ‘There exists a close correlation between music and literacy since both of them help to train the brain to the rhythmical patterns and to the qualities of sound’ (Fleta and García 2013: 199). Playful language belongs to the ‘organic language’ of childhood (Ashton-Warner 1963), in that it grows out of the child’s own emotions and needs. The patterned nature of children’s culture can be exploited as an early step towards literary literacy: Rhyme and assonance give an almost spell-like authority (. . .) When swearing to the truth they will chant, with hands crossed over heart, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. Drop down dead if I tell a lie’. (. . .) And even the quick-fire exclamations needed for claiming something found are often thought to need the reinforcement of rhyme: ‘Finders keepers, Losers weepers!’ (Opie 1996: 281–2)

Nursery rhymes are traditionally associated with song, with vibrant rhythms, with lively illustrations, with comic, familiar characters and absurd, topsy-turvy meanings. With their vivid characterization, they aid visualization of language, and empowerment with regard to the students’ own linguistic creativity. ‘Everyone, regardless of cognitive level, plays with language or responds to language play’ (Crystal 1996: 328). A wealth of creativity is to be found in the language that belongs to the ‘public domain’ of childhood: playground lore, chants and nonsense, counting out, skipping and clapping songs, jokes and rhythmical riddling, the ever-popular alliterative tongue-twister and the pitter-patter of much childhood repartee (Opie 1996; Opie and Opie 2001). David Crystal refers to the skill of reading when he writes: ‘If language play is the normal perspective for pre-school children, how far will the lack of this perspective become a barrier, as they try to acquire another skill?’ (Crystal 1996: 338). Crystal goes on to comment on mother-tongue school reading: ‘the world of formal reading is one where language play is conspicuous by its absence’ (Crystal 1996: 340). In his monograph, Language Play, he argues that the playful or ludic function is central to language and ‘should be at the heart of any thinking we do about linguistic issues’ (Crystal 1998: 1). An extremely significant observation in the context of L2 acquisition is that the ‘delight in rhyming (. . .) seems to peak at around age eight’ (Crystal 1998: 172), the age at which EFL now begins in many contexts worldwide. Functional literacy, learning to read and write, has been shown to be supported by the mnemonic patterning of children’s culture, such as the pulsating repetition of strong rhythm and rhyme, onomatopoeia with its echoes from the outside world, the vowel and the consonant repetition of assonance and alliteration. Longitudinal studies have shown that informal experience of

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linguistic routines, such as singing and chanting nursery rhymes in the nursery school, plays a strong role in preparing children for reading and writing (Bryant et al. 1989, 1990), by developing children’s phonological sensitivity and drawing attention to the recurrence of patterns. The musicality of proverbs and familiar sayings implies a linguistic creativity in adults as well as in children. Adults also show their pleasure in language play, for example while chanting in unison at sport events. The potentially hypnotic effect of rhythmical repetition is well known: it creates group identity, shared social experience, a sense of security and strength in numbers, motivation and a sensuous pleasure in words and rhythm. Ronald Carter considers that ‘creativity is a pervasive feature of spoken language exchanges as well as a key component in interpersonal communication, and that it is a property actively possessed by all speakers and listeners; it is not simply the domain of a few creatively gifted individuals’ (Carter 2004: 6); he concludes ‘linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people’ (Carter 2004: 13). When listening to the playful language of young children’s private speech, it becomes clear that creativity is also a property of intrapersonal communication. Carter even wonders whether ‘creative language may be a default condition, a norm of use from which ordinary, routine “non-creative” exchanges constitute an abnormal departure’ (Carter 2004: 214). Popular sayings and proverbs were not invented by poets, but have come about through generations of collected wisdom, sharing in a sense of identity, and sharing in the fun of language, such as: ‘Seeing is believing’, ‘Easy come, easy go’, ‘No pain, no gain’, ‘Practice makes perfect’, ‘Health is better than wealth’, ‘When the cat’s away the mice will play’, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and ‘Better safe than sorry’. Similarly, authentic family ritual sayings are made memorable by parallelisms and rhyme; the rituals and repetitions help children discover patterns and follow familiar procedures: Good night. Sleep tight. I spy with my little eye . . . Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Off we go, buffalo. See you later, alligator. See you soon, big baboon. I’m the king of the castle. Get down you dirty rascal!

The ever popular ‘I’m the king of the castle’, with which children dare their friends to pull them down from a wall, log or any other height, may be two millennia old. A Latin version is quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Opie 1951: 254).

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There are many examples of every-day discourse that is rich in alliteration and onomatopoeia, such as the pitter-patter of the rain, a party singsong, sizzling sausages, a zigzag of lightning, the creepy crawlies and the wiggly worms in our gardens. Thus, iconicity is fundamental to the nature of children’s culture and literature: both visual iconicity in the form of pictures and aural iconicity in the form of onomatopoeia, which refers to the sound resembling the meaning. In addition, children make use of their linguistic creativity to enter into and create mental models of stories told or read aloud to them by adults, which aid them in the creation of their own make-believe worlds: ‘literary texts are part of pleasurable games of the imagination, where children enjoy creating verbal associations which become the foundation for imaginary stories. The pleasure of reading is closely related to the pleasures of creating’ (Schofer 2004: 389). As young children are extremely busy acquiring language, it is not surprising that they love to play with it, the principle of ‘play as practice’ is clearly upheld. Nodelman and Reimer, referring to Barthes’ influential differentiation of the pleasure of literature into jouissance and plaisir (Barthes 1975: 14), have comprehensively listed 22 pleasures. I would argue that their first two are closely related to oral literature when delivered with musicality: ●●

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The pleasure of experiencing sounds and images in and for themselves – as pure sensory activity outside and beyond the realm of shared meanings and patterns. This is the essence of jouissance – bodily pleasure. The pleasure of words themselves – the patterns their sounds can make, the interesting ways in which they combine with one another, their ability to express revealing, frightening, or beautiful pictures or ideas. This is the point at which jouissance begins to shift into plaisir. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 25)

Experienced primary-school teachers use percussion instruments such as drums or a triangle to add rhythm and ritual to their language class, to accentuate their lessons, engage their students and mark class conventions. A study of the percussive rhythms of children’s culture suggests many reasons to emulate rhythmical linguistic creativity in the EFL classroom. There are examples of playful language, such as rhymes and songs, to be found in most teaching materials for young language learners. However, playful language is very far from being the ‘default condition’ in the functional communicative classroom with children and

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teenagers. Unfortunately, still the majority of graded readers published for use in the primary and lower secondary EFL classroom are singularly lacking in pulsating, rhythmical language, cohesive ties such as marked lexical repetition and idiomatic formulaic sequences, such as How are things? and Have a go!

The phonological level of language play Children’s oral culture is particularly supportive of L2 acquisition on the phonological level. It is extremely common to hear NNS of English using the present tense when a native speaker would use the modal verb ‘will’. Examples of native-speaker usage: ‘There’s a knock. I’ll open the door.’ ‘The phone’s ringing. I’ll answer the phone.’ NNS English teachers may have an excellent explicit metalinguistic knowledge of the target language. However, it is also important for teachers to manage phonological features such as final consonant links if language learners are to accurately discriminate the sounds and notice the modal verb: ‘Before a word-initial vowel, a word-final consonant tends to be carried over to become the onset of the following syllable’ (Cass 2004: 29). Thus, in these examples, a native speaker would link the words and say: I’ll open the door; I’ll answer the phone. Linking can be effectively practised with rhymes: Here am I, Little jumping Joan; When nobody’s with me I’m all alone. (anonymous)

The first line of this rhyme should be pronounced: Here [r]am I. This is because the silent end-position ‘r’ in here – in received pronunciation (RP) – is pronounced before a word starting with a vowel. The last line I’m all alone is spoken as I’mallalone. The word-final consonants ‘m’ and ‘l’ become the onset of the following syllables, which begin with a vowel. Fairy tales shape children’s early experience of language. In the recent past, whole scripts of animated films were written in rhyme. Here is an example from Disney’s ever-popular Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White speaks these lines in the scene when she is alone deep in the forest, having escaped unharmed from the hunter who had been instructed to kill her: I really feel quite happy now, I’m sure I’ll get along somehow.

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Everything’s going to be all right, But I do need a place to sleep at night. (Morey 1937)

No claim would be made for this as great literature, but it upholds the rhyming tradition of nursery rhymes, prolonged through children’s chanting culture, which can be overheard in ‘the park, or the playground, or wherever children find themselves in groups’ (Crystal 1998: 173). On the phonological level, traditional fairy-tale refrains and other rhymes help language learners acquire connected speech. Graham Cass refers to students of English in Germany when he writes: ‘Without any doubt, the two key areas which require attention if learners are to produce fluent, natural speech are vowel weakening and linking’ (Cass 2004: 28). The well-known traditional fairy tale ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ includes the following memorable refrain, which echoes gigantically in the collective memory of the English-language speech community: Fee, fi, fo, fum I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!

This refrain can support language learners in learning to link for fluency: the final consonant of alive, ‘v’, is pronounced as the onset of or in line 3, and the final consonant of grind, ‘d’, is spoken as the onset of his (most RP speakers would drop the ‘h’ in his). Vowel weakening takes place in line 2, a native speaker would usually use the schwa vowel [ә] four times in this line: ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman’(the schwa is underlined). An Oxford University Press graded reader has abbreviated the traditional ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ refrain to ‘Fee! fi! fo! foy! I can smell a little boy!’ says the giant. (Arengo 2006)

This is intended to be a helpful simplification. However, the opportunities to practise connected speech are reduced, particularly the fum/Englishman halfrhyme is lost, which serves as an excellent reminder to reduce the vowel to Englishmәn. The parallelism of Be he alive, or be he dead is lost, which is not only a poetic, striking and therefore noticeable use of language, but also an excellent antidote to the habit of ‘simplifying’ a sentence such as the princess is asleep to the princess is sleeping. In  all authentic poetic, dramatic or narrative language, the adjectives asleep, awake and alive are repeatedly to be met, as they are, of course, in every-day discourse. It is quite simply impossible to change all

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occurrences of asleep, awake and alive to sleeping, waking and living. Moreover, this would produce unnatural and ill-formed language, such as ‘The beautiful princess is sleeping but the handsome prince is waking [sic]’. In the original ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum’ refrain we have a strong and forceful rhythm, worthy of a fearsome giant. The words added in the graded reader, ‘says the giant’, being redundant, are not allowed to spoil the dramatic effect in the traditional refrain. Of course, it is not only the pounding, booming rhythm that works as an effective mnemonic, but it is also the blood-thirsty language. The graded reader reformulation, ‘I can smell a little boy’, suggests that the hero Jack is a harmless boy and a little one at that. The adapted line cannot possibly compete in memorability with the horrifically thrilling ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman’ and ‘I’ll grind his bones to make my bread’. As rhyme and rhythm alone are not enough to make language memorable, the next section considers the semantic level of language play and the significance of meaning and nonsense.

The semantic level of language play Nobody who has ever listened to the gobbledygook of children’s playground games could imagine that total comprehension is a major criterion for children in their choice of language. Children actively seek opportunities to advance their understanding of the world, to create and dally with meanings, to appreciate and learn about order while they flirt with disorder and anarchy; the serous work of children’s play and private speech must not be belittled and underestimated. Children need to learn to fit in; therefore, they need to turn things upside down, back to front, topsy-turvy and inside out. They play with their position as misfits, and thoroughly enjoy rhymes such as One fine day in the middle of the night Two dead men got up to fight. A blind man came to see fair play, A dumb man came to shout hurray. (anonymous)

Nonsense literature is extravagant and can be subversive, this is very appealing to children who are always being told what to do and need to test the boundaries. Nonsense literature is outlandish and implausible, thus exercising the imagination. I argue this can be considered as early seeds of originality; to Attridge, originality is to be placed above creativity in a hierarchy of artistic engagement that reaches its zenith with invention (Attridge 2004: 35). There is much creative potential in nonsensical nursery rhymes, and we find them

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generously distributed as intertexts in children’s literature. This intertextuality is an example of how repetition may also be original; in addition, the larger-thanlife characters become lifelong friends and the rhythms become enduringly familiar melodies. Hey diddle, diddle! The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

This favourite nursery rhyme succeeds, in its few brief catchy lines with a total of 30 words, to create not only a vivacious personification of the animals, the musical cat, sportive cow and the humorous dog, but also invites the listener to infer amorous qualities to the personified dish and the spoon. Illustrators invariably depict them as running away hand in hand, and the moon is traditionally given a laughing face. Personification is a potent tool in literature for the young: the inexplicable becomes explicable, emotional engagement is achieved and dreams come alive. Clearly, visualization, in the sense of mental images while listening or reading, is strongly supported, which is an important introduction to story. The humour of children’s culture and children’s literature is also seen as an empowering and meaningful element: The best antidote to the anxieties and disasters of life is laughter; and this chil­ dren seem to understand almost as soon as they are born. If laughter is lacking, they create it; if it is offered to them, they relish it. (Opie 1992: introduction)

An entire chapter, ‘The Dancing Cow’, in P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (1934) involves the story of the cow that jumped over the moon. Intertexuality is intertext repetition, whereby elements of children’s culture are repeated in later texts, creating an echo effect. The recent Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen, has created his own version of ‘Hey diddle diddle’, which is identical to the traditional rhyme except for the last line: ‘And the dish ran away with the chocolate biscuits’ (Rosen 2000: 10). This is an invitation and challenge to young readers to make up their own final line, for example: ‘And the dish ran away with the jar of honey/And the dish ran away with the wobbly jelly/And the dish ran away with the strawberry tart’. Or the young writers may be invited to find an alternative rhyming word: ‘And the dish ran away with the raccoon/baboon/with a balloon/in the afternoon’.

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The British Guyanese poet Grace Nichols has re-written many of the most popular nursery rhymes, including ‘Hey diddle diddle’: Hey diddle diddle the cat’s on my middle and my grandma’s in the kitchen with the spoons. (. . .) (Nichols 1997, unpaginated)

In her poem, Nichols transforms the world of nonsense into a contemporary homely scene. The spoons are real and the moon is to be gazed at, not jumped over; the personification has disappeared. The fiddle is included figuratively in the idiomatic expression ‘she doesn’t give a fiddle’; while the lazy, possessive and obstinate cat is vividly realistic. Yet the allusion to the nursery rhyme, which would have been well known to Nichols through her Caribbean schooling, is still strong. This is largely due to the multiple rhyming: diddle, middle, twiddle, middle, fiddle. The rhyme ‘Hey diddle diddle’ can be met yet again as one of the several storyworlds that are interwoven in the postmodern picturebook The Three Pigs (Wiesner 2001), as described in Chapter 4. With Wiesner’s picturebook, an eccentric and extraordinary work of children’s literature, the culmination of creativity according to Attridge – invention – has, I suggest, been achieved. The Opies have commented on the tremendous range of the playground rhyming material they have collected as follows: ‘Rhyme seems to appeal to a child as something funny and remarkable in itself, there need be neither wit not reason to support it’ (Opie and Opie 2001: 17) and ‘Another effect of the emphatic syllables is to implant the rhythms of the English language in minds too young to understand all the words’ (Opie 1996: 178). This suggests that the semantic level of children’s oral culture may be less important than the phonological level, at least with regard to young children and the youngest language learners. The following anecdote, written by applied linguist Dave Willis in response to a paper I presented at the IATEFL international annual conference in Harrogate 2010, seems to support this view: Children make their own sense of what they hear, including what they hear in their mother tongue, I can remember our two daughters aged about five and three arguing about the second line of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, following the opening ‘If you go down in the woods today’ and leading on to the gathering of all the bears. The older one heard it as ‘You’d better go in the skies’ – presumably to avoid being ambushed by the bears on the ground. The younger one heard it as ‘You’d better grow into size’ – so that you would be big enough to handle any trouble from the bears. The actual line is, of course, ‘You’d better go in disguise’.

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The word ‘disguise’ was probably beyond them, but that didn’t get in the way of their enjoyment. This little anecdote made me wonder just how much children do ‘understand’ and how much they fill the gaps with their own ingenuity. (Willis 2010: iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-10/linguistic-creativitytraining-–-something-english-teachers-need)

Willis refers to how children ‘fill the gaps with their own ingenuity’; children do this and must do this to learn. The tremendous challenge for language teaching is to keep children inferring and experimenting and not being taught to expect absolute meanings either with language or with literary texts. The exact words the two young girls used show how they recognized the pattern – their invented rhyme words ‘skies’ and ‘size’ to rhyme with ‘You’re sure of a big surprise’, the previous line of the song, shows the motivational power of a teddy bear adventure story set to catchy music. Cook describes this as a friendly frame of sound: ‘Young children tolerate imprecise meanings because language hangs in a friendly frame of sound – rhymed rhythmic verse, or the continuing sound of the adult storytelling voice reading to them’ (Cook 1997: 229). I next consider how this desire for pattern can be mapped onto the second language lesson with the aid of children’s literature.

Language patterning in children’s literature: The form/meaning dichotomy The language patterning of children’s literature offers literary literacy potential as well as language acquisition affordances, which should be taken into consideration in tertiary, secondary and primary education sectors. Ongoing teachers of young learners are usually highly creative individuals, which they show in the contextualization they use in teaching practice: scaffolding such as gestures, mime and facial expressions, creation of pictures and puppets, choice of sound effects and realia. But the scaffolding does not reliably extend to the classroom discourse ongoing teachers initiate and maintain, as Thornbury indicates: The average classroom L2 learner will experience nothing like the quantity nor the quality of exposure that the L1 infant receives (. . .) Moreover, the input that infants receive is tailored to their immediate needs – it is interactive, and it is often highly repetitive and patterned – all qualities that provide optimal conditions for learning. (Thornbury 2002: 20)

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Inexperienced teachers lack a repertoire of ritualized language. This is a disadvantage – it is claimed that ‘Ritualised language and routines can (. . .) be seen as scaffolds’ (Weitz et al. 2010: 15). NNS teachers have particular difficulty in using patterned language, similar to child-directed speech, in an impromptu yet cunningly regulated way. That is, they lack practice in spontaneously inventing chant-like language to support the emerging second language. In teacher education courses, children’s and young adult literature can help student teachers discover the cohesive webbing of words and the repetitive principle exemplified by literary texts. Student teachers can be encouraged to employ patterns in their own creative writing and story telling, through which they gain an insight into what scaffolded classroom discourse could be like: with far more online linking to previous utterances than in everyday discourse outside the classroom. The study of the language of children’s literature in teacher education may consciously liberate teachers from the school or patriarchal culture of privileging the development of ‘masculine language’: analytical, referential communication (see Lacan’s ‘the Law of the Father’), and rather help teachers discover ways to enhance the input and ‘the delicate tension between reproduction and invention’ (Rosen 1988: 20). Re-formulations in literature are far more than mere duplications of language: they are a powerful means of foregrounding language. I argue that NNS students in teacher education can most fully understand and grasp the power of repetition through their own efforts in creative writing, including the important concept of aural iconicity (Wales 1989: 226), when the sound resembles the meaning (a dramatic example of this follows: when Hughes’ The Iron Man topples down the cliff face). It is my belief that a study of children’s literature in teacher education may convince student teachers to attend not only to what they say as teachers, but particularly to how they say it. Furthermore, I argue that the study of children’s literature in the primary and secondary sectors creates rich affordances for children to notice language patterns through the generously patterned texts. The cohesive ties of children’s literature, whether lexical repetitions, syntactic or phonological patterns, aid comprehension and intratextual attentiveness. Literary repetitions can encourage mental activity and support children in creating a network of associations widely considered as essential for deep processing and long-term retention (Kersten 2010). Thornbury (2002: 24–6) claims that imaging, cognitive depth and affective depth are significant factors for moving language material into permanent long-term memory. These factors are particularly relevant for  the

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EFL-literature classroom. Creating a mental image is encouraged by literary texts, for example a picture in the mind of ‘the cow jumped over the moon’; cognitive depth is encouraged, for example by recognizing the repetition of ‘the cow jumped over the moon’ as a theme in various intertexts; and affective depth is encouraged, for example when ‘the cow jumped over the moon’ is experienced as a delightful idea. Michael Toolan defines an external and internal repetitive principle in literature: The paradox of the singularity and uniqueness of literary works is that (.  .  .) repetition is crucial to them in at least two senses. The ‘external’ sense in which repetition is crucial to them is that, more than any other kind of text, the literary text bears repetition (re-reading, performing again, reinterpreting, intertextual uptake in other works), without wearing out. The ‘internal’ sense (. . .) is that the literary text tends to exploit, within itself, more kinds of more repetition than any other kind of text known to me. It does not do the latter only, of course: a literary text has to ‘say something’, project an idea or a picture, as it were. But even in its invention, the literary text is oriented to repetition – e.g., to inventively casting a following phrase or line as echoically linkable to a previous one, thereby achieving (over and over again) a focussing and depth of texture again atypical in nonliterary discourse. (Toolan 2008: 4)

Language patterning supplies connectedness, coherence and intense focus; it is very often used as a marked cohesive device in oratory, linking new ideas to previous ones. Despite the vital importance of multiple exposures to new language material, language teachers are often far too uneasy, anxious or even suspicious with regard to repetition. And yet, nobody doubts the rhetorical effectiveness of repetition in ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day’, and the rhythmical intensity it lends to Macbeth’s dread torpor as he feels the clock ticking inexorably towards his own death. The conventional EFL-literature classroom will examine literary texts in order to discover literary ways of extending meanings, such as metaphors, similes, personification and hyperbole. However, inventive repetition is the literary feature that is the most prominent in young children’s literature: the enlivening effect of anaphora, parallelisms and rhetorical questions and the  impact of playing with sounds such as alliteration and onomatopoeia. I will now show that repetition is also the most helpful discourse feature that literature offers second language learners – 1. for dramatic emphasis, 2. for humour, 3. for pleasure in patterns, 4. to intensify the theme and 5. to contribute rhythm and rhetorical energy.

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Language patterning for dramatic emphasis Dramatic emphasis is vital in many literary texts as well as in oratory. It is crucial for lively, salient classroom discourse and a significant category of input enhancement (Sharwood Smith 1993). Dramatic emphasis will help children notice and eventually acquire language, particularly through: ●●

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an impressive first meeting an intense emotional quality sense involvement phonological intensity.

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate until his death in  1998, uses language patterning, visual iconicity (here: layout and uppercase font) and aural iconicity for dramatic emphasis extremely effectively in his tale for children, The Iron Man: He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted – up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness. CRRRAAAASSSSSSH! Down the cliff the Iron Man came toppling, head over heels. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! From rock to rock, snag to snag, tumbling slowly. And as he crashed and crashed and crashed His iron legs fell off. His iron arms broke off, and the hands broke off the arms. His great iron ears fell off and his eyes fell out. His great iron head fell off. All the separate pieces tumbled, scattered, crashing, bumping, clanging, down on to the rocky beach far below. A few rocks tumbled with him. Then Silence. (Hughes 1968/2005: 2–3)

The repetition Hughes employs emphasizes and echoes how the gigantic iron creature bounces and bumps from rock to rock down the face of the cliff. If language learners have never before encountered the lexical items ‘fell off ’ and ‘broke off ’, they would have a good chance of acquiring them through

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this impressive first meeting. This tour de force of story telling illustrates the effectiveness of sound images. Students can try writing a noisy fall, such as that of the Iron Man, stretching their lexical creativity, even inventing noise words, such as ‘The rumbling, rattling, smashing, screeching, thundering, thudding, thumping, bumping, bashing, booming, whooshing, whopping, walloping, clanging, cracking, clashing, clattering and exploding crash from the cliff top’ (invented example). As a literary work, The Iron Man relies heavily on language patterning. The theme of the story is that violence breeds violence; I suggest it would be unconvincingly didactic without the powerful and poetic language. Hughes creates cohesion with the rhythm of his language, for example, the focused repetitions in the extract quoted include: his enormous iron right foot/his iron legs/his iron arms/his great iron ears and his great iron head. The characterization of the Iron Man is indeterminate in the extreme; the questions posed at the beginning of the story are never answered: The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where had he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. (Hughes 1968: 2)

This creates a mystery around him; his characterization is fragmentary yet mythopoeic. Using a present tense in a story told in the past is an absolute exception that proves the rule, as demonstrated here by the poet laureate Hughes. The Iron Man is conventionally narrated throughout in the past tense, including, of course, the perfect and progressive aspects of the past (past perfect and past progressive), except for the mystifying ‘Nobody knows’ (Hughes 1968: 2) at the very beginning of the tale. NNS student teachers practising creative writing in Germany often try to write stories in the present tense, because they are used to writing summaries repeatedly at school. This is, however, both more difficult due to a complex combination of tense and aspect then required and far less authentic than writing narrative in the past tense. When writing a story in the past tense, it is not too difficult for students to remember that the perfect and progressive aspect of the present (present perfect and present progressive) must never be used, or any form of present tense – except, of course, in dialogue. This simple rule – narrative is written in the past – should be introduced in the secondary school for story writing, as it helps students focus on correctly combining past, past perfect and past progressive in narrative. Most importantly, this rule helps students truly

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understand that the present perfect is an aspect of the present tense, and does not belong in story telling. In the spellbinding narration that follows the Iron Man’s devastating crash from the cliff top, he is able to reconstruct himself, body part by body part, on the beach. There is an emphasis on sound effects, a phonological intensity that helps create an impressive setting with intense sense involvement, all of which can arouse the readers’ or listeners’ attention to the language as well as the meaning, and creates rich amplification through simplification. Student teachers can practise creating language patterns for dramatic emphasis in their own narrative writing.1 The following example shows lexical links across sentences that give the extract successful cohesion: repetition of ‘old’, alliteration: ‘humungous hill’, ‘criss-cross corridors’ and anaphora: four sentences beginning with ‘It was . . .’ . It also shows sense involvement: ‘freezing cold’ and ‘smelled mouldy and damp’; and intense emotional quality: ‘very ghastly, almost spine-chilling’: Many years ago in a far off kingdom there was a very massive, old castle. It was older than your great grandparents. It was as old as the humungous hill on which it stood. It was made of big, grey bricks and full of criss-cross corridors that were freezing cold. They smelled mouldy and damp. It was very ghastly, almost spine-chilling  .  .  .  (Alexandra Helbing, Creative Reading and Writing Course 2009/10)

The teacher in the language classroom should provide aspects of dramatic emphasis, which can be coached in teacher education, such as multiple exposures to new language and phonological intensity. If, for example, there is an angry man in a story or textbook for young learners, student teachers can practise playful circumlocution – talking (and acting) around words: The man was angry, angry, angry! He was so angry his face turned red like a tomato. His face was shiny red, just like a red tomato! He stamped his foot. He was so angry he jumped up and down. He snorted like an angry bull. Grr-roar! He punched the air. He fizzed like a firework. Zzzzzz! He was so angry that he looked like he was going to explode! (invented example, first quoted in Bland 2010b: 342)

Feelings and emotions are very suitable for rehearsing circumlocution in groups: ‘She was miserable’/‘He was curious’/‘I was exhausted’/‘We were frightened’/‘They were ashamed’. After several minutes to make notes, each group enacts their prepared circumlocution around their chosen feeling, but must not read from their script. Teacher education must above all encourage ongoing teachers to

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work carefully on adjusting their classroom discourse to their audience. Different age groups and different topics require different rhetorical choices: the expert’s contributions to the dialogue should be contingently responsive to the needs of the learner, as these needs are understood in the light of the immediate situation as well as of the longer-term goals of education. To date, there has been little mention of this important characteristic of interaction in discussions of teacher-student talk (. . .). (Chang and Wells 1988: 97)

Expertly written children’s literature can be highly impressive due to the aesthetic of language. The following extract from Philip Pullman’s The Firework-Maker’s Daughter is intensely emotionally focused. The protagonist Lila, a young girl who wishes to become a Firework-Maker, is in deathly earnest in her intention to reach the Grotto of Razvani, the great Fire-Fiend. However, there are many stones in her path, both metaphorically and literally: On she climbed, higher and higher. Before long she came to a part of the slope where the stones were loose, and where she slid back two steps for every three she took upwards. Her feet and legs were bruised and battered, and then she lost her other sandal; and she nearly cried out in despair, because there was no sign of the Grotto – just an endless slope of hot rough stones that tumbled and rolled underfoot. And her throat was parched and her lungs were panting in the hot air, and she fell to her knees and clung with trembling fingers as the stones began to roll under her again. She let go her little bag of food and her blanket; they didn’t matter any more; the only thing that mattered was climbing on. She dragged herself on bleeding knees up and up, until every muscle hurt, until she had no breath left in her lungs, until she thought she was going to die; and still she went on. (Pullman 1995: 68–9)

The many detailed sense images seem especially important for the reader’s emotional immersion; we are made to feel with Lila how the painful ascent of the volcano Mount Merapi batters and burns her feet, her legs, her throat, knees and fingers. Polysyndeton (repetition of conjunctions, a rhetorical device that children use in their own storytelling) emphasizes the inexorable painfulness of the climb: And her throat/and her lungs/and she fell . . . Finally the three-fold repetition of ‘until’ in the last sentence relentlessly builds up to the climax ‘and still she went on’. By choosing literary texts that are not beyond the linguistic abilities and schemata of our EFL learners, we do not block an important give-andtake in the learning process with language and literature: ‘By analyzing literary

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applications, learners enhance their understanding of language. Certainly, this give-and-take both profits from and intensifies the natural interdependence of language and literature’ (Barnett 1991: 9). The interdependence of form and meaning in literature is well identified by a student from the Creative Reading and Writing course, who posted the following review on Amazon.de: Firework-Maker’s Daughter (Philip Pullman 1995) A firework of fun, thrill and friendship, 29.09.2009, by Jens Aschenbrenner How to light a firework of fun, thrill and friendship? What happens if you augment the mixture with irony and humour? Will the applause be thunderous when a cheeky girl, a brave boy and a talking elephant take responsibility? Philip Pullman answers all these questions at one fell swoop. The plot itself is (nearly) classic story telling: a little girl sets off to become a firework maker and survives several adventures with the help of good friends. In the end, not only her own wish will be fulfilled. The author shows his inimitable sense of irony and humour. Once more he enables even adults to believe in speaking animals and wondrous incidents. I would recommend this story to all parents who want their children to become enthusiastic readers (. . .). (www.amazon.de/gp/pdp/profile/A1TYMLAHWK9FEQ/ref(cm_cr_rdp_ pdp)

The following observation is particularly true, and nonetheless neglected, for language learners still at school: ‘Memory of new words can be reinforced if they are used to express personally relevant meanings’ (Thornbury 2002: 30). Younger language learners cannot always express their ideas in words. Therefore, creative activities that call for a participatory reading of the text in order to express a student’s response partly in words, partly in artwork, are both suitable and motivating. Two examples of such artwork (created by advanced learners), combined with creative writing follow. The first example quoted develops a characterization of the Fire-Fiend and Lila by anti-thesis. The Fire-Fiend is ‘creepy’ and ‘death-bringing’, he pronounces ‘death-curses’ and his breath is ‘venomous’, whereas Lila is a ‘defenceless girl’. This is a reader-response interpretation of the scene, a creative and participatory retelling: Two creepy, death-bringing black eyes as dark as a starless night stared out of the heart of the burning flames. It was the Fire-Fiend himself. He attacked the defenceless girl with countless death-curses while his breath filled the air with thick, heavy and venomous smoke. All the hand shaped flames flickered around the Grotto’s master longing for every creature’s life. (Corinna Rochhausen 2010, see Figure 5.1)

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Figure 5.1  At the mouth of the grotto (Rochhausen et al.)

In the following example, Bode has changed the focalization in her creative writing. She has created a new point of view and supported the characterization through the thought report of the Fire-Fiend and his cruel observation of Lila’s predicament. At the same time, there is grim ironic humour in the alliteration of the name Fire-Fiend, and in Bode’s alliterative description: ‘He (. . .) let out a gruesome growl’. Safe in the knowledge that sooner or later the girl would give up, the Fire-Fiend observed each of her steps in silence. But as she walked on unwaveringly, climbing her way up the straining, steep and arduous path to the Grotto, his dead certainty slowly faded and flashed to anger. He decided that her time had come to prove herself worthy and let out a gruesome growl, making the mountain shake and tremble. Soon the first small stones and rocks were loosened and rapidly crashed down the path on which the girl was walking. She lost her balance, stumbled down and was battered by dozens of stones. He saw her face contorting with pain and waited eagerly for her to let out a cry full of suffering. (Annabell Bode 2012, see Figure 5.2)

Language patterning to provide humour Margaret Meek refers to Hughes’ The Iron Man when she observes ‘Young readers respond with pleasure to the compelling pace of the story and the

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Figure 5.2  Lila climbing up to the Fire-Fiend (Bode)

awesome clarity of the details. Critics seeking to define children’s literature are confronted by a paradigmatic instance of its complexity’ (Meek 2001: 375). A further element in the complex story is ironic humour, which is particularly expressed in the descriptions of an imperiously belligerent dragon from outer space, a ‘black flying horror’ as big as the whole of Australia: Next morning it landed – on Australia. Barrrump! The shock of its landing rolled round the earth like an earthquake, spilling teacups in London, jolting pictures off walls in California, cracking statues off their pedestals in Russia. (Hughes 1968/2005: 41)

When asking student teachers who have read Hughes’ The Iron Man, but are unpractised in creative writing, to describe the dragon (without referring again to the text), I am generally offered terse descriptions with adjectives in pairs: ‘The dragon is black and huge’/‘It is an enormous and dangerous dragon’. As such utterances lack a melodic pattern, the language is difficult for children to ‘notice’, and deep processing is not supported. The language employed by Hughes to describe the dragon is extremely patterned, in an unusual but very simple way, and therefore most suitable to emulate for a humorous and memorable effect, as well as an excellent example of the use of an intensifier: ‘Terribly

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black, terribly scaly, terribly knobbly, terribly horned, terribly hairy, terribly clawed, terribly fanged, with vast indescribably terrible eyes, each one as big as Switzerland’ (Hughes 1968: 41). This same language pattern could be used in a fairy tale retelling, for example, to describe the gifts Sleeping Beauty receives at her Christening Party (illustrated with empty speech bubbles in Figure 5.3): ‘She will be terribly beautiful. She will be terribly good. She will be terribly happy. She will be terribly clever. She will be terribly artistic. She will be terribly rich . . .’ It is extremely difficult for NNS teachers to provide language patterns ‘on-line’ or unscripted, but practice and an understanding of the need – in order to achieve a network of associations around new lexical items and chunks – have been shown to help. Even inventing the simplest repetitions such as anaphora requires practice. Referring again to Sleeping Beauty, for example, anaphoric repetition

Figure 5.3  Page 4 from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in Fairy Tales by Janice Bland © (2008), illustrated by Elisabeth Lottermoser © (2008). Reproduced by permission of Schulbuchverlage Westermann, Braunschweig Germany

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could be: ‘My gift for the baby princess is great beauty’, ‘My gift for the baby princess is great goodness’ and ‘My gift for the baby princess is great happiness’. Alternatively, personification can be practised: I give to you the loveliness of the setting sun. I give to you the wisdom of the honourable owl. I give to you the strength of the tallest tree. I give to you the patience of the mighty mountains. I give to you the health of the fresh fountain. I give to you the happiness of the small squirrel. (Anika Hendrich, Creative Reading and Writing Course 2011)

Not only does this help students to ‘notice’ language, but it also accords with the ‘child’s affinity for the aesthetic stance’ (Rosenblatt 1982: 272).

Language patterning for pleasure in patterns Children who are at the beginnings of literacy (5- to 9-year-olds) are usually still involved in a thriving oral culture: At this stage in their lives they seem particularly receptive to the highly structured and rule-governed oral activity of these highly textured rhymes which play with language in formulaic ways. All the games are emotionally charged involving elaborate dramatic routines in which the text controls the players. (Grugeon 1988: 167)

Children’s counting-out or ‘dipping’ rhymes can be an ideal model for ritualiz­ ing some of the classroom discourse, where the children themselves will insist on the exact wording of the text as well as the exact observation of the ritual (van Peer 1988). Children engage in the same dipping rhyme over and over again, without any apparent sign of becoming bored – they may, on the contrary, be seen to enjoy the performance; we can be pretty certain, therefore, that they take part in the ritual for the pure delight of doing so. (.  .  .) First, there is the highly patterned structure of the text and the ritualised procedure of execution. As with certain ‘literary’ constructs which give delight, rhyme, rhythm and metre all contribute to the musical qualities of the text and may be enjoyed for their own sake. (van Peer 1988: 175)

It is pleasurable for children to chant dialogues rhythmically – one side of the  classroom answering the other side, the boys answering the girls or the

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8-year-olds answering the 9-year-olds – rehearsing language and dramatic routines with gestures and facial expression while participating in nonthreatening group interaction. Chanting dialogues with dramatic tension should be rehearsed during teacher education. For this, children’s playscripts, discussed in Chapter 6, are particularly useful. The refrains of fairy tales are seldom altered in the many retellings, as children derive pleasure from their reappearance in differing contexts. The familiar Little Red Riding Hood refrain illustrates a stock question-and-answer format, based on antithesis of ideas. The questions and answers are balanced, alliterative and idiomatic. In the version shown in Figure 5.4, the dialogue turn taking is emphasized through the use of speech balloons. This is child-centred; it is reading ‘in its social context; readers of comics swop them, act out the farces which they enjoy, and know that the

Figure 5.4  Page 10 from ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in Fairy Tales by Janice Bland © (2008), illustrated by Elisabeth Lottermoser © (2008). Reproduced by permission of Schulbuchverlage Westermann, Braunschweig Germany

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adults are in two minds about their worth’ (Meek 1988: 25–6). It is unfortunate that EFL publishers, who tend to the conventional, actively discourage the use of speech balloons and a type font that employs iconicity to suggest characterization visually, such as the Big Bad Wolf shouting out with his gruff voice. With regard to comics, perhaps they, or the teachers who select the books, are also ‘in two minds about their worth’. It is lamentable that iconic help in interpretation of character is denied to young EFL readers. According to empirical research with picturebooks, discussed in Chapter 4, already first-grade (NS) children find this support useful: ‘Thus, the children recognized the different fonts and most realized that the different fonts had significance with respect to communicating information about the characters’ (Pantaleo 2004: 225). Fairy tale characters have very memorable names; they are often alliterative like Little Red Riding Hood, involve an epithet, like Sleeping Beauty or both, like Big Bad Wolf. Reading and listening to fairy tales is facilitated by immediately recognizable recurrent plot patterns, such as the repetition in groups of three in many traditional tales, the last-minute rescue or love at first sight. All this belongs to children’s schemata and is therefore readily accessible. Few and excessive characteristics, such as the bigness and badness of the Big Bad Wolf, make archetypes or stock characters in fairy tales extremely easy to identify, and aid the creation of pleasurable mental models and recall. The tricolon or rhetorical rule of three can lead to effective and pleasurable impromptu classroom discourse, for example: ‘The princess was beautiful. The princess was beautiful and clever. The princess was beautiful, clever and had the warmest heart of all’. Three has always been a number with magical appeal. The rule of three is observed by Shakespeare: ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears’; by Tony Blair: ‘Education, Education, Education’; in advertising: ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’; in public announcements: ‘Stop, look and listen’; in proverbs: ‘If at first you don’t succeed try, try, try again’; in games: ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ and, of course, in children’s literature: ‘The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today’ (Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll). The power of the three-fold pattern may in part emanate from the magical triples of fairy tales and story telling, when tension is created, then expanded and at last resolved. It is easy for teachers to employ this effective rhetorical rule in classroom discourse, once they have understood its usefulness and how it echoes children’s oral culture: When Jill was little it was toys, toys, toys. Now Jill is a big girl it is boys, boys, boys. (anonymous)

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In picturebooks and other multimodal texts for children, the delight in patterns may be reflected both in language patterning and in a strongly patterned visual style. This is particularly the case with Fiona French’s picturebook Snow White in New York (1986). This is a postmodern retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, set in New York of the 1930s, thus the literary repetition is in the ‘external’ sense (Toolan 2008) of intertextual reinterpreting. The language is ironically patterned: ‘Once upon a time in New York there was a poor little rich girl called Snow White’. The tale alludes to the traditional fairy tale – Snow White’s stepmother ‘liked to see herself in the New York Mirror’ – while at the same time referring to the contemporary celebrity culture. However, the magic of the picturebook is largely due to French’s Art Deco illustrative style, which hyperbolically creates a New York high society gangster world, with the fairy-tale theme of jealousy and murder. Particularly, Snow White and her evil stepmother, the ‘Queen of the Underworld’, are characterized with the help of their glamorous Art Deco backgrounds. Snow White is portrayed before sweepingly curving symmetrical lines and in golden and pastel colours. The stepmother is portrayed before severely straight parallel lines, in black and deep, dark red. The stepmother is ‘mad with rage’ when her bodyguard fails to shoot Snow White, and decides to drop a poisoned cherry into Snow White’s cocktail glass herself. She hands the glass to Snow White ‘with a smile’. The verbal text is brief and uncomplicated. Students in the EFL-literature classroom would be able to read the picturebook after only a year or two of English, with the bonus that it serves as an introduction to New York’s most famous architectural style and most iconic skyscrapers of the 1930s. The chilling and silent moment of the poisoning is illustrated with the stepmother’s ill-intentioned hand in extreme close-up on the verso, and Snow White’s innocent hand reaching for the glass in extreme close-up on the recto. The wordless elegance of this moment of high drama is an invitation to students of all levels to create a thrilling text for this scene, as in the following vivid example of creative writing from an ongoing teacher: Snow White reached her hand expectantly towards the glass filled with the sweet poison. When her stepmother handed her the quick death in a glass it was an encounter of good and evil. Snow White’s hand was delicate, tender and soft. Her pale fingers of perfect shape and form looked as fragile and innocent as the hand of an angel itself. The way her perfectly aligned fingers moved closer to the glass gave her motion a gracefulness which seemed to be magical. The glass she was reaching for was a rather common cocktail glass. It held a clear blue liquid and a glowing red cherry bobbing on the surface. It looked like

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the setting sun over the ocean’s horizon. No one would have guessed that certain death was accompanied by such beauty. Only the stepmother’s hand, still carrying the cocktail, revealed a glimpse of the true nature of the deathly drink. It was a strong and firm hand with five solid fingers. Each of the long, sharp fingernails was painted in a dark red colour, the colour of fresh blood. (Raffael Haak, Creative Reading and Writing Course 2011)

As with many of the exemplars of children’s literature under discussion in this book, Snow White in New York can support the acquisition of literary literacy and language skills from beginner to advanced-learner level. Creative writing is a key tool in the acquisition of literary literacy at all levels: Creative writing also feeds into more creative reading. It is as if, by getting inside the process of creating the text, learners come to intuitively understand how such texts work, and this makes them easier to read. Likewise, the development of aesthetic reading skills provides the learner with a better understanding of textual construction, and this feeds into their writing. (Maley 2013: 164)

Exploiting language patterning to intensify the theme The previous section considered language patterning for pleasure in patterns. Although children of nursery-school age and younger are undoubtedly delighted by rhythm and rhyme as appealing and satisfying quite beyond any semantic significance, the children learning English holistically in the primary and lower secondary schools have the right to thoughtful as well as playful English classes. The question of content is crucial when we wish to follow all the learning goals, including educational goals, outlined in the various school curricula (e.g. in Germany) for English as a foreign language. This section examines how language patterning can support and intensify the theme and message. So, for example, Susan Laughs (Willis and Ross), on an extremely elementary level, uses rhythm and rhyme to support a message that is only revealed in the final picture, and not at all in the verbal text. There are just two words to each picture, showing Susan in action: Susan laughs, Susan sings, Susan flies, Susan swings. Susan’s good, Susan’s bad, Susan’s happy, Susan’s sad. Susan dances, Susan rides, Susan swims, Susan hides. (Willis and Ross 1999)

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Figure 5.5  From Susan Laughs by Jeanne Willis © (1999) and illustrated Tony Ross © (1999). Reprinted by permission of Andersen Press

Although the text of this picture book is extremely repetitive, it is not received as  boring or monotonous but, on the contrary, as musical and rhythmical as it serves as a cohesive unifying pattern. The repetition in the language and illustrations of daily actions typical of childhood (see Figure 5.5) has an important meaning also on the level of theme and characterization. As the last picture unexpectedly reveals, ‘That is Susan through and through – just like me, just like you’, Susan’s doings are normal, adventurous and mischievous despite the fact that she is a wheelchair user and is unable to walk. For the reader, a new perspective on Susan, on the many ways wheelchair users can be included in an extensive variety of activities, and a refreshing of one’s own personal schema of physical handicap, is the result. We Are All Born Free. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures (Amnesty International 2008) offers exemplary learning opportunities for thinking skills and intercultural learning. Each picture illustrates one of the 30 articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The articles are simplified so that they could be understood at primary or lower secondary level. The images on each double-page spread are created by well-known picturebook artists; the artists use their imagination and creative powers freely in the illustration of their particular Human Rights article. There is no verbal text other than the simplified article itself, such as ‘We all have the right to belong to a country’ illustrated by Frané Lessac. Lessac’s contribution shows a red wooden boat on a blue sea. The boat is overcrowded with passengers, who are packed in like

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sardines. Each passenger young and old is staring out at the reader/viewer. There are no smiling faces, but a white dove flying towards the boat is carrying an olive branch. As each picture in We Are All Born Free tells a different story, or attempts to narratize a different concept, with very little verbal input, EFL students must largely rely on the teacher for language modelling and verbal scaffolding. Therefore, the question with which most student teachers approach just about any image – ‘What can you see in the picture?’ – is woefully inadequate, to support either the children’s linguistic learning or their content learning. The responses then elicited are for the most part one-word answers, unconnected observations, which lead neither to the deep processing necessary for the acquisition of language chunks nor to a deeper understanding of the picture and the story it tells. On first encountering this picture, younger children tend to misread it as a depiction of a boat party, or as a joyful outing on the sea or a lake. It is an interesting challenge to find a pattern that will help the children acquire a language chunk, while at the same time helping them discover for themselves the story the picture tells. There are a number of alternative ways to bring out the meaning in a rhythmically repetitive way. The teacher could begin: Look at all these people in this big red boat. They haven’t got room to turn round, have they? They haven’t got room to play. Can they sit down and rest? No, they haven’t got room to sit down. And they haven’t got a single chair. Do you think they feel good? Can they play football? (They haven’t got a football./No, they haven’t got room to play football.) Tell me what else they haven’t got. Toys? Other things? Tell me what they haven’t got room for.

The teacher can now expect, and elicit with gestures and verbal prompts as necessary, 20 or more responses such as the following invented examples: They haven’t got room to sleep. They haven’t got a bed. They haven’t got room to eat. They haven’t got a table. They haven’t got a TV. They haven’t got room to dance. They haven’t got room to run around. They haven’t got room to have fun.

Alternative, slightly easier language could be: ‘They can’t play. They can’t run. They can’t sit. They can’t jump. They can’t eat. They can’t sleep. They can’t watch television. They can’t shower.’ Yet a further alternative could be: ‘Nobody can move. Nobody can find a friend. Nobody can leave the boat’ . . . Employing a combination of critical pictures, as the preceding example, with supportive, repetitive and narrative classroom discourse and an opportunity for inductive learning (in the case of the boat picture, the children discover the

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restrictions and confinement for themselves, prompted by the use of rhythmical repetition), allows the teacher to introduce ethical learning in the primary and lower secondary language class in a way that fulfils the definition of Bildung according to Winfried Marotzi. In addition to increasing knowledge within pre-established schemata, learning processes that can change and refresh the schemata can be considered Bildung (Marotzki 1990: 41). This means the learning processes reach beyond manageable linguistic goals in the foreignlanguage classroom, and allow opportunities to decentralize, to widen horizons and to see from other perspectives, to better understand one’s own context as well as wider-world contexts and to ensure the learning will transfer beyond the classroom context in which it occurs. Introducing a real-life image of ‘boatpeople’ refugees (accessible e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people) will support transfer, and provide an opportunity to recycle the language, this time referring to a real-world context. The class narrative can now be extended to a real-life story, encompassing intercultural learning, such as developing an awareness of the commonality of human experience, examining an issue that has global significance and developing an inquiring and caring perspective on creating a better and more just world (Short 2009: 3). There are countless examples in children’s literature where repetition and refrains are used to support the theme. Widely known is Robert Munsch’s picturebook Love You Forever, where the lingering, rocking and repetitive language and circuitous content are symbolic for the long-drawn-out, enduring love a parent feels for their child, of whatever age. A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang: I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be. The baby grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was two years old, and he ran all around the house. (Munsch 1995)

J. K. Rowling uses repetition to intensify the impression of time passing breathlessly, relentlessly, inexorably, just exactly when more time is desperately needed: time was slipping away as though somebody had bewitched the clocks to go extrafast. There was a week to go before February the twenty-fourth (there was still time) . . . there were five days to go (he was bound to find something soon) . . . three days to go (please let me find something . . . please . . .) (Rowling 2000: 419)

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Canadian Munsch and British Rowling, with their rhythmical narratives, re-create a collective identity and universal emotional needs, illustrating Barthes’ claim: ‘narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself ’ (Barthes 1982: 251).

Language patterning to contribute rhythm and rhetorical energy The following is taken from a student teacher’s version of Little Red Riding Hood, with a humorously repetitive and very effective description of the wolf: The most bloodthirsty, the most scary, the most terrifying, the most horrible, the most awful, the most hideous, the most bloodcurdling creature the world had heard of. People rumoured it was able to see like an eagle, to hear like a bat and was as strong as two grizzlies. (Jan Färber, Creative Reading and Writing Course 2010)

Färber has created a patterned text by repeating superlatives in a lexical chain: A characteristic feature of cohesive texts is that they are threaded through with words that relate to the same topic – what are sometimes called lexical chains. This is even more likely if the text is authentic – that is, if it has not been specially written or doctored for the language classroom. (Thornbury 2002: 53)

In Färber’s brief text there is a ‘scary’ chain, which includes the words: bloodthirsty, scary, terrifying, horrible, awful, hideous and bloodcurdling. This is followed by a series of comparisons evoking sight, sound, smell and touch and an ‘animal’ chain. An important rationale for a Creative Writing course is building and developing the opportunity for students of all ages to employ all of their linguistic and imaginative capital in their writing, so developing an affective bond to reading and writing literary texts and taking ownership of their own writing as a result of ‘identity investment’ (Cummins 2001). The final student-teacher text quoted here vividly illustrates how a concentration of language patterning and the distinctive sound play of aural iconicity can create rhetorical energy. The task was to describe in detail how the porridge overflows in the fairy tale The Magic Porridge Pot: SPLASH, SPLASH, SPLASH. With accelerating speed the porridge was covering the wooden floor. Steaming porridge was now bubbling everywhere: under the table, over the fire-red carpet, making its way under the threshold. The entire house was embraced in a sweet and warm smell that filled your nostrils. Hmmm. Again and again the mother desperately cried ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ But the pot didn’t

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stop. By now the porridge reached the windowsill. It had covered the chairs, the table, and the pictures on the wall were not visible anymore. Glasses, pots and plastic boxes that stood on the working surface were disappearing in the bubbling mousse. SLURP, SLURP, SLURP. The mother was helpless. The liquid had already covered her body up to her chest, sticking to her, holding on to her, hindering her from moving. The mother started to cry. The porridge bubbled on the windowsill out of the open window. The dense porridge developed enormous strengths. It was as strong as a current. It was so strong it pulled the rug out from under the mother, carrying her out of the kitchen window. With a loud thud the mother landed on the frog-green grass that was covered in beige puddles of porridge. As fast as possible, the mother got to her feet and ran away to seek help. In the meantime, the porridge had moved higher and higher, up to the first floor, covering each step of the staircase, up to the second floor, squeezing its way in and out of every possible hole. Windows were clattering with an ear-piercing sound for the pressure of the porridge was too high. The house began to move, to tremble, to shake. It got bigger and bigger, rounder and rounder. It looked like a giant ball leaking everywhere. The giant ball was shaking and shivering. The porridge was now filling up the chimney and then . . . BOOOOOOOM. With an explosion-like sound the porridge burst out of the chimney, shooting into the sky like fireworks. (Lena Bürsken, Creative Reading and Writing Course 2009/10)

I have emphasized in this chapter the role creative writing can have in teacher education in promoting an understanding of the ludic function of language for L2 acquisition. As language play ‘chiefly involves manipulating language structures’ (Crystal 1998: 187), the use of language play in classroom discourse, children’s literature and creative writing will ‘improve children’s ability with language structures’ (Crystal 1998: 187). Recent empirical studies have shown that high-quality classroom discourse with young learners supports the acquisition of language structures: ‘Therefore, we can clearly state that input which is qualitatively more beneficial seems to increase the rate of acquisition in receptive L2 grammar knowledge’ (Weitz et  al. 2010: 36). The relevance of authentic and playful children’s literature for literary literacy is highlighted in the following statement: because there is so little, linguistically, in early readers which children can use as a model to refine their creative language interests and skills, the books give children no basis for approaching the more imaginative domains of language use, such as poetry and satire, and may actually impede the implementation of a child’s creative urge. (Crystal 1998: 195)

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There may be the beginnings of change with some major EFL publishing houses  now including patterned language and aural iconicity in their EFL graded readers, a laudable example being the Cambridge Storybooks series. Authentic children’s literature is, however, nearly always linguistically creative and repetitive, most visibly so for young readers. Additionally, it can contribute to meta-linguistic skills: ‘Seven and eight-year old L2 learners (and some even younger ones) can examine the effect that amusing repetitious phrases or onomatopoeia have on their reading pleasure’ (Ghosn 2002: 175).

Note 1 The examples of student teachers’ creative writing are all taken from my Creative Reading and Writing Course at Hildesheim University 2009–12.

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The reading and acting out of plays written for children and adolescents, as well as unscripted drama processes, can help students perform literature: ‘If literature is to be a rich source for foreign language instruction, the most accessible texts can be models not just for reading but also for performing language’ (Schofer 2004: 391). In addition to plays written for children, drama processes such as freeze-frames, questioning-in-role, intra-personal role-play and teacher-in-role provide context-embedded, stimulating language-learning opportunities and are now well established in many different educational contexts. Moses Goldberg uses the term ‘creative dramatics’ for drama processes with children: ‘the free expression of the child’s creative imagination through the discipline of an art form. Other goals include the development of the whole child through a group process, and the fostering of an appreciation of the theatre’ (Goldberg 1974: 4). Drama processes often require a whole-body response, for example, to literary texts, illuminate the perspective structure of the storyworld and may reveal the verisimilitude and consistency of characters. In contrast, mono-dimensional worksheets on literary texts inhibit a multi-dimensional representation of the language with sensory images (Brian Tomlinson 1997). Drama is an important, wide and under-theorized area of children’s literature and culture (Hollindale 2001). Educational drama processes as activities involving whole-body response on the one hand and play scripts for children as literary texts that offer the opportunity of study in the EFL-literature classroom on the other hand encompass too many learning affordances to fit into any single categorization. Goldberg (1974: 5) uses the expression ‘recreational drama’ when plays with a written script are performed by children. Both creative dramatics and recreational drama provide multisensory clues to meaning, and both give students the opportunity to learn to trust and enjoy their linguistic resources and extend their repertoire. In this

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chapter I will concentrate on plays for children; however, I would first like to briefly illustrate the wide uses of drama processes for literary interpretation. I will further consider the use of holistic drama processes with Harry Potter in Chapter 8.

Drama processes When discussing a literary text with EFL students, I (like most lecturers) have a number of favourite approaches. Once the entire class has finished reading a book – preferably twice – one of my preferred ways of disentangling the text is to invite group work on five particular areas: 1. the story/plot distinction, 2. characterization, 3. setting, 4. patterns – including imagery, intertextuality and tone, and finally 5. theme.

I find these five areas combined can help build up a comprehensive picture of most narrative texts. Language is involved in  all five areas – as we have already seen, language and literature cannot be separated. I will illustrate the five areas with suggestions for student tasks on a narrative text very suitable for the secondary EFL-literature classroom: Clockwork (Philip Pullman 1996). This is a short novel that includes many gothic elements, particularly the uncanniness of life-like automata. It also includes fairy-tale elements  – an indeterminate past and the stylized use of a snowy German mountain village with a tavern as meeting place, characters with old-fashioned German names, as well as a (parodied) prince and princess in an embedded storyworld whose long wished-for child is a cause of conflict. Another cause of conflict is the failure of the apprentice Karl to craft a masterful figure for the famous village clock, by long tradition the crowning act at the end of a clockmaker’s apprenticeship. Clockwork has postmodern features, such as characters that break out of an embedded story (narrative metalepsis: the embedded story is created by another central character, the storyteller Fritz), and enter the world of Karl, Fritz and Gretl (the young girl who finally resolves the story puzzle in fairy-tale style). Clockwork combines at once a quaint fairy-tale world with moments of suspense and dread, as when the mysterious ‘philosopher of the night’ Dr Kalmenius leaves his own storyworld to burst in upon the storytelling scene in the tavern just as Fritz the storyteller describes him as the sinister antagonist. Like many Pullman books, Clockwork is at once complex

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and simple. To experience the pleasure of unlocking the interlocking stories and themes, it should be shared in an EFL-literature classroom ready for this level of complexity, for example, with 15- to 16-year-olds, even though the story may be read by much younger NS readers on a simpler level. Despite the final love story, the main themes are dark and troubling. There seems to be an echo of Thomas Carlyle’s critique of a mechanical society: ‘Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand’, from ‘Signs of the times: The Mechanical Age’ (Carlyle 1829). The narrator engenders anxiety in the reader concerning the pseudo-human automata that play a role in the story, whether they are created by human cleverness and cunning, supernatural evil or a combination of both. The story would form an excellent preparation for the reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The suggestions that follow for group work on Clockwork are divided into the five areas story/plot, characterization, setting, patterns and theme. Many of the ideas include an aspect of dramatization, illustrating my argument in this chapter that drama processes are extremely useful for literary interpretation.

Tasks on Philip Pullman’s Clockwork 1. STORY/PLOT • Write the radio play script of a scene, create the sound effects, perform and record it (e.g. when the royal sledge is chased by a pack of desperately hungry wolves). • Write a missing scene: a part of the story but not in the plot (e.g. Karl’s last-minute attempt to create a figure for the clock). • Write a newspaper article for either a quality or a tabloid newspaper, using expressive and/or explosive headlines (e.g. DEAD PRINCE DRIVES SLEDGE). • Re-create a scene as a mini-play using finger puppets. 2. CHARACTERIZATION • Write acrostics on different characters’ names, highlighting aspects of character. • Group hot-seating – each member of the group answers in-role as a particular character. • Create role-on-the-wall group posters. Annotate-in-role the posters of other groups (write what your character thinks about the character on other group posters).

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• Study the commentary in the boxes. How reliable is the commentator? Look for double meanings (e.g. the double meaning referring to the Great Clock of Glockenheim, page 14: ‘There never was a clock like it, I promise’). • Create Wanted Posters, for example, Dr Kalmenius, Fritz, Prince Florian, Baron Stelgratz. Annotate the Wanted Poster with information about the character’s deeds, idiosyncrasies and possible reasons for his or her disappearance. • Create a comic with speech bubbles, paying attention to the register and tone of the dialogues, whether, for example, arrogant and princely (Otto), aggressive (Karl), happy-go-lucky (Fritz) or menacing (Dr Kalmenius). • Intra-personal role-play (e.g. Karl played by two students, his evil intention fights his better self). • Create a Thought Tunnel – a single character moves through the tunnel, miming his or her thoughts; the students forming the tunnel voice the character’s thoughts.

3. SETTING • Write a fantasy journey to set one of the scenes. • Picture dictation: dictate the imagined stage setting of a particular scene to a student who draws it on the blackboard (e.g. the storytelling scene in the tavern). • Draw a story map to show how and where the different storyworlds converge. 4. PATTERNS • Recurring images: Choose a mechanical device to draw, and annotate with an explanation of the significance in the story (e.g. Prince Otto’s clockwork heart). • Intertexuality: Compare Karl’s pact with Dr Kalmenius to the Dr Faustus legend. Compare Dr Kalmenius and his machines to the protagonist Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. • Tone: Collect quotations to best illustrate the tone (e.g. mysterious, threatening, unreliable, fairy-tale). 5. THEME • Teacher-in-role – for example, the teacher takes on the role of the Burgomaster and questions other characters played by the students;

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or the teacher plays the antagonist Dr Kalmenius and is interrogated by the students playing other characters. • Group freeze-frame – each group creates a frozen thematic representation, the class interprets, comments and improves. Despite the fact that Clockwork is a narrative text, many of the tasks outlined above are drama processes employed in the service of literary literacy. I next turn to plays written for children, as neglected yet ideal literary texts for the secondary EFL-literature classroom.

Play, plays and performance Children’s literature experts with a specialist interest in drama (such as Peter Hollindale), educationalists in the field of drama (Gavin Bolton, Moses Goldberg, Dorothy Heathcote, Peter Slade) and educationalists in language teaching with a specialism in drama (Maria Eisenmann, Mike Fleming, Christiane Lütge, Carola Surkamp) all extol the importance of drama in education. The efficacy of dramabased approaches to foreign language learning has been well documented. According to Cook (2000: 196): The rehearsal and performance of an appropriate play combines the best of both structural and communicative syllabuses: rote learning and repetition of a model,  attention to exact wording, practice in  all four skills, motivating and authentic language and activity, instances of culturally and contextually appropriate pragmatic use, and integration of linguistic with paralinguistic communication.

Additionally, enacting children’s drama can support literary literacy in the EFLliterature classroom: it can foster an understanding of characterization, an interest in the theatre and can help prepare for the canonized or postcolonial play scripts of the upper-secondary school, the cultural heritage as well as interculturallearning justification for drama. Many scholars consider the affective dimension equally important to the ‘structural and communicative syllabuses’ Cook refers to, particularly in language teaching to children and young adults. According to Earl Stevick (1980: 4) in second language teaching ‘success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analyses, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom’. Working towards a whole-group goal promotes group cohesiveness, students’ self-confidence and self-esteem.

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Drama is a holistic method that utilizes all five semiotic systems (Anstey and Bull 2009: 28) simultaneously. Drama uses

1. The linguistic system (written play script, stage directions and spoken dialogue) 2. The visual system (scenery, props and costumes) 3. The gestural system (facial expression, body language, movement and stillness) 4. The audio system (music, sound effects, rhythm and silence) 5. The spatial system (setting, the positioning of characters to the stage, to each other and to the audience). This connects drama to the language play of young children, with its vocal–visual and vocal–tactile choreography (Crystal 1998: 164). This link between the rich semiotics of drama and children’s interactive play is echoed in the polysemic word ‘play’. Young children are smart in learning about life, turning everything into a game: ‘children have a natural inclination to play, alongside a natural instinct to learn and to be curious and inventive, which are characteristics of the human race in general’ (Moyles 2005: 3). Children show us their active way of learning: they play, they play roles, they observe, they listen, they imitate, they try out. And this, like all child’s play, belongs to the serious stuff of life. Peter Slade, pioneer in the field of educational drama, writes Play is an inborn and vital part of young life. It is not an activity of idleness, but is rather the child’s way of thinking, proving, relaxing, working, remembering, daring, testing, creating and absorbing. It is, in fact, life. The best child play takes place only where opportunity and encouragement are consciously given to it by an adult mind. (Slade 1958: 1)

The value of enacting drama in order to rehearse a change of perspective has also been underlined (Nünning and Surkamp 2006: 147; Volkmann 2008: 187). To Pfister (1988: 4–5) the ‘absolute nature of dramatic texts’, the lack of a fictional narrator, ‘creates a sense of immediacy in the action on stage in the way it enables both the dramatic text and its reception process to take place simultaneously’. However, a change of perspective is also rehearsed imaginatively with the aes­ thetic illusion of polyphonic narrative fiction, provided the student has the appropriate schemata, that is, provided children’s fiction is chosen when the students are not yet adults. Furthermore, the opportunity to rehearse multiple perspectives in drama (Volkmann 2008: 187) is certainly not limited to working

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with scripted drama (recreational drama), but is equally true of drama processes (creative dramatics) such as intra-personal role play. An aspect of drama that is seldom investigated is the patterned nature of play scripts, which is, of course, reinforced by rehearsal, itself a repetition but not a duplication. We have seen in the previous chapter that one of the most salient features of literary texts is repetition or patterning (Toolan 2008). We have seen how linguists are now identifying copious language play in everyday discourse (Carter 2004; Cook 2000; Crystal 1998; Hall 2005), and the Opies have produced ample evidence of the patterned nature of children’s oral culture (Opie 1996; Opie and Opie 1951, 1992, 2001). All three instances of patterning are present in a play script for children: 1. It is a literary text, 2. It consists entirely of characters’ utterances – apart from the stage directions, possibly a narratorlike chorus, and elements of paratext and 3. It belongs to children’s culture. There is additionally a fourth instance: 4. The ‘external’ sense of repetition is also very much in evidence: rehearsing and performing, reinterpreting in a new performance and reinterpreting the drama as a remediation of a narrative text. Acting out an authentic play script, far from the uncreative act it has been considered in recent pedagogy, can combine linguistic creativity with the creativity of performance. Bauman refers to the dynamics of performance, including storytelling, as a recognition of alternative and shifting frames available for the recontextuali­ sation of texts. Successive reiterations, even of texts for which performance is the expected, preferred, or publicly foregrounded mode of presentation, may be variously framed: reported, rehearsed, demonstrated, translated, relayed, quoted, summarised, or parodied, to suggest but a few of the intertextual possibilities. (Bauman 2005: 421)

There is still little evidence of either scripted drama for children or drama techniques for literary interpretation being greatly employed in the EFLliterature classroom, particularly at the lower secondary level. ‘The source of material on dramatic methodology is sparse, for there appears to be evidence of much talk but little practice. It is difficult to find teachers who use drama, scripted or improvised’ (Bolton and Heathcote: 1998). This short-come is not so easy to address. It may be surmised that the stumbling block is teacher education, although, according to Showalter: ‘(t)eaching is itself a dramatic art and it takes place in a dramatic setting’ (Showalter 2003: 79). However, another important aspect is critical attention, for where this is lacking, the relevant texts will remain unknown to educators and teachers. Referring to the significance

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of  drama on children’s and adult lives, Peter Hollindale’s pronouncement on drama for children calls urgently for critical attention: Given the historical depth of children’s drama, the long tradition of children’s creative involvement as participants, not just spectators, the diversity of educational gains which it affords, and the omnipresence of drama in contemporary adult life, it should no longer be acceptable for children’s drama to be the impoverished curricular and theatrical Cinderella which it currently is. (Hollindale 2001: 220)

Plays for children Recent successful plays for children on the professional stage have often been adaptations of children’s novels, for example, Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse (2009) and Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy (2005), all of which were adapted by well-known playwrights (see bibliography) and performed at the National Theatre to great acclaim. These plays embrace dark themes, including war, infanticide and rape. They are challenging in their thematic complexity, and offer opportunities to study the pre-texts, intertexts and epitexts: the original novels in each case, the films The Golden Compass and War Horse, historical backgrounds and geographical settings. The remediations of these children’s novels approach the realm of crossover literature and would be suitable for the EFL-literature classroom with students in their mid-teens and older. I have chosen to introduce here five plays for children for their suitability for  the mid-secondary EFL-literature classroom: King of Shadows (Cooper, adap. Mitchell 2011), The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler (Kemp 2003), Allie’s Class (Bland 2010), Wild Girl, Wild Boy (Almond 2002) and Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Rushdie, adap. Supple and Tushingham 1998). The selection is due to the themes, which include aspects of literacy and oracy, and connected to that, aspects of bullying in each case. Therefore, the plays are relevant to the school syllabus as well as including interesting and sometimes disturbing linguistic playfulness, which extends in the case of Wild Girl, Wild Boy, I will argue, to the rhythms and disruptions of écriture féminine. A practical consideration is the suitability for acting out in school, with large casts of young people: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler and Allie’s Class take place in school and largely within classrooms, King of Shadows involves a Company of Boys, and Wild Girl, Wild Boy and Haroun and the Sea of Stories include a chorus of voices – schoolmates,

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teachers and neighbours in the former – and a chorus narrating the story in the latter. King of Shadows and Wild Girl, Wild Boy both have as their protagonists bereaved children, who learn to come to terms with their loss, in part through the means of time slip (King of Shadows), and magic realism (Wild Girl, Wild Boy). Thus there is in each text a single fantasy element within a realistic storyworld. Whereas the Cooper text belongs to the mainstream of children’s literature as a humanist and in this case a strongly teleological text, I will argue that the Almond and Rushdie texts, through their celebration of oracy and imagination, critique a limited view of man as the patriarchal source of truth and knowledge. I further suggest that the potentially empowering impact for the reader/actor of The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler and Allie’s Class rests in each case on a specific use of language. In the former, the use of language startlingly reveals the constructedness of gender. In the latter, the patterned language drawn from authentic children’s playground rhymes and games reveals, particularly through acting out, the communality of bullying within children’s linguistic culture.

King of Shadows Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation of Susan Cooper’s time-slip novel King of Shadows (Cooper 1999, Carnegie Medal short-listed) throws light on its pretext A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Shakespearian theatre. This is sometimes known as ‘Shakespearing’ children’s literature, as it draws some of the cultural capital of Shakespeare into the epitext of the contemporary work. The immortal ‘even to the edge of doom’ splendour of Shakespearian poetry (Sonnet  116, another pre-text that plays a role in King of Shadows) can more impressively reach students through their performing the language from within the aesthetic illusion of the Elizabethan storyworld. The time-slip trope may allow in the students who enact the drama an awareness of their own critical autonomy, as they simultaneously observe the Elizabethan playhouse world, and become an actor in it, much like the protagonist Nat who has slipped back in time. The play includes passages from A Midsummer Night’s Dream both in a contemporary play-within-the-play and an Elizabethan production, the time-slip playwithin-the-play. Nat, ‘an American boy actor whose voice has not yet broken’ (Cooper and Mitchell 2011: 16) is transported to the Globe Theatre London, and the production of the magical Dream simultaneously four centuries apart, in the Globe of today and of Shakespeare’s time. In either case, A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be understood and interpreted in relation to the ‘after-text’

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King of Shadows, as, especially with regard to younger readers, ‘the operation of intertextuality may be achronological’ (Stephens 2010c: 195). In this sense too, the Shakespearian schema of the student in the EFL-literature classroom is likely to be similar to that of the slightly younger native-speaker, and will be in the same position to enjoy performing the pre-text play-within-the-play in the light of the after-text. Shakespeare is the resident Globe ‘wordsmith’ when Nat joins the company as their new and rather strange Puck (only Nat is aware of the time-slip). Shakespeare is fatherly to Nat, who has recently lost his mother, then his father who committed suicide after the death of his wife, and then suddenly his entire known reality by inexplicably moving back in time. The Romantic notion of the inspired and remote author is interrogated though the figure of Shakespeare, who is characterized as a practical, paternal and deeply human actor-playwright. Understanding Nat’s pain, he presents him with his sonnet 116: Will (Takes a sheet of stiff, curling paper from his doublet) This is a sonnet I copied for thee after we talked the other day. It is about love, and loving. I wrote it for a woman, but it could just as well be for thee and thy father, Nat. I give it to you to remind you that love does not vanish with death. (Cooper and Mitchell 2011: 57–8)

This is the culture of Shakespeare on a level that is meaningful experientially to students, as most adolescents fear loss in one way or another. It is more manageable linguistically due to the motivating and emotional appeal and the vivid detail of the Elizabethan storyworld context. Perhaps most importantly, an introduction to Shakespearian theatre in the mid-secondary school will help EFL students acquire an Elizabethan schema in a pleasurable way, an important preparation if their school curriculum requires study of Shakespeare in the upper secondary school. Cooper and Mitchell’s King of Shadows brings the participants right into the mucky, smelly yet vital world of Shakespeare. Drama works ‘by bringing participants closer to the subject through emotional engagement but at the same time preserving a distance by virtue of the fact that the context is make-believe’ (Byram and Fleming 1998: 143). This is emphasized by the time-slip trope: ‘Time-slip novels, by virtue of the fact that they straddle different times, may be useful in rendering oblique commentary on particular times through their juxtaposition with other historical periods, and also in working through ideas about historical process’ (Ang 2001: 707). Thus negotiating meaning and understanding through active involvement and active reflection creates the opportunity to change perspective when enacting

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the different roles: an experience in literary literacy. This is empowering to the pre-adult readers, for ‘(e)xperience and expertise, not age-related changes in cognitive capacities’ determine performance (Wood 1998: 93). It is significant that the contemporary ‘Company of Boys’ in King of Shadows, like the Elizabethan theatre, denies girls and women within the storyworld of the play the opportunity to ‘perform identity’ on stage. The aspect of identity as performance on the ‘world stage’ is taken up in the three following plays. A protagonist’s quest for agency is frequently a leitmotif in children’s and young adult literature. This quest can be brought alive by acting out plays in the EFL-literature classroom, and by including drama processes for character interpretation such as hot-seating, intra-personal role-play and thought tunnel.

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler owes significance to the language in an unusual way. Gene Kemp, who dramatized her own novel (a Carnegie Medal winner), challenges the reader: Always remember that the play should be a living thing. I’ve dramatized Tyke to the best of my ability – it could have been much better, I’m sure – but it’s a beginning, a framework. If you choose to work on it, then make it come to life as you see it, as you like. That’s what Shakespeare did after all! Why not you? (Kemp 2003: 5)

There are many dramas in this play, Tyke’s class is to play Lancelot and Guinevere, and Danny Price, a bullied boy with learning difficulties and a speech impedi­ ment, is to play Galahad, whose ‘strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure’ (Kemp 2003: 49). The history teacher, Mr Merchant, models acting out as an educational method by role-playing in the local outdoors where a historical event the children enact, involving William the Conqueror, originally took place. He seems as a teacher well aware that ‘(d)ramatic texts have the potential to activate all channels of the human senses’ (Pfister 1988: 7). The language as well as the action authentically re-creates the school life of the 12-year-olds; the teachers are characterized particularly through their use of language, stretching from authoritarian control to sympathetic support of their  pupils. The head teacher talks far over the heads of the children, which is starkly ironic in an educational context, as the content decoded by a storyworld child as receiver clearly does not match or even approximate the content encoded by the headmaster as sender. Students in the EFL-literature

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classroom, who may be just 2 or 3 years older than the child characters in the play, are already in a far better position to understand the irony. Linguistic play is further emphasized by a harlequin, who jokes with the audience between the scenes. Although this figure is outside the ‘absolute nature’ of the dramatic text, the harlequin does not disrupt the author’s ploy in revealing the culturally and socially constructed nature of our concept of gender (Allrath and Gymnich 2005: 195). The protagonist Tyke is an extremely active friend to Danny, the only character who always understands Danny’s defective speech and supports him against the bullying, never afraid of a challenge or a fight and therefore regularly in trouble with the school authorities. Tyke’s gender is not revealed in the dialogue until nearly the end of the last act, when she is climbing onto the roof of the school. The fact that Tyke is a girl never fails to surprise the firsttime reader, revealing how we construct our concept of gender from certain stereotyped gender divisions. The effect on Tyke when her least favourite teacher uses her hated real name is nearly disastrous: ‘Get down at once, Theodora Tiler. Theodora Tiler, you naughty, disobedient girl’ (Kemp 2003: 65, emphasis in the original). Enraged by the refusal of this particular teacher to accept the agency she has tried to construct for herself, Tyke slips from the roof of the school. This near-fatal accident suggests the tremendous difficulty of human agency against the odds of social constraints (Althusser 2001). This is very relevant for an empowering and critical EFL-literature classroom, as the confining of female agency is often compared to the restriction of children’s agency. With this literary text, both are involved. The characters in the drama know all along, of course, that Tyke is a girl, but their perspective is hidden from the audience or reader by a careful manipulation of the dialogue (and costume in a stage performance). This discrepancy between the reception perspective and the character perspective is the opposite of dramatic irony. Greater character awareness is unusual in drama, ‘(a)s a dominating factor in dramatic texts, inferior audience awareness is far less common than the reverse’ (Pfister 1988: 52). The scenes in The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler are short; students in the EFL-literature classroom should pre-read the scenes in order to be better prepared for reading aloud or acting out, script in hand. Reading aloud requires an understanding of the tempo and rhythms of the text, the meanings of utterances and silences; acting out requires still more familiarity with the script in order to begin, perhaps in groups, a choreography of suitable gestures, facial expression and movements. Nonetheless, it should be possible to maintain the awareness discrepancy of Tyke’s gender until a late stage – as this is essential for the literary effect of schema refreshment – for

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there is no reason scene by scene to take the gender of the student who reads the part of Tyke into consideration. I argue that schema refreshment is the most important educational benefit of The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, and the learning that takes place is on a reflective meta-level. If students become aware of how easily they are (mis)led by certain sociocultural patterns, their metacognitive skills will be honed. When the ruse of hiding Tyke’s gender has been revealed, some confusion and resistance in the EFL classroom may be expected, due to cognitive dissonance. This gives rise to an opportunity for a discussion of identity as performative and contingent, and whether interpellation can, indeed, be resisted. Tyke’s resistance to the school frame causes her to be punished more than Danny, as well as (partly) causing her accident. Resistance as a possibility for social change, for example resistance to the performative interpellation of globalized culture, will be discussed in Part III.

Allie’s Class The girls in Janice Bland’s Allie’s Class perform their social identity linguistically, establishing prestige and social success largely through rituals and language, much of which derives from chants of the street and playground. There are conflicts within the social structure of the classroom, and peer group pressure serves to ‘other’ a newcomer, Allie. Among the boys, the theme of establishing agency in the face of bullying is echoed, Guy is the studious target, who, like Allie, is threatened with social exclusion. The adults are conspicuous by their absence. The topic of bullying can be explored particularly well through drama, as the students acting out the one-act play are ‘protected’ by their role. They can maintain a distance to the subject matter – even more so in the foreign language – and can rehearse and experience behaviours by changing character perspective without taking risks (Surkamp and Zerweck 2007). Acting out a bullying situation brings the students very close to their daily school experience, as ‘(b)ullying is a problem that affects ALL of our children – those who bully, those who are victimized, and those who are witnesses to interpersonal violence’ (www.education.com/reference/article/how-widespread-is-bullying/emphasis in the original). Students connect fear and anxiety to the theme of bullying. However, according to a study carried out with students of an eighth grade that had a bullying problem, it was noticeable that they were better able to confront the sensitive topic through a playful drama experience, including an outspoken reflection on the bullying situation in Allie’s Class, than through a confrontational conference on their own situation with their teacher (Surkamp and Zerweck

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2007: 21). Acting out is key to the social learning gained from the change of perspective, for example experiencing the role of a bully or the role of a victim: ‘Children speak with their bodies. From movement comes feeling, from feeling thought. Today’s experiences are tomorrow’s ideas’ (Cranston 1995: 101). Much of the language of Allie’s Class is modelled on the oral rituals of children’s culture. Unpopular children have always had to suffer jeers and torments, such as Tattletale tit, Your tongue shall be split, And all the dogs in the town Shall have a little bit! (Bland 2010: 14)

The echoes of playground rhymes in Allie’s Class lend the script a dynamic rhythm and tempo, which makes it particularly accessible to students in the EFL-literature classroom. The important warming-up phase before any acting out can begin (Nünning and Surkamp 2006: 175) is clearly most essential when dealing with themes that require trust and sensitive collaboration. In the case of Allie’s Class some of the rhythmical language can be rehearsed as a warming-up activity. This works particularly well when the male students rehearse a game from a girls’ scene, such as the clapping and dancing game: ‘My mother said/that I never should’ (Bland 2010: 5), and the female students rehearse a rhyme from a boys’ scene, such as: ‘Thump him! Bump him! Biff him! Beat him! Bash him! Mash him! Pulp him! Slash him! Scrap him! Slap him! Scalp him! Zap him!’ (Bland 2010: 15–16). In the last example, each line is spoken by a different character in the play script. However, as a warming-up activity, the students could try out different kinds of choral work, such as chanting in unison, echoing, chanting as a chorus dialogue or as a canon. When the group work is performed, the audience can give helpful comments as to how girls/boys would really play this scene: ‘The collaborative participation of an audience is an integral component of performance as an interactional accomplishment’ (Bauman 2005: 420).

Wild Girl, Wild Boy Bullying and othering are also themes in David Almond’s Wild Girl, Wild Boy. The protagonist seems to be about the same age as the protagonists in the afore­ mentioned plays, but, distraught by the loss of her father, Elaine is scarcely able to read and write: ‘Agh! Words on me fingers and on stupid paper slither and

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crawl and slip and slide and stagger like wounded things’ (Almond 2002: 12). Although Elaine is not literate, she uses poetic language, here, for example, a striking polysyndeton and simile. Elaine talks aloud, sometimes to herself, sometimes to her father who appears as a character when she imagines the past, and often to a Wild Boy whom at first only she can see. Elaine’s father had taught her the wonder and mystery of nature while they spent hours together at their allotment: ELAINE The allotment. It was a wild place, a wilderness, and I was his little girl. The middle of it was all tame and neat, but all around: the long grass, the high weeds, where I crawled and wandered and got lost and called out to him. (Almond 2002: 20)

There is much vivid ‘word-scenery’ (Pfister 1988: 16) in Wild Girl, Wild Boy, thus, although the scenes change very fast, the settings can be imagined by the students acting out the play. Almond is a magic realist writer, and it is not always clear what Elaine is experiencing, and what she is only imagining. Drama processes such as questioning-in-role can enable students to fill in gaps and co-create the meaning. Elaine uses a dried seedhead as a rattle, this not only lends rhythm to the changing scenes, but also seems to carry her back into the past, where so much was wild and alive on the allotment, as her father says: ‘grow like mushroom, grow like magic, grow like happiness in the heart . . .’ (Almond 2002: 23). The references to nature reflect the miracle of life, as when Elaine’s father finds a lark’s egg: DAD A chick came out from this. Can you believe it? A little chick made from a yellow egg yolk and a salty white that’ll one day soon be flying over us and singing the loveliest of songs. A miracle. Look! Larks, larks, larks. (Almond 2002: 18)

Without her father, Elaine is devastated by a reality around her that insists on order, discipline and convention. A neighbour tells her mother: McNAMARA Give her rules and regulations. Discipline her. Tame her. It’s like gardening. How d’you get the best plants? Proper feeding, proper watering, proper pruning. Start growing the wrong way and you pull them back. Start getting wild and you cut them back. You show them what’s the right way and what’s the wrong way to grow. You train them, and you keep on training them, otherwise there’s just . . . wilderness. (Almond 2002: 70)

Elaine’s mother listens fearfully to McNamara, to a doctor and to the voices of schoolmates, teachers and neighbours that, in a chorus, comment on the

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action and deride and haunt Elaine. The chorus scenes in Wild Girl, Wild Boy are particularly interesting to rehearse in the EFL-literature classroom; students can speak rhythmically in unison, in pairs or with individual voices rising to a crescendo, as the mocking comments rise to a climax: – Reading: accuracy? – Nil. – Comprehension? – Nil. – Reading age? – Elaine has not yet achieved a score in our current methods of assessment. – Writing skills? – Hahahahahahaha! (Almond 2002: 27)

The Wild Boy is the magic realist element in Wild Girl, Wild Boy; he cannot speak, has fur on his hands and feet and is at one with nature. In this he is like a child who is still in contact with the Real, in the Lacanian sense. Elaine is taunted by her environment because she cannot move easily to the Lacanian Symbolic, and literacy: Many children’s books depict children who must be socialized, who must adjust to adults’ demands and rules, in order to become integrated into the Symbolic. As they do so, they lose their ability to experience the Lacanian Imaginary. One aspect of socialization is learning to read. (Nikolajeva 2005: 214–15)

The Wild Boy is able to help and support Elaine, to show tenderness too to Elaine’s mother, who learns to be able to see him when, at the end of Wild Girl, Wild Boy, she turns her back on McNamara and his rules and regulations. She runs up the hill to the allotment with her daughter, to the Wild Boy and the ‘Real, a world of swirling and running and energetic chaos’ (McGillis 2009: 268). This creates a radical ending in a work of children’s literature, as literacy, education and order are not seen as the highest goal, but rather nature, wildness and empathy. Écriture féminine (Cixous 1976; Kristeva 1984) suggests that patriarchal constraints begin already at Lacan’s mirror stage, when the Law of the Symbolic and literacy begin, and when the child severs the feeling of oneness with the mother by recognizing an independent selfhood in his or her mirror image. The pre-Oedipal period of maternal closeness, which Kristeva terms the semiotic, ‘may be repressed, but is never eliminated’ (Tolan 2006: 335). The semiotic is characterized by the sensuous, babbling, rhythmic language play of private speech that is gradually replaced by the apparently linear and logical Symbolic.

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Yet writers as well as children may allow ‘the semiotic material to “bubble up” beneath the pressure of mature socialized language, enabling poetic language to arise’ (Thacker 2001: 8). Thacker suggests that this ‘calling attention to the constructedness of language and celebrating a childlike apprehension of the world’ (Thacker 2001: 9), empowers the reader to seek his or her own interpretation of the dream-like world created by the author. Écriture féminine, although not defined precisely, includes ‘a blending of written and oral forms’ (Falconer 2010c: 169). It is written by both male and female writers, and suggests a ‘feminine’ discourse by allowing the reader a greater contribution as co-creator (Thacker 2001: 12). I suggest Elaine’s dream-like and sensuous dialogue in Wild Girl, Wild Boy belongs in the category of écriture féminine. ‘Thus, the need to regard children’s literature as a central part of childhood culture is encouraged by feminist perspectives that privilege the relationship of power within discourse and seek alternatives to dominant, controlling, “masculine” narratives’ (Thacker 2001: 3–4).

Haroun and the Sea of Stories The background to the writing of this humorous fantasy could scarcely be more solemn. Salman Rushdie wrote the story, fulfilling a promise to his young son, while he was in hiding due to the fatwā issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, which resulted in many threats against his life. The cause of the death threats was Rushdie’s literary use of the freedom of speech. The themes of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, apart from resistance to political oppression, are the power of stories, of books and of dialogue, and the importance of freedom of speech. The young hero Haroun has a quest to fulfil, to protect his father and the power of the imagination that his father represents. Despite the seriousness of the themes, the exuberance of Rushdie’s language sustains a light-hearted tone throughout. The fantasy figures and hilarious contemporary Arabian Nights background produce scenes of high comedy. One of these is the bus station and journey into the mountains and the Dull Lake, accompanied by roadside warnings (spoken by the chorus) that the daredevil bus driver deliberately ignores: IF YOU TRY TO RUSH OR ZOOM YOU ARE SURE TO MEET YOUR DOOM ALL THE DANGEROUS OVERTAKERS END UP SAFE AT UNDERTAKERS

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LOOK OUT! SLOW DOWN! DON’T BE FUNNY! LIFE IS PRECIOUS! CARS COST MONEY! (. . .) IF FROM SPEED YOU GET YOUR THRILL TAKE PRECAUTION – MAKE YOUR WILL. (Rushdie 1998: 8–11)

The companions who help Haroun fulfil his quest are as memorable as Dorothy’s friends in the Land of Oz. Apart from Butt the reckless bus driver, who later reappears, there is Iff the Water Genie, who takes Haroun to the Moon Kahani, which is home to the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and Mali, the Floating Gardener, whose job it is to keep the ocean free of pollution. This is, for all Rushdie’s entertaining story telling, a weighty business, for the beautiful Ocean is being sabotaged and threatened with annihilation. When Haroun first sees the Ocean, he looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Chorus As all the stories ever told could be found there, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. Chorus And because the stories were in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories. (Rushdie 1998: 28)

The main themes of Haroun and the Sea of Stories come across well in its adaptation as play script, and Rushdie’s vibrant language can be appreciated and enjoyed while reading aloud, and noticing the innovative use of language, the tempo and rhythm. Particularly some of the dramatic scenes can be exciting to interpret as drama, for example, the Moody Land scene, when the weather copies the turbulent emotions of the characters while they are crossing the Dull Lake (Rushdie 1998: 16). Nonetheless, ambitious students in the EFL-literature classroom may like to read the much longer novel in addition, which should be made available to them. The villain of Kahani is Khattam-Shud, and Haroun the young hero must save not only his storyteller father, but also his world from Khattam-Shud’s evil determination to destroy all stories: Haroun But why do you hate stories so much? Stories are fun . . . Khattam-Shud The world, however, is not for Fun. The world is for Controlling. Haroun Which world?

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Khattam-Shud Your world, my world, all worlds. They are all there to be Ruled. And inside every single story, inside every Stream in the Ocean, there lies a world, a story world, I cannot Rule at all. And that is the reason why. (Rushdie 1998: 57)

Reynolds considers Haroun and the Sea of Stories ‘offers a paradigm of the dichotomous nature of children’s literature itself ’, while dependent on and respecting the education system, it is also ‘subversive and liberating, mocking and critiquing the values and practices of these same systems and the institutions and individuals responsible for upholding and disseminating them’ (Reynolds 2010: 62). The wide range of Part II has reflected the eclecticism of children’s literature. (Thacker 2001: 3) maintains children’s literature offers ‘degrees of autonomy for the reader’: Texts that invite the reader to play with meaning, to question the authority of the author’s voice, or to engage with a more feminine discourse, inviting a more ‘writerly’ approach, are threatening to a society that wishes to construct the child as conformist and obedient. The emphasis on marketing the repetitive and conventional fiction for children, such as the Goosebumps or Sweet Valley High series and the educational need to enforce functional literacy combine to suppress those subversive forces that challenge dominant thinking and create the pleasure of the text. (Thacker 2001: 13–14)

In other words, the language of children’s literature and culture can yield an empowering resistance to a patriarchal (school) culture, which always privileges a symbolic, rational, conventional socialization (Lacan’s Symbolic). Interestingly, this seems to parallel an argument that has been made to explain adults’ frequent distrust of comics, and by extension all multimodal texts: ‘they (the teachers) resented as anarchical the comics’ invitation to the eye to jump all over the page before settling down into the traditional reading pattern’ (Tabachnick 2009: 4). Part II has called for a better understanding of the ludic nature of children’s literature in order to empower students to find their own individual, playful voice, through creative writing and through performance, which is always a co-creation. As language is a vital part of performing identity, this may also encourage students to develop their agency on their own terms, and to resist having an image or subject position developed for them by the interpellation of the school system and globalized consumer culture. The issue of agency and subject positions will be further developed in Part III.

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Parts I and II have shown how the EFL-literature classroom can, starting already with young learners, be extended to include the important educational elements of visual literacy and literary literacy. The aspect of critical literacy, and teaching an awareness of how we are subtly influenced by our reading as well as our viewing, is an integral part of my argument throughout. Part III will now revolve around critical cultural literacy, which attempts to show that an important literacy skill, in contrast to Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy concept (1987), is less a matter of acquiring ‘absolute knowledge’ but rather of understanding the relativity of perspective. Children’s literature scholarship, similar to postcolonial adult literature scholarship, includes a theoretical component that belongs, in my argument, to the remit of cultural studies. This is the study of ideology in the (children’s) literary text (Hollindale 1988; McGillis 2000; Nodelman and Reimer 2003; Stephens 1992). I refer here both to explicit ideological considerations such as postcolonial, transcultural and global issues reflected consciously in the storyworld, and to implicit, unintended and therefore subconsciously included author ideologies such as anthropocentricism or, for example, a biased white Western heterosexual male perspective structure. Ideological ramifications are an essential aspect of children’s literature scholarship as the young and impressionable reader can be less justifiably ignored than in adult literature scholarship. It is my argument that on this point particularly children’s literature scholarship clearly touches upon matters of great relevance for the educational concerns of the EFL classroom, as well as teacher education. Chapter 7 continues the concept of ‘engaged reading’, first introduced in Chapter 4. Here it shall be investigated how far engaged reading is able to combine emotional-affective and critical learning goals, which are frequently

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seen as contradictory (discussed in Volkmann 2010: 17). Claire Kramsch asks rhetorically should it really be our goal to develop in our students the same uncritical insider’s experience of the target culture as those who are instrumental in forging it in a given society? Should we not give our students the tools for a critical understanding of the target culture and its social conventions? (Kramsch 1993: 181)

Arguments for engaged reading with children’s literature I shall first of all introduce six characteristics of committed children’s and young adult literature, which create affordances and highlight the way it is able to connect to and empathetically involve the pre-adult reader: I. Heteroglossia; II. Intercultural involvement of the reader in life stories; III. Dialogic relationship of the particular and the universal; IV. Appeal to the idealism of the pre-adult reader; V. Textual and cultural hybridity and VI. Affording the unmasking of bias with the meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy. These criteria introduce and substantiate my argument for engaged reading with children’s and young adult literature in the EFL-literature classroom:

I  Heteroglossia To Bakhtin, the novel is characterized by language as a plurality of voices, a polyphonic narrative involving a heteroglossia of regional origin and class, gender and ideology: introducing an era’s many and diverse languages (.  .  .) the novel must be a microcosm of heteroglossia. (. . .) The imperative takes on new importance in the Bildungsroman, where the very idea of a man’s becoming and developing – based on his own choices – makes necessary a generous and full representation of the social worlds, voices, languages of the era, among which the hero’s becoming – the result of his testing and his choices – is accomplished. (Bakhtin 1981: 411)

Bakhtin was writing in the late 1920s, and refers to the Bildungsroman and male hero. I argue that the wider terms ‘children’s literature’ and ‘(trans)cultural identities’ can replace ‘Bildungsroman’ and ‘male hero’ for the present discussion, without distorting Bakhtin’s principle: ‘the novel must be a microcosm of heteroglossia’. Clearly, a polyphonic narrative may reach readers from a wider

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variety of ‘social worlds’. Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park (Kate Greenaway Medal short-listed picturebook), discussed in Chapter 7, is an unusual example of post-modern hetoroglossia in a text suitable for lower-secondary EFL readers.

II  Intercultural involvement of the reader in life stories It would be very interesting to compare several life stories from one national culture, thus providing a rich mosaic, a multiple heteroglossia. There are, for example, several deeply moving and well-written books about children’s experience in contemporary Afghanistan, such as Morris Gleitzman’s Boy Overboard and Deborah Ellis’s trilogy The Breadwinner. The Kite Runner (2011), Khaled Hosseini’s Bildungsroman, is now available as a graphic novel, and therefore also accessible to a mid-secondary-school readership. Already the titles of these life stories indicate that they are accounts of individual girls and boys who have had to take on a particular (and life-threatening) role as a part of every-day lived experience. By redrawing the boundaries of EFL teaching to include authentic literature for young learners and teenaged learners, helping them read mindfully long before they are able to read adult literature, we can include cultural awareness ‘right from day one’: Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. (Kramsch 1993: 1)

Narratives chosen for engaged reading are often life stories describing dramatic and formative events with compelling emotional resonances. They may describe elemental life experiences, or epiphanic, revelatory moments, with a powerful storyworld that exacts empathy from the reader. Young readers can connect to such immersive life stories, usually with a young hero or heroine as focalizer, as they have their own life stories full of drama, which, particularly in the multicultural classrooms of today, may be equally of a life-changing nature. These are, however, all too often ignored in education: life stories reveal the wealth of experience to be explored, which could inform our teaching. The world is in the classroom. It can only be translated into new cultural webs if we enter into dialogues and explore people’s lived experience. (Kearney 2003: 8)

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A further way of exploring children’s lived experience close to home is to include books that refer to issues often banned from the classroom, such as homosexuality. An exemplar is discussed in this chapter, Michael Willhoite’s Daddy’s Roommate.

III  Dialogic relationship of the particular and the universal Life stories and epiphanies are often enthralling because they can unveil particular and unfamiliar cultural contexts, yet producing resonances that are universal. Cross-cultural communication seems to require both at the same time: the universals can get their proper meaning (or weighting) only from the particular voice of the writer and the particular voice can be listened to and understood only through the universal. (Kramsch 1993: 226)

Cultural authenticity is important as the storyworld becomes real by aesthetic illusion, and therefore must be as thoroughly researched as a non-fiction text. Postcolonial novels are often partly autobiographical or in some other way based on personal experience, and therefore authentic in the culture-embedded setting. In addition, children’s literature authentically reaches out to the pre-adult reader, so that the reading experience is authentic. However, literary texts are not documents and ‘do not mimetically mirror cultural constellations (. . .). What complicates the matter even more is the fact that a “context” is not the sum of given data (. . .) but a “text”, too’ (Erll 2005: 90, emphasis in the original). Students can learn through the cultural studies approach that ‘(w)hat we conventionally call facts are representations, mediated by previous interpretation’ (Seidl 1998: 106). Small wonder that a British historian researching the Victorian workhouse can write: The historian must envy the novelist his freedom to conjure up that ‘ghost of character’ from the anonymous poor. Any book which deals, as this one does, with the most helpless members of a past society, runs the risk of turning them into an abstraction, of stripping them of their humanity. (Crowther 1981: 1)

Armin Greder’s The Island, discussed in this chapter, is a striking example of the dialogic relationship between the particular and the universal. It concentrates less on the experience of the refugee, but more on the hostility shown by the islanders towards his alien appearance. In doing so, it critiques the growing distrust of multiculturalism in many Western societies.

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IV  Appeal to the idealism of the pre-adult reader The life stories presented in committed young adult literature often involve a figural narrative situation with a marginalized focalizer. Adolescent readers, as relatively powerless themselves, are likely to empathize with the predicament of the oppressed: The Reader as Thinker. The adolescent reader looks to stories to discover insights into the meaning of life, values and beliefs worthy of commitment, ideal images, and authentic role models for imitation. The truth of these ideas and ways of living is a severe criterion for judging them. (Appleyard 1991: 14, emphasis in the original)

Critical young adult literature suits the rebellious adolescent reader, whose inner turmoil finds a painful parallel in contemporary society’s anxieties and injustice. This is a recent development in fiction for young people and has a pedagogical function: In the hands of inspired writers, vicarious experience can prove sufficiently strong to grip young readers without exposing them to actual dangers. At the same time, through its profundity and relevance, Young Adult literature can help teenagers to think about, and hopefully to transcend, the rigid and dysfunctional structures of popular culture, stereotyping, oppression, and injustice. (Hilton and Nikolajeva 2012: 15)

This book does not deal with literature for the older adolescent, but the boundaries of children’s literature are ever more fluid, as Chapter 8 on the Harry Potter series illustrates. To Canagarajah ‘in the post-modern world, education has lost its innocence. The realization that education may involve the propagation of knowledges and ideologies held by dominant social groups has inspired a critical orientation to pedagogical paradigms’ (Canagarajah 1999: 3). He speaks from  an  anti-hegemonic postcolonial perspective (Sri Lankan Tamil), and argues ‘(a)ppropriating English while maintaining their vernaculars makes periphery subjects linguistically competent for the culturally hybrid post-modern world they confront’ (Canagarajah 1999: 197). The thoughtful pre-adult reader can readily identify with representations of the struggle of non-hegemonic groups and individuals against oppression. Referring to the hardships for asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom as depicted in Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy (2001), Rieuwerts writes ‘(i)t is this very personal perspective on one of today’s big issues that appeals to teenagers and teaching ideas should

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include these personal and wider issues’ (Rieuwerts 2013: 132). Further, the preadult reader is likely to be open to an ethical discourse on race, class, gender and the environment, especially when embedded in a convincing storyworld. A question of fairness and justice from a postcolonial perspective is discussed in this chapter with Sarah Mussi’s Scout’s Honour.

V  Textual and cultural hybridity According to children’s literature scholar Clare Bradford, ‘theorists point to the potential for hybrid forms of art and literary production to undermine the foundations of colonial discourse and its claims to superiority’ (Bradford 2010b: 191). The hybrid literary form of magic realism, taken up more and more by children’s authors, has postcolonial roots, and suggests alternative worldviews. Particularly pre-adult readers may be open to both textual hybridity, such as multimodal texts and magic realism, and cultural hybridity, to read sensitively, for example, the transcultural work of writers ‘using English, the colonial language, to speak and write against the empire’ (Canagarajah 1999: 34). This is because the identity of adolescent readers is itself ambivalent and still in formation during the liminal period of adolescence. I avoid using the expression ‘transcultural competence’ to refer to the learning involved in reading about transcultural experience, as even a sensitive empathetic reading cannot be equated with the actual experience of culture shock. Culture shock, the almost inevitable result of a transculturality, even when not sudden and enforced, involves bewilderment, alienation and anxiety (Furnham 2004). This is the case, for example, in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime Indian (2008), which describes non-enforced transculturality. In Beverley Naidoo’s The Other Side of Truth (2000) (Carnegie Medal winner) the child protagonists, involved in enforced transculturality, suffer culture shock, and at the same time lose their family, friends, possessions and agency, as well as their understanding of truth. In an example accessible already to lower-secondary school EFL students chosen for this chapter, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, the loss includes all of the above, and in addition the ability to communicate through a mutual language. A negotiation of subject positions and a quest for agency is intrinsic to much of children’s literature. It can be observed that cultural hybridity, as a theme that has developed strongly in the postcolonial era, has deeply complicated this quest. The learning that this engenders in the EFLliterature classroom can still be characterized, I argue, as intercultural learning,

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despite recent debates on terminology, for example, in Germany. This should then lead to the meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy.

VI Affording the unmasking of bias with the meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy The German concept of Bildung includes involving ethical principles in language learning (Hu et al. 2008: 172). I maintain that ethical debate in the EFL-literature classroom will be welcomed by pre-adult learners. For this critical cultural literacy as a meta-cognitive skill must be trained: Another useful ingredient that learning and understanding theories have contributed is the significance of meta-cognitive skills (.  .  .). Especially when it comes to the comprehension of sociocultural practices, which will inevitably include the use of cultural schemata on the part of the learner, the ability to reflect on one’s own perception and comprehension is extremely valuable. (Reichl 2013: 109–10)

The meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy will, in turn, temper a mindless immersion in any particular storyworld. Stephens stresses that to encourage students to identify with focalizers should not belong to the reader-focused approach in the literature classroom, as it is ‘a dangerous ideological tool and pedagogically irresponsible. It fosters an illusion that readers are in control of texts whereas they are highly susceptible to the ideologies of the text, especially the unarticulated or implicit ideologies’ (Stephens 1992: 68). The principle of critical cultural literacy critiques a sometimes too ‘limited perspective of reader response theories that focus primarily on the reader as an autonomous constructor of meaning and minimizes the importance of the socio-cultural and historical aspects of the construction of meanings in response to literature’ (Serafini 2005: 50). Paula Fox’s The Slave Dancer is discussed in this chapter as a committed anti-slavery book where, however, the natural order represented is that of whiteness as being the norm. The skill of critical cultural literacy can help the student recognize the imposition of a human ‘norm’ of whiteness as implicit residual racism, for the construct ‘race’ should not be reserved only for nonwhites: ‘As long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people’ (Dyer 1997: 1).

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Critical language awareness and critical cultural awareness A critical engaged reading cannot be separated from the fact that: ‘(t)he ability of the learner to behave both as an insider and an outsider to the speech community whose language he or she is learning, depends on his or her understanding of the cultural situation’ (Kramsch 1993: 182). This statement reinforces my argument for children’s and young adult literature in a classroom with pre-adult readers, for a critical cultural reading requires an adequate understanding of the storyworld. The educational advantages of EFL might be considered to include

1. Intercultural communicative competence 2. Citizenship development, creating positive attitudes to diversity and tolerance 3. Motivation for language learning, confidence building and arousing curiosity 4. Meta-linguistic knowledge, appreciation of multilingualism, learning to learn 5. The literacy spectrum, for example, film, media and visual literacy The above aspects of language learning correspond to the five interdependent dimensions of benefits claimed for language awareness: 1. performative dimension, 2. social dimension, 3. affective dimension, 4. cognitive dimension and 5. power dimension (Garrett and James 2004: 331–2). However, the critical aspects of the fifth dimension are possibly the least developed. Many aspects of literacy, including visual and literary literacy, have been discussed in previous chapters. Critical cultural literacy encompasses in my argument both critical language awareness (Canagarajah 1999; Fairclough 1992; Pennycook 2001) and critical cultural awareness. For Byram, the latter is identified as an aspect of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as one of the five savoirs, savoir s’engager. Byram defines this as: Critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager): an ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries. This ‘educational’ component of ICC adds the notion of evaluation and comparison not just for purposes of improving the effectiveness of communication and interaction but especially for purposes of clarifying one’s own ideological perspective and engaging with others consciously on the basis of that perspective. The consequence may include conflict in perspectives, not only harmonious communication. (Byram 1997: 101, emphasis in the original)

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To date, the concept of critical cultural awareness has been least developed in theory and practice: ‘there are very few approaches to what can be called critical cultural awareness (by analogy with critical language awareness, cf. Fairclough 1992)’ (Risager 2004: 161). It also seems extremely difficult to give a clear place to the domain of critical cultural awareness in school ELT curricula. Following Byram’s concept of a spectrum of savoirs belonging to ICC (Byram 1997: 34), ICC includes aspects such as knowledge, attitudes, skills and education. The aspect of knowledge would include sociocultural issues; the aspect of attitude involves the willingness to understand another perspective and question one’s own values; the aspect of skills encompasses interpret­ing and interacting; the aspect of education embraces critical cultural awareness and political education, such as an awareness of prejudice and stereotyping in one’s own as well as in other cultures. Reading and negotiating children’s literature is arguably the most effective method for rehearsing intraand intercultural communicative competence with pre-adults, other than a well-prepared intercultural exchange. Yet procedures for understanding reading as practice in ICC in the lower to mid-secondary-EFL classroom are extremely scarce: However, meaningful the careful evaluation of skills and sub-skills may be, however lucid the demands of standards may be, the allotment to levels like A1 or C2 does not in itself make a language speaker successful in his or her striving for communication with members of other cultures; these levels do not say anything about empathy, sensitivity or intercultural understanding. Understanding the other, however, is one of the main problems we encounter when we learn or teach a foreign language, and it cannot be solved by teaching reading as a merely informative skill. (Burwitz-Melzer 2013: 56)

I suggest an intra-cultural exchange could also be based on children’s literature, for example, a story-telling project that involves family members from the different speech domains in a multicultural classroom, or an interschool drama project across institutional divisions (Bland 2013: forthcoming). A consideration of the topics of ICC in the EFL-literature classroom is, of course, significant to the argument for engaged reading. There is awkwardness within the postcolonial debate about the world-wide dominance of Englishlanguage children’s literature, most of which stems from ‘the old centre’: if children’s literature is to maintain its claim to be culturally influential, such an awareness at the (old) center is vital. While English remains the dominant

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world language, and when only a tiny fraction of translation is into English, neo-colonialism seems to be inevitable. (Hunt and Sands 2000: 49, emphasis in the original)

Susan Stewart claims ‘Aside from North America, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan, most countries do not have funds to devote to the publication of children’s literature’ (Stewart 2008: 97). If this is the case, then I suggest the global language English plays a pivotal educational role in supporting the acquisition of ICC internationally. Ghosn, writing from the Lebanese perspective, makes a similar point: ‘In the developing countries, where high quality L1 literature may not be available or easily accessible to all children, the EFL program can provide the much needed literary experiences’ (Ghosn 2002: 177). The exact version of global English taught is less relevant for the argument of using children’s literature to promote critical cultural literacy. Global English as a dynamic system is naturally adaptive and is likely to diversify, as the need requires: ‘the very international nature of the language acts as a guarantee of its continuing intelligibility, which the imposition of intranational controls would necessarily undermine’ (Widdowson 2004: 195). English, as a first, second and foreign language, has enormous market power with publishing houses, which will always try to fulfil market demands. It is currently the case within children’s literature that texts by ‘indigenous and minority authors, especially those produced by specialist publishing houses, must compete with the products of multinational publishers, distributed and promoted globally’ (Bradford 2010a: 49). There have been studies of linguistic imperialism in English teaching; most interesting are the voices from the periphery: Appropriating English while maintaining their vernaculars makes periphery subjects linguistically competent for the culturally hybrid post-modern world they confront. The maintenance of polyvocality with a clear awareness of their socio-ideological location empowers them to withstand the totalitarian tendencies – of local nationalist regimes and Western multinational agencies – enforced through uniformity of thought and communication. (Canagarajah 1999: 197)

Canagarajah uses the expression periphery to refer to both the ‘outer circle’ and ‘expanding circle’ (Kachru 1988: 5) of second language speakers of English, currently estimated at between 800 and 1500 million, as opposed to the 320–80 million ‘inner circle’ native speakers of English (Crystal 2003: 107). The global proportion of the use of English is the rationale for my argument

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that the restriction of topics and texts in the EFL-literature classroom to the centre nations such as Britain, Australia and North America is nothing short of cultural imperialism. The British Council TeachingEnglish website claims categorically on using literature: ‘The literature used in ELT classrooms today is no longer restricted to canonical texts from certain countries e.g. UK, USA, but includes the work of writers from a diverse range of countries and cultures using different forms of English’ (British Council 2008). There are gifted postcolonial writers of children’s literature writing in English; equally there are gifted writers, often with hybrid identities, who may well be, as Peter Hunt writes, at the (old) centre, telling life stories from around the world with great commitment, and very frequently of children crossing borders. Adolescent readers tend to readily engage with such storyworlds and are open to a discussion of human rights, as already mentioned (see ‘Appeal to the idealism of the pre-adult reader’). However, in addition, the meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy must be employed in order for experiential learning, which includes engagement, reflection and conceptualization (Kolb 1984), to be achieved. I argue that a first step to critical language awareness and critical cultural awareness can be achieved implicitly even in the primary school, for example, through engaged reading of radical storyworlds. However, although learning through children’s literature is ideally nearly always inductive learning, in order to achieve the meta-cognitive skill of critical cultural literacy, the learning must be explicitly reflected upon through booktalk in the EFLliterature classroom of the secondary school.

Human rights in the EFL classroom The narrative imagination, the ability to inhabit a strange world for a time, and share in it cognitively and emotionally, is the ‘promise of literature’ according to Martha Nussbaum: It is for this reason that literature is so urgently important for the citizen, as an expansion of sympathies that real life cannot cultivate sufficiently. It is the political promise of literature that it can transport us, while remaining ourselves, into the life of another, revealing similarities but also profound differences between the life and thought of that other and myself and making them comprehensible, or at least nearly comprehensible. Any stance toward criticism that denies that possibility seems to deny the very possibility of literary experience as a human social good. (Nussbaum 1998: 111)

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To Wallace (1992: 69), ‘(c)entral to the idea of critical reading is an awareness of the role that language plays in conveying not just a propositional message but an ideological one’. This supports the contention that human rights should be considered as belonging to the cultural dimension of language learning. According to Hugh Starkey: ‘Language teaching is a vehicle for transmitting knowledge and understanding of human rights and a policy instrument for promoting intercultural communication in a spirit of human rights’ (Starkey 2004: 285). I argue that the educational purpose of the EFL classroom can, from this theoretical standpoint of critical cultural literacy, encompass a human rights approach based on cross-cultural (intra- and intercultural) communication. This would seek ‘to use knowledge of foreign languages and cultures for improving relationships between people, both within and between countries’ (Starkey 2004: 286). This is supported, for example, by Delanoy (2006: 240), ‘my notion of the intercultural includes global issues (e.g. human rights, global civic responsibility)’. Children and teenagers generally already have a sense of fairness, as discussed under ‘Appeal to the idealism of the pre-adult reader’. However, critical thinking abilities need to be nurtured in order for the students to look beyond themselves and the status quo, and gain an understanding of diversity: Immersion in literature that generates critical analysis of the status quo can open students to new perspectives, prepare students for current and coming challenges to traditional ways of being, and perhaps even stimulate them to launch their own challenges to the old order. (O’Neil 2010: 41)

Developing critical thinking skills heads the list of abilities that global education should involve, according to Education for Global Citizenship: A Guide for Schools:

1. Asking questions and developing critical thinking skills 2. Equipping young people with knowledge, skills and values to participate as active citizens 3. Acknowledging the complexity of global issues 4. Revealing the global as part of everyday local life, whether in a small village or a large city 5. Understanding how we relate to the environment and to each other as human beings. (Oxfam 2006: 3) We have already seen how students’ language skills in the EFL classroom are far behind their cognitive capacities, and therefore students’ critical thinking skills are often neglected, particularly in the area of intercultural learning:

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Although beginning students may not have the language skills to analyze texts closely, we can and should develop their critical thinking skills: for instance, they can analyze some word meanings from context, compare what they already know about the world with what they are learning, and make inferences. (Barnett 1991: 10)

I will make use of the Education for Global Citizenship criteria for a closer examination of a number of exemplars of children’s literature. First of all, I turn my attention to ideology and perspective structure, as critical thinking skills involve the context as well as the text.

Attention to ideology and perspective structure in the EFL-literature classroom Both in a literary and in a cultural analysis, the author is an integral part of the cultural context: ‘For the cultural and literary historian, the context is thus not a “datum” but another “interpretandum”, just like the literary text itself ’ (Erll 2005: 90). Authors are unreliable as to the significance of their own work. D. H. Lawrence maintained: ‘Never trust the artist. Trust the tale’ (Lawrence 1923/77: 31). The author’s ‘intention’ then is best avoided (see the ‘intentional fallacy’, Wimsatt 1954 and the ‘death of the author’, Barthes 1989) exactly because we cannot entirely escape contemporary notions, cultural influences and confines. The author may have achieved something other than he or she realized, and quite different to what he or she ‘intended’. The ideology of the educational system, community, peer group and family creates a cultural confine that on a subconscious level influences every individual to a greater or lesser extent, including authors. Our habit is so much to cherish individualism, however, that we often overlook the huge commonalities of an age, and the captivity of mind we undergo by living in our own time and place and no other. A large part of any book is written not by its author but by the world the author lives in. (Hollindale 1988: 15)

The perspective structure of a literary text is ‘the totality of the world- and beliefmodels embraced by the fictional individuals of the storyworld’ (Surkamp 2005: 423). Within the concept of critical cultural literacy, the perspective structure of any literary text must be considered, as even a prize-winning committed and moving literary text may have a biased perspective structure: bias may arise when certain sectors of the community – notably females, dis­ abled or handicapped people, the elderly, those of a particular class, ­ethni­city,

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nation,  culture, sexual orientation, political persuasion or religion  – are depicted in, or excluded from, either text or illustration. (Mikkelsen and Pinsent 2001: 75)

A possible example of this is The Slave Dancer (Fox 1973, Newbery Medal winner), a deeply committed and moving literary text that forces the reader to imaginatively live through the evil of the transatlantic slave trade. This is a first-person narrative situation, and the reader experiences the savagery by witnessing it from the point of view of the 13-year-old American boy, who has been kidnapped to work on a barbarous slave ship. As a first-person narrative told from the point of view of a white boy, we have no access to the thoughts of the African slaves. They must have spoken in their own languages, but this is not recorded. Towards the end of the book, the two sole survivors, the white boy narrator and one black boy, are able to communicate a little in English; and yet we do not ‘hear’ the black boy utter more than four words. The young readers of this text, many of whom must be African Americans, are made to live through the horror as a white person witnessing the maltreatment and murder of the black characters, who themselves have no voice. Thus the implied reader is white, which suggests that, although the explicit ideology is forcefully anti-racist, there is an othering implicit ideology. It could be discussed whether denying all the black characters a voice is an example of bias, as defined by Mikkelsen and Pinsent. This is not an argument against The Slave Dancer with EFL students, but rather for a critically aware reading. A reading of The Slave Dancer in the intermediate EFL-literature classroom can elucidate aspects of colonialism that still have strong repercussions in the global-English contemporary world, both explicit historical colonial ideology and contemporary implicit residual racism: a white Western male perspective structure. For, as children’s texts, according to Bradford, ‘both reflect and promote cultural values and practices, it is inevitable that they disclose conceptions of and attitudes to race, ethnicity, colonialism and postcolonialism, responding to the discourses and practises of the societies where they are ­produced’ (Bradford 2010a: 39). Using authentic literature from different cultures introduces diversity of experience to the EFL-literature classroom, and comes with the safeguard of scholarship in literary and cultural studies that demonstrates how to analyse texts for bias. The pedagogical mandate of TEFL may be fulfilled when young EFL students are encouraged to reflect on diversity. According to Kramsch,

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however, cross-cultural approaches and the cross-cultural personality require an as-yet-unrealized critical language pedagogy: Foreign language education has been characterized up to now by the search for a ‘middle landscape’. (. . .) By refusing to be ideological, this approach has in fact espoused a middle-ground conservative ideology, recognizable by its positivistic, pragmatic bent, intent on assimilating conflicts by minimizing them. (Kramsch 1993: 12)

Kramsch asserts that culture is not something we should ‘tack on’ to language learning, in the shape of conventional Landeskunde or Area Studies. I argue raising critical cultural awareness of one’s own and other cultures can be achieved with children’s literature, particularly when the narrative is a reporting of life stories from other cultures, including, of course, other cultures within one’s own culture. Even the sense of nation will vary within one culture: ‘Nation as a concept resides in the hearts and minds of those who live in a particular place at a particular time’ (Stewart 2008: 98). I argue that the rejection of the essentialist concept of teaching culture and the rise of multiculturalism strongly critique the conventional understanding in the EFL classroom of a uniform national culture existing in the different regions of the Anglophone world. To lead students on to higher-order thinking skills and critical cultural readings, who can then take on the role of the expert in diverse ways and read against the grain of global English texts in ethical ways, I maintain that literary education must commence in the first years of EFL learning. Reading against the text with young learners was introduced in Chapter 4. An investigative technique of resisting reading for secondary-school EFL readers could be ‘contrapuntal pedagogy’ (Said 1993; Singh and Greenlaw 1998). This involves juxtaposing a neo-colonial Eurocentric or Americentric text with a postcolonial text in order to consider events or historical figures from different perspectives: ‘The term contrapuntal is a metaphor Said has taken from musical theory and which means to counterpoint or to add one rhythm, melody, or theme to another’ (Singh and Greenlaw 1998: 194, emphasis in the original). I suggest the musical metaphor underlines the enriching, multilayered cultural concept. Chambers makes a very similar point: Being able to read between the lines also includes the recognition of the different possible interpretations of meaning. Children need to hear alternative versions of the same story in fiction, and, later, to be aware that different newspapers may

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present conflicting accounts of ‘the truth’, as do different historians and different scientists. (Chambers 2011: 160)

In fact, EFL teachers would not have to look far to implement contrapuntal readings in the EFL-literature classroom. Many graded readers for intermediate students are stories with a historical background. Almost always a simplification of the language goes hand in hand with a simplified and Eurocentric or Americentric perspective structure, and can therefore be considered neo-colonial. Edwards (2008) writes on a website dedicated to the Saskatchewan cultural heritage: ‘Through non-Aboriginal writing, theatre, film, television, comic books, and advertising, Indians have existed as the invention of the European’. According to Alter: The development of ICC and the quality of empathy strongly depend on the media to which children are exposed to, because based on a medium the reader receives a certain image of the represented culture and transfers this image into a construction of a perceived reality. One example in which fictional representa­ tion of otherness has led to a superficial and false image of otherness is the perceived and constructed knowledge of First Nations and Native Americans. (Alter 2013: 151)

The various retellings of Pocahontas are a case in point. In graded readers, the Native Americans or ‘Indians’ under Powhatan, Pocahontas’ father, are portrayed as mostly interested in stealing weapons, as in Pocahontas (Vicary 1998) and The True Story of Pocahontas (Reinhart 2003). The published version of Powhatan’s speech of circa 1609 tells a very different story: ‘Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food?’ You see us unarmed, and willing to supply your wants, if you will come in a friendly manner, and not with swords and guns, as to invade an enemy. I am not so simple, as not to know it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children; to laugh and be merry with the English; and, being their friend, to have copper, hatchets, and whatever else I want, than to fly from all, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots, and such trash, and to be so hunted, that I cannot rest, eat, or sleep. In such circumstances, my men must watch, and if a twig should but break, all would cry out, ‘Here comes Capt. Smith’; and so, in this miserable manner, to end my miserable life. (Drake, Samuel (1851), Biography and History of the Indians of North America, from Its First Discovery (11th edn). Boston: Benjamin Mussey. Quoted in Blaisdell 2000: 4)

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The contrapuntal reading can be intensified by introducing students to a story from a collection of Native American women’s writing: Sister Nations (Erdrich and Tohe 2002). ‘Her Pocahontas’ is the Mohawk/Blackfeet story of a doll named Pocahontas: ‘Her Pocahontas was nothing like the dolls the other girls had. Their dolls were Christmas presents with blue eyes, curly blonde hair, petite plastic noses’ (Deer Cloud 2002: 110). The silent ‘earth-skinned’ doll of the story symbolizes much that the girl who owns her knows, but cannot put into words. The white girls have a Pocahontas doll too: Their Pocahontas was a film star, first a squaw saving the White Man in bad cowboy-and-Indian movies, last a buckskin-Barbie disguised by Disney as politically correct. Any girl could be one. Her Pocahontas knew the truth but couldn’t speak. When her mother died too young, her eldest brother asked her after the funeral, ‘Whatever happened to that doll Ma gave you – Pocahontas?’ (. . .) ‘Maybe,’ she told him, ‘she died of smallpox, of arms and legs broken for trying to bring back the old dances, of a tongue slit for speaking her own language.’ (Deer Cloud 2002: 111)

The authentic story has a Native American perspective structure, and of course can be contrasted with the Disneyfication of Pocahontas as the ‘Good Indian’ who, in a romanticized and – from a Euro-American perspective – mythopoeic narrative, bravely saves the white hero Captain John Smith from the ‘Bad Indians’. However, the concept of contrapuntal reading is not to search for a ‘true’ version of a story, but rather for a better understanding: ‘we would like people in different cultures to understand each other better, so that they can live in harmony, so that their lives can be enriched by understanding others more fully’ (Singh and Greenlaw 1998: 193).

Global issues and children’s literature I now turn to specific exemplars of children’s literature that can be employed in the EFL-literature classroom to include the examination of race, class, gender and ecocritical issues. The great challenges of the early 21st century are global in nature – issues that transcend the capabilities and resources of any one nation or sector. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan labelled them ‘problems without passports’. (www. unfoundation.org/global-issues/)

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The previous sections have considered the global proportions of the use of English,  the place of human rights as subject matter within the remit of intercultural education and the need for critical cultural literacy in order to reveal the perspective structure of texts. This forms the theoretical underpinning for the following discussion of texts that combine themes of global relevance with the format of children’s literature. ‘Another compelling reason for using literature in a language class is the potential power of good literature to transform, to change attitudes, and to help eradicate prejudice while fostering empathy, tolerance, and an awareness of global problems’ (Ghosn 2002: 176). Interestingly, contemporary and innovative creators of children’s literature on serious themes are increasingly turning to visual narratives, word and image combined, to address a pre-adult global audience on the readers’ terms. This can be exploited in the intercultural EFL-literature classroom: Using the powerful visual representations as tools to move beyond the initially tedious process of decoding a foreign language, into a world of images and meanings created individually, allows the child to engage immediately with the visual text, constructing theories about other languages, other cultures, themselves and their emotions and about their relationship to this sense of ‘otherness’. (Enever 2006: 67)

The contemporary power of the image has been called an ‘iconic turn’ (Boehm 1994), and calls for an interdisciplinary analytical and critical study of visual culture (Sauerländer 2004). The borderline between picturebooks and graphic novels, between books for young children and books for teenagers, has become unstable. Yang (2007) refers to certain picturebooks, including Tan’s The Arrival (2006 children’s book winner and overall winner Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards) and Wiesner’s Flotsam (2007 Caldecott Medal Winner), with the words: ‘Some of the most accomplished graphic novels in existence are never identified as such’. These and other works selected for the following sections are grouped into the topic areas of race, gender, class and the environment. I suggest the topic of global issues might be considered a more potent raison d’être for inclusion in the EFL-literature classroom than the scarcely definable issue of literary genre, such as ‘short story’, ‘novel’ and ‘poem’, or the controversial issue of language ‘grading’ for particular proficiency groups, which does not sufficiently encompass the formulaic use of language already with lower grades.

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Race issues For this section, I have chosen two texts that illustrate xenophobia, The Island (Greder 2007), and the predicament of refugees, The Arrival (Tan 2007). Already the titles seem to suggest a non-geographical and non-temporal universal relevance, and indeed the texts are intensely symbolic, and demand interpretation of the reader, which makes them highly suitable for booktalk in the EFL-literature classroom. They particularly illustrate the Global Citizenship criterion: ‘Revealing the global as part of everyday local life, whether in a small village or a large city’ (Oxfam 2006: 3). Although The Island does not belong to any one particular culture, the images suggest a Western setting. It was created by a Swiss writer/illustrator who has lived most of his adult life in Australia. Greder first published The Island in German; he created and published the English version 5 years later. It tells of a helpless and vulnerable outsider (symbolized by his nakedness and starved appearance), who is washed ashore on an island of prosperous and well-fed farmers. They first want to thrust him back into the ocean, which is depicted on a double-page spread as wild and forbidding. A fisherman on the island explains this would be murder, so they very reluctantly give him an abandoned goat pen to sleep in. The verbal text is stark and troubling, yet with familiar undertones: The people grew restless. Fear spread throughout the island. People began to talk. ‘We have to do something before it’s too late!’ ‘We have enough troubles as it is.’ ‘He is not one of us. He isn’t our problem.’ ‘He is a stranger. He doesn’t belong.’ ‘He has to go.’ (Greder 2007)

As this excerpt reveals, the storyworld is all too easy to understand and disturbingly close to our own reality. The reader is forced to live through the xenophobia of the villagers, because we read in the narration and dialogue – and see in the images – the fears, prejudices and intolerance of the islanders as if it were reasonable normality. However, the emotions of the victimized stranger are not revealed; mostly we do not see the stranger in the illustrations at all (he is helpless and imprisoned in a goat pen), but a visualization of the villagers’ xenophobic terror of the stranger. The man is starving so the islanders have to give him scraps to eat; but they are afraid to let him work as he is different

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from them, and soon the entire community is distressed by this difference. The  pictorial quotations from European painting, Munch’s The Scream and Fuseli’s The Nightmare do not allow the reader to imagine this symbolic island is far removed from contemporary Western civilization. The awe-inspiring educational and aesthetic value of the picturebook is in the intense visualization of prejudice. The foolishness and viciousness of the villagers’ unfounded fears can be more meaningfully examined, analysed and possibly understood in the EFL classroom through their visual expression. The grim outcome of pushing the man back into the sea and turning the island into a fortress ‘so that no one would ever find their island again’ reveals that, in the end, the islanders themselves are also victims of their own ignorance. Tan’s The Arrival tells the life story of a refugee, from the bitter moment of departure, until the time he can welcome his wife and daughter to the strange land. This is a purely visual narrative, so the verbalization is entirely in the hands of the EFL-literature classroom. The pictures tell many stories, which can be recounted orally or in writing. The first panels depict a dark dragon-like threat that forces the father to seek a new home for his family. The following panels tell of his desolation when he has left his wife and daughter, they force the reader to share his bewilderment when he is unable to communicate in the new land. Just like the refugee, the reader has to work on every visual clue available to try and make sense of this strange new culture, and the ‘wordlessness of the book adds to the feeling of being estranged’ (Burwitz-Melzer 2013: 62). The lack of language also underlines the universality of the experience of loneliness and confusion that a refugee must feel, and his dependence on the unhelpful officials and helpful settled refugees he meets. Clearly, this is a very important experience for the EFL student: culture shock and anxiety, loss of family, sense of rejection and helplessness as a foreigner, loss of the ability to communicate and, therefore, loss of agency. Most pages have 12 detailed panels, which offer page after page of authentic negotiation of interpretation, for the meaning is often open. There are details of gestures and facial expressions showing disorientation and attempts at communication (see Figure 7.1). There are flashbacks when other refugees ‘tell’ their stories of war and oppression, often depicted in another monochrome tint. The stories range from weirdly futuristic, as, for example, the doublepage spread where giants appear to be using vast vacuum cleaners to drain the streets of human beings, to realistic sepia drawings that recall old photos of emigrants on a ship to the United States and the crowds of refugees on Ellis Island in the early twentieth century. The combination of the realistic and

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Figure 7.1  The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Lothian Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia, 2006

surreal, the familiar and the fantastic makes the experience of The Arrival both particular and universal: By placing photorealistic human figures in abstract, surreal environments, Tan evokes the intimacy of an individual immigrant experience without ever settling on a specific person, time or place. His drawings depict architecture and clothing that are at once historic and futuristic. (Yang 2007: N/A)

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The Arrival and The Island are texts that illuminate the refugee experience, and thus are of great value for intercultural learning in the EFL-literature classroom. Acquiring critical cultural literacy, ‘asking questions and developing critical thinking skills’ (Oxfam 2006: 3), will be discussed in the next section with a text very relevant to a heterogeneous – and homogeneous – classroom, for the concept of culture includes differences inherent in social class within a single neighbourhood.

Class issues Class as one of the major global issues has been rather neglected by children’s literature scholarship, which is surprising as class division and class conflict seem to be again on the increase in many societies. This is reflected, for example, in inner-city schools in the United Kingdom, and also in the German school system, where students with a non-German background attend the low-status Hauptschule in disproportionate numbers. Socio-economically disadvantaged students are generally overrepresented in the Hauptschule, and moreover ‘the social gap between students is extremely wide in Germany and is by no means closed or even improved in school’ (Luchtenberg 2009: 469). A report compiled by the European Forum for Migration Studies (EFMS), Bamberg University, observes: However, children with a migration background suffer from the general weaknesses of the German educational system, i.e. the early streaming after the fourth grade, which tends to place pupils with less favourable starting positions (e.g. insufficient German language proficiency) in the lower levels of the multitrack school system. (. . .) The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS; German abbreviation is IGLU) revealed the significantly lower reading proficiency of migrant students at the end of primary school. (Bosch, Peucker and Reiter: 2008: 73–4)

Voices in the Park (Browne 1998), with its heteroglossia of different sociocultural voices, is a surreal picturebook that is, nonetheless, close to the reality of many children in EFL classrooms. It is full of hidden surprises, intertextuality and intratextuality (stories within stories), and thus highly suitable for booktalk in the EFL-literature classroom. Gradually and collectively, on repeated visits to the text, the students can discover all the visual jokes through an investigative process, and ponder the symbolic meanings. The storyline is minimal, but

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repeated four times, using four voices and points of view that belong to a haughty lady gorilla, her tyrannized son Charles, a sadly demoralized unemployed male gorilla and his vivacious warm-hearted daughter Smudge. However, the characters have human bodies with gorilla heads, so they are human beings imagined as animals. This zoomorphism encourages a critical distance to the fantasy storyworld. In addition, the class differences, though very clearly there, have to be investigated through external evidence, such as the splendid house Charles lives in, and the characters’ clothes and body language, which can be received as an ethical comment on the construct of class difference as being outside, not within the individual, as each gorilla looks very much the same. The challenge of the picturebook is in the symbolism of the pictures, and the need to interpret them in order to grasp the social comment. The relatively easy verbal text characterizes the two families as belonging to two different classes already by their own individual type fonts (visual iconicity) and discourse styles. The four different voices relate the afternoon as in a diary, nuanced according to character and class; the affordances of the pictures and the interanimation, however, are nearly overwhelming: ‘The sophisticated and complex illustrations in Browne’s book create an almost hypertextual viewing experience; there is much to choose from to “click on” with one’s eyes’ (Pantaleo 2008: 61). Referring to both Voices in the Park and The Three Pigs (discussed in Chapter 4), Pantaleo continues that the children ‘made intra- and intertextual connections during the picturebook read-aloud sessions. The picturebooks were ideal for rereading to the children as the polysemous texts afford multiple opportunities for meaningmaking and interpretation’ (Pantaleo 2008: 67). In the Pantaleo study, already first graders in the United States were able to make many literary connections. With the aid of scaffolding and language modelling, the somewhat older and more cognitively aware EFL students will be able, in addition, to discover much sociocultural meaning. The characters (the four voices) recount the afternoon in the park each from their own perspective. Additionally, the colours, weather and even different seasons in the park – although they were all there at the same time and witnessed the same events – become metaphors for the characters’ attitudes and moods. This unexplained symbolic connection between the season and each narrator’s mood creates a challenging indeterminacy in setting (Pantaleo 2004: 219). Charles’ arrogant mother is fiery, her hat a fierce red and the park trees are richly autumnal. For Smudge’s father, the streets on the way to the park are dark and

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dreary, the park trees are wintry and leafless. Having been cheered up by his daughter in the park, sparkling fairy lights appear in the trees on their return home. The pavement scene, often described as ‘weird’ by young readers (Serafini 2005), shows a street artist dressed as Father Christmas having now discarded his sign ‘WIFE AND MILLIONS OF KIDS TO SUPPORT’, and instead dancing with characters from his own paintings for sale on the pavement (Figure 7.2). Charles’ park experience is first wintry and cloudy (the clouds, tree tops and even lamp posts are shaped like his domineering mother’s hat). However, when he begins to play with merry Smudge, there is a break in the clouds and the trees

Figure 7.2  From Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne © (1998). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group UK Limited. All rights reserved

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can be seen covered in spring blossoms. Finally, when Smudge, the fourth voice, narrates the afternoon in the park, the scene is saturated with the brightest and friendliest of summer colours. Eight- to twelve-year-old students in a US multi-age classroom studied Voices in the Park over several days (Serafini 2005), and it was found that they attended to three aspects of the post-modern picturebook in particular. The students, about the same age as students who could well study this picturebook in an EFL-literature classroom after a year or two of EFL, focused on ‘the non-linear structure of Voices in the Park, the images include [sic] in the illustrations and their possible symbolic meanings and the relationship or interplay between the illustrations and the written text contained in the picture book’ (Serafini 2005: 52). Studying the non-linear structure of Voices in the Park can be an excellent lesson in literary literacy: as each character becomes the protagonist in turn, the narrative offers four focalizers and four very distinct points of view. A study of this picturebook can furthermore introduce literary devices such as (visual) metaphor and symbolism. Many of the students in the Serafini study were keen to express the symbolic meanings they had observed: Allison: I notice that for every separate voice, the trees and the season is different. The mom’s point of view, she’s kind of gloomy, so the trees are just boring. The dad’s point of view, he’s sad so the trees are dead. Brittney: (. . .) there’s always something dividing them except for the dogs, so it kind of symbolizes them kind of being one and showing them it doesn’t really matter about if he’s rich and she’s poor. (Serafini 2005: 58–9).

Comment on class issues in Voices in the Park is often disguised in visual metaphors. Serafini found the students were keen to discuss how the repre­ sentations in images and verbal text could be interpreted on more than a literal level of meaning. He expresses the importance of beginning a literary education in the primary school: Recognizing and understanding symbols is an important part of being a reader. If readers are not allowed to experience and discuss symbolic representations while in elementary school, they will have difficulty analyzing the symbols represented in the poetry and novels they will encounter in secondary education. (Serafini 2005: 59)

Serafini points to a learner trait that enhances literary interpretation, the ability to tolerate ambiguity: ‘I would suggest that those readers with a higher level of

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tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty were more capable of making sense of meta-fictive elements’ (Serafini 2005: 60). The concept of tolerating ambiguity is likewise crucial for successful and satisfying second language acquisition, thus early literary studies may well support second language studies in the secondary school by continuing to encourage the tolerance of ambiguity that young language learners usually demonstrate in the primary school. To this end, language teachers need training in recognizing the opportunities inherent in lack of closure, training in navigating the non-linear structure of post-modern literary texts and training in understanding the value of children learning ‘to suspend closure in order to consider multiple perspectives and meanings’ (Serafini 2005: 60). In this section, I have considered a picturebook with the theme of class, a global issue that is neglected in children’s literature scholarship as well as in the theory of teaching literature, although it affects the life of every child. In the next section I will look at two exemplars of literary texts, already suitable for the primary EFL classroom, which I consider useful in the light of gender issues. Gender plays a major role in children’s literature scholarship. However, despite the massive formative influence constructs of gender have on students’ lives, ‘Gender Studies has only played a marginal role in the concepts for literature learning in EFL as developed in German-speaking countries’ (Delanoy 2007: 187).

Gender issues The Global Citizenship maxim ‘equipping young people with knowledge, skills and values to participate as active citizens’ (Oxfam 2006: 3) is particularly relevant to the discussion of gender issues in children’s literature. Many educators suggest children are not only influenced, but actually become, or unconsciously ‘perform’ (Butler 1990) the gender roles they see in the media and read about in books. On this point, Nodelman and Reimer state: If that’s true, then the narratives children see on TV or read in books play an important part in making them who they believe themselves to be. In offering subject positions, fictional texts for children work to construct their readers’ subjectivity. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 178)

It has already been considered how graded readers tend to neo-colonialism in their Western perspective structure, and the ‘middle-ground conservative ideology’ (Kramsch 1993: 12) that is embraced when difficult topics are avoided.

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It is hard to see how this can be in the best interest of pre-adult students, who are embroiled in difficult topics of all kinds in their daily lives, and while identity formation is a major aspect of adolescence. Gender in literary criticism refers to the ‘socially-shaped (as opposed to the biologically-determined) characteristics of women and men, boys and girls’ (Sunderland 2004: 229). All cultural artefacts, including textbooks and children’s literature, are involved in ‘gendering’ by their representation of male and female characters, whether as humans or as anthropomorphized animal characters. From a feminist perspective, contemporary children’s literature is likely to be more radical than EFL textbooks, which are usually ideologically conservative. Additionally, children’s literature scholarship critically examines the issue of gender, in that ‘the advent of a feminist perspective has transformed the way that it is possible to think about children’s literature (and other non-canonized literatures as well)’ (Thacker 2001: 3). The anti-essentialist position of gender studies focuses on ‘the conceptualisa­ tion of gender as a culturally and socially constructed and thus historically variable category’ (Allrath and Gymnich 2005: 195). This brings to the fore, once again, the importance of what is portrayed as normal, and what is unconsciously or deliberately ignored: ‘Showing only some aspects of reality normalizes those aspects and inevitably implies the freakish unacceptability of others’ (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 130). Influenced by concepts such as the heterosexual matrix (Butler 1990), a dualist understanding of gender is gradually being overturned in gender-sensitive radical children’s literature. In contrast, I have not yet seen the portrayal of a gay man or lesbian woman in an EFL textbook. Such portrayals would also be highly unlikely in a graded reader published for the international EFL market (see PARSNIP principle, Chapter 8). Leaving the portrayal of multiple gendered identities until students are sufficiently mature to discuss, for example, Stephen Frears’ film My Beautiful Laundrette, denies younger adolescents the opportunity to experience gender as a multiple yet unfreakish and fluid phenomenon. Questioning the essentialist dualist concept of gender is likely to be too sensitive for most secondary-school classrooms (Volkmann 2007: 166–7). A straightforward portrayal of a child visiting his gay father, in a picturebook with a linguistic level that is not too demanding for the primary EFL classroom, might be another matter. Daddy’s Roommate (Willhoite 1990) is, from the literary perspective, a conven­ tional picturebook – one that has an unremarkable, symmetrical relationship between the visual and verbal text and with few gaps and layers to negotiate. From the gender studies perspective, it may help children of gay parents to feel

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less marginalized, as well as support those students who, as they grow older, begin to question their own gendered identity. It tells a simple story of a boy, his homosexual father, and the father’s roommate. The following text is accompanied by seven full-page images: ‘My Mommy and Daddy got a divorce last year. Now there’s somebody new at Daddy’s house. Daddy and his roommate Frank live together. Work together. Eat together. Sleep together. Shave together’ (Willhoite 1990). Reading Daddy’s Roommate in the primary EFL-literature classroom may not be a formidable task, but simply a single gesture and emancipating project. However, it should be pointed out that Daddy’s Roommate was named the second most censored book of the decade by the American Library Association in the 1990s (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 130). There is still a long way to go to overturn the heterosexual matrix. Despite the fact that the complex roots of an eating disorder are strongly connected to childhood and adolescence, there is unfortunately as yet a dearth of children’s literature dealing with the topic. A picturebook that celebrates diversity of subject positions, body shapes and life styles, and works effectively against a ‘granny’ stereotype, is Our Granny (Wild and Vivas 1994). The language of Our Granny is patterned and rhythmical, with the balanced arrangements of parallelisms and lexical density. Together with the verbal text, the illustrations of Our Granny work against the mental inertia that is typical of stereotyping (Volkmann 2011: 27). Contemporary grandmothers are frequently highly active and productive, professional and/or caring individuals, yet ‘habits of thought and valuing persist over many generations, even when they have been superseded by political and cultural change’ (Bradford 2010a: 39). The images in Our Granny depict the enormous diversity within a cultural category that is often reduced to a gendered and ageist stereotype. They also celebrate a rich diversity of body shapes (see Figure 7.3). Many of the educational goals involved in a wide understanding of intercul­tural learning, which values diversity, and includes anti-ageism, anti-sexism and anti-lookism, are respected in Our Granny, a wellillustrated and well-written picturebook suitable for the EFL-literature young learner classroom. The aspect of critical cultural awareness in this section on gender has been, in contrast to my approach to race and class issues, in the area of implicit learning, providing EFL students still in the primary school with images that may empower them to resist future stereotyping pressures. As stereotyping is largely subconscious, ‘stereotypes function as mental filters’ (Volkmann  2011:  25), I argue that an implicit counteracting of stereotypes should be the first step towards critical cultural literacy wherever possible, and the reflexive approach

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Figure 7.3  Excerpted from Our Granny by Margaret Wild © (1994), illustrated by Julie Vivas © (1994). Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved

(Volkmann 2011: 29), should be the second step (examples of a reflexive approach will be given later in Chapter 7).

Ecocritical issues The critical method of ecocriticism was introduced in Chapter 2. The discussion is continued here with the environment as a global issue and ecocriticism as an ethical debate. The urgency of the interdisciplinary topic of environmental conservation is expressed succinctly by Goatly, who reminds us that neglecting the environment in favour of the classic list of race, class and gender issues is ‘rather like addressing the problem of who is going to fetch the deck-chairs on the Titanic, and who has the right to sit on them’. He continues: However, these ideological positions can reinforce the ecological one. (. . .) Gross affluence and gross poverty undermine ecological sustainability. Equally, an antiimperialist ideological perspective could feel free to celebrate the harmonious relationships with nature of many indigenous people; biological diversity and

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cultural-linguistic diversity must probably go hand in hand. Feminism too, may reinforce ecological positions. A feminist view which celebrates rather than regrets the gender construction of women as more caring, gentler people than the typical male, would fit well with campaigns to end the profligacy of arms spending and the threats of nuclear contamination. (Goatly 2000: 277–8)

As climate change and natural disasters have shown that the earth cannot remain stable in the face of human onslaught, it might also be argued that the environment as a global issue is the most potent reason for including children’s literature in the EFL-literature classroom. According to the children’s literature scholar David Rudd, Aristotle had stated already in the fourth-century BCE that there were great similarities between children and animals (Rudd 2009: 242). As children (and indeed adults) are, in fact, primates, this can be taken as confirmation that children are still in close proximity with the Real, in the Lacanian sense. Ecocritics have similarly noted the connection: ‘classic children’s literature has long been preoccupied with natural history, ecology, and human– animal interaction’ (Dobrin and Kidd 2004: 4). Thus it is not surprising that more exemplars chosen for Chapter 2 were placed under the heading ‘Picturebooks with an environmental perspective’ than in the other sections. Writing 20  years ago, the children’s literature critic Nodelman (1992: 31) stated that children’s literature was ‘filled with images of childhood experience that accord more with Wordsworth’s visions of idyllic childhood innocence than with the realities of modern children’s lives’. However, children’s literature has developed a great deal in the past 20  years. To Ghosn: ‘if children learning a foreign language are to gain insight into the target language culture, they should read high quality contemporary fiction which shows the characters in contexts that accurately reflect the culture of the English-speaking world today’ (Ghosn 2002: 177). I have chosen for discussion almost exclusively literary works that have been written in the past 20 years, my reasoning being that contemporary language is the most useful for the EFL-literature classroom, as well as the vital point that recent children’s literature has developed in thought-provoking multilayered and multimodal directions. The multilayered aspect supports a thinking disposition in the classroom; the multimodal aspect supports L2 understanding and access to literary texts for the digital-native young readers. There are radical children’s texts that investigate anthropocentrism and ecocide (such as Browne’s Zoo and Burningham’s Oi! Get off our Train, discussed in Chapter 2), which can help prepare students for Global Citizenship according to the criterion ‘understanding how we relate to the environment and to each

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other as human beings’ (Oxfam 2006: 3). This is not an entirely new develop­ ment,  as ecocide was already the subject of Dinosaurs (Foreman 1972), a beautifully illustrated picturebook in which the focalizer, ‘a man’, is taught the error of his ways by dinosaurs who return to the earth in order to save it. However, contemporary picturebooks, such as Flotsam (Wiesner 2006), can be highly complex and break the mould in several ways, beginning with length. To use Flotsam, which celebrates the wonder and magical nature of the natural environment, a secondary-school classroom first has to relearn some lessons, particularly that pictures are not ‘simple’ to read and that narratives do not have to be linear. Flotsam begins realistically; a boy on the beach studies the sea life around him using a magnifying glass and microscope. He is always in close physical contact with the sand, water, plant and animal life, while his parents read in their deckchairs. A mighty wave washes an old Melville Underwater Camera onto the beach, and the boy has the film inside developed. As soon as the film is ready, the boy dashes back to the beach to study the images. The photos show underwater worlds with little cities created of shells, and tiny creatures that live among the sea horses and fish (see Figure 7.4). Finally, there is a photo of a child holding up a picture, and this embedded picture shows another child holding up a photo. Using his microscope, the boy is able to discover that the embedded picture shows more and more embedded pictures of children holding up a photo. No less than 11 children from around the world, stretching back at least a hundred years, have found the camera and the mystery it contains. The boy finally throws the camera back into the sea, having first taken a photo of himself holding the print with the embedded pictures, so that the secret of the parallel worlds can be carried by the waves and sea life to another child in another country, who is waiting to receive it. Vivienne Smith, referring to Kress and van Leeuwen’s demand image, identifies in Flotsam a double layer of demand: Characters, or eyes, look out to the reader towards or through, something else, and challenge us to notice not just what is depicted, but the very notion of seeing itself. A crustacean stares out, framed by a human eye. Later, a human eye, framed and magnified by a hand lens, looks at the crustacean. The demand here is clear: Reader! Slow down. Step aside from the daily action. Look! Looking is seminal to this text. (Smith 2009: 87)

Wiesner creates all his images with great respect for detail and accuracy, from the past fashions and realistic beach settings of the children who had discovered the camera previously, to the natural world and the fantastic underwater parallel worlds. Valuing, illuminating and magnifying detail in this way, highlights

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Figure 7.4  Excerpted from Flotsam by David Wiesner © (2006). Used by permission of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved

the wonder of the natural world, which flows seamlessly into the underwater magical worlds, and challenges the reader to look with far more care, as the boy does, at what is being destroyed. Interestingly, Flotsam is a wordless picturebook. As we saw with Almond’s Wild Girl, Wild Boy in Chapter 6, according to Jacques Lacan, the Symbolic, linear, logical and patriarchal language, supplants the thing itself, the Real. Possibly the images initially bring us closer to the Real, for when we experience the world only through language, we are ‘trapped in the alienating prison-house of language, so can never capture the real animal (any more than our real selves)’ (Rudd 2009: 247). However, and this is of course highly relevant for the EFL-literature classroom, it is also the Symbolic, that is language, which allows us ‘imaginatively, to animate any “thing”: animals, certainly, but also vegetables, flowers, dolls, clocks (.  .  .) where animism rules, where all things are democratically, anarchically even, given a voice’ (Rudd 2009: 247–8). With multimodal texts we can offer our students images as well as language, and begin much earlier with global issues and globally relevant topics in the EFL-literature classroom.

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FREE? Stories About Human Rights in the EFL-literature classroom This section introduces FREE? Stories Celebrating Human Rights (2009), an anthology of 14 short stories, commissioned by Amnesty International to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The stories are by well-established authors from India, Australia, Palestine, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, Kenya, the United States and the United Kingdom. They offer compelling, often humorous and always disturbing narratives around the struggle for basic human rights. The protagonists are vulnerable in at least two senses – they are children or adolescents and they are othered, in that they do not belong to the dominant power structure of the cultural community represented.

Deep reading and truncated reading An anthology of short stories has the advantage that the students in the EFL classroom do not initially all have to read the same story, allowing the students an element of choice. FREE? as a collection of short stories is far from Anglocentric or Eurocentric (see Thiongo’o 1986), nor does it not fall into the trap of Exoticism or Orientalism (see Said 1978). The UK authors write about human rights transgressions that take place in or connected to the United Kingdom, and the American authors write about human rights transgressions that take place in the United States; other countries and continents are also represented by their major children’s writers: Meja Mwangi from Kenya, Ibtisam Barakat from Palestine, Jamila Gavin from India, Margaret Mahy from New Zealand and Rita WilliamsGarcia from Jamaica. As I have argued throughout this book, a weaker aspect of curricula for ELT in the secondary school is typically the fact that students are seldom sufficiently prepared for reading the highly complex literary texts they encounter in English in the upper secondary school, through a gradual literary apprenticeship in the lower and mid-secondary school. Many students, of course, will leave school before they reach the upper secondary school. These students are denied empowering learning to learn opportunities, or meta-cognition, through insightful booktalk. ‘Many in countries performing low on international measures of performance, such as South Africa, see the teaching of thinking as a valuable means of raising educational levels and developing social inclusion’ (Moseley et  al. 2005: 15).

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A similar concept for empowerment through enhancing educational levels and developing social inclusion worldwide through a study of transformative children’s literature raises the question of how well reading and talking about literature can support thinking dispositions. This will largely depend on the methodology practised by the teacher, as well as the choice of literary text. The more recent tendency in literary criticism is to focus strongly on the reader’s, or community of readers’, meaning making with the text. This requires more than one single reading: Children know the pleasures of re-reading; they constantly reread favourite books. Critics know the necessity of rereading; it’s the only way to get to know a text well enough to complement it with more than superficial pastime attention. Of course, experienced readers can do more with a one-time reading than can inexperienced readers. But whatever your facility, the point remains: books that are worth bothering with at all are worth (may demand) rereading. (Chambers 2011: 162)

Clearly, then, the choice of text is of the utmost importance, if adolescent readers are to be persuaded to re-read, and to be in the position to make their own sense of the storyworld, as well as the foreign language. Furthermore, the text must be one that is, to use Aidan Chambers’ words, ‘worth bothering with’. In the case of critical cultural literacy, the context of the text – possibly including the sociocultural background of the author – is a part of the learning process. It is important to remember, as already discussed, that the author is a subject of his or her context, subject to the ‘thought control’ of his or her culture (even if the culture is a contemporary and democratic one). Of course, ‘thought control’ is a dramatic expression to use for enculturation – a development that is natural, important and impossible to avoid entirely, but one that can be influenced within pedagogical processes. Jarvis explains the progression we make with regard to the culture we are born into: When children are born, they are born into a society whose culture preceded them and will most certainly continue after their lives are over. Culture therefore appears to be objective and external. But the children have inherited no, or minimal, instincts to help them live within society and conform to its culture; thus they have to acquire that culture. In the first instance, then, learning is a matter of internalising and transforming something that is apparently objective to the individual (. . .). However, there comes a time when they begin to think for themselves, ask questions and generally experiment (. . .). Individuals begin to act back on the social world that has formed them. (Jarvis 1992: 22–3)

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The importance of ‘acting back’ is woven within several stories in the anthology FREE? such as David Almond’s Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads. Commonly intermediate students are offered extracts from novels for their literary apprenticeship. This truncated reading is far from optimal for the kind of shared class contemplation that leads to a deep literary and critical cultural reading: The private motivation for joining in discussion is a conscious attempt to sort out with other people problems we recognise are too difficult and complex for anyone to sort out alone. The public effect of this conscious pooling of thought is that we come to a ‘reading’ – a knowledge, understanding, appreciation – of a book that far exceeds what any one member of the group could have achieved alone. (.  .  .) (Literary reading) offers us images to think with and a means of creating and re-creating the very essence of our individual and corporate lives. (Chambers 2011: 111)

It has also been pointed out that full-length texts will yield more contextual clues for language acquisition through comprehensible input, for example, through the lexical chains and marked cohesive links typical of authentic literature (see Chapter 5). The mental state of ‘flow’ (Csíkszentmihályi 1990) – with regard to reading this means an utterly focused motivation and immersion in the storyworld – requires the opportunity for ‘overlearning’ and visualization. Overlearning (Csíkszentmihályi 1990) refers to sustained and continued practice, beyond initial mastery – the kind of pleasurable practice that, in reading, comes from reading one’s favourite flow-inducing author. The writers who contribute to the anthology FREE? are all prize-winning authors of full-length novels. It is to be hoped that some of their longer works may be the students’ next reading material, favourite children’s and critics’ choices such as David Almond’s Skellig (Carnegie Medal winner), Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, Roddy Doyle’s The Giggler Treatment, Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy (Carnegie Medal short-listed), Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover (Carnegie Medal winner), Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful (Carnegie Medal shortlisted), and far, far more. Graded readers for intermediate students may be a valuable contribution towards language acquisition in the form of extensive reading, but cannot, other than in the exceptional case of a reader of highest literary quality, replace literary booktalk on texts ‘worth bothering with’ in a community of readers. The anthology introduced here, with 11 authentic short stories, two narrative poems and one fictionalized record of a tape-recorded interview that works as a play script, has very strong advantages for adolescent readers. The themes are vital

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contemporary issues of global relevance. The levels of language and allegory, embedded in gripping story, are ideal for teenaged EFL readers. The publisher recommends the stories for the wide age range of 8- to 14-year-old (nativespeaker) readers (www.walkerbooks.com.au/statics/dyn/1246425954183/FreeStories-Celebrating-Human-Rights-Classroom-Ideas.pdf). This corresponds to the fact that expert writers who also write for children do not like their work to be marketed for a specific age group, as multi-layered stories work on several levels and for several age groups, a point that I have already underlined. It is my argument that short stories by leading children’s literature authors are usually more suitable for insightful booktalk with teenaged readers than either excerpts from novels or graded readers, and may encourage some students to read fulllength books by the same authors.

Peer-stimulated reading This section details a way into booktalk on FREE?, with group work on the different stories. One way to help the groups choose which story they will read is by initially focusing on the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After each of the 14 stories in FREE? one of the articles is quoted. Following Eoin Colfer’s Christopher, for example, there is a summary of Article 24: ‘We all have the right to rest from work and relax’. Michael Morpurgo’s No Trumpets Needed ends with Article 28: ‘We have a right to peace and order so that we can all enjoy rights and freedoms in our own country and all over the world’. There is an overview of all 30 articles at the end of the book, with a somewhat simplified text, which can be used for initial discussion of meanings. Students in groups of three could first prepare a poster with their chosen Human Rights article in two or more languages, according to how many languages the group of three can master (such as English, German, French, Arabic or Turkish). This will underline the appeal of the document to be understood as universally applicable, in all cultures and nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) has achieved the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Translated Document’: into 300 languages and dialects1. Referring to the multiple translations, Mary Robinson, the former High Commissioner for Human Rights, identifies ‘a special symbolism’: It immediately brings to us a sense of the world’s diversity; it is a rich tapestry with so many different languages and peoples. But, at the same time, it shows that

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all of us, in our different forms of expression, can speak the ‘common language of humanity’, the language of human rights, which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/WorldRecord.aspx)

Lexical items can be added to each poster that might be helpful in a discussion – not an abstract discussion on human rights – but discussion referring to the concrete context of each story. Commencing with FREE and FREEDOM, and using a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, the class can discover expressions such as: emancipated, democratic, enslaved, imprisoned, freedom, openness, opportunity, liberty, privilege, power, captivity, free-will, independence, to free, to rescue, to enslave. Further useful expressions are fairness, unfairness, justice, injustice, discrimination, prejudice, captivity, imprisonment, enslavement, restriction, tolerance and intolerance. If each group of three students reads a story at home, an activity that would fit well in the following lesson is a version of ‘The Sentence Game’ (Chambers 2011: 210–12). This game can be played as feedback whenever a class does not all read the same books (as is the case with extensive reading). The groups discuss among themselves what they enjoyed or disliked about their story, and what they found shocking or surprising, while the teacher tours the groups. The teachers’ role may be a complex one, encouraging but not dictating the development of critical cultural literacy: I would argue that the teacher, in the role of facilitator more than one who imparts information, is well advised to intervene to an extent in order to make processes of learning explicit, but then step back again to allow the subjective and intersubjective learning processes to unfold. (Reichl 2013: 115)

At a given sign, the discussion ends, and each of the students formulate alone in writing the one thing they would most like to say about the story to the others in the class who haven’t read it. In the next step, the group of three share their sentences and help each other with the editing, and arrange them into a threesentence paragraph. Subsequently, each group takes it in turn to sit at the front of the class, as a panel of experts. They announce the title and author of their story, and read aloud the Human Rights article that inspired the story. They then read aloud their sentences. After this, the audience can ask the group questions about the story. The group may decide not to answer a question if they consider it would spoil the story by revealing information too early. Finally, the students might offer a quote from their text that seems particularly relevant concerning

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the Human Rights article the story is dedicated to. Chambers sums up ‘The Sentence Game’: The educational values of this game are obvious: a book has to be read carefully enough to talk about it well; there is small-group and large-group work based on co-operative talk; a carefully constructed sentence must be written and editorial help exchanged; experience is gained of presenting thoughts, feeling, critical ideas to an audience, and of explaining and defending them; student-stimulated further reading is a possible outcome. (Chambers 2011: 211–12)

In addition to all the advantages identified by Chambers, there is also the common theme of Human Rights making this collection of stories ideal for engaged reading. I will now look more closely at two of the stories.

Studying stereotyping with Almond’s Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads As literature is often characterized by gaps, a good way to begin the discussion of any literary text is with the students’ own questions to find out which gaps interest and perplex the students. The teacher can invite the students to write down in pairs three questions they would like to discuss. Students usually ask about the meaning of a pattern they’ve noticed, they may ask about something that puzzles them, or they may simply want clarification about the setting or the period of the storyworld. Subsequently, two pairs together in a group of four can try and answer each other’s questions. Each group should try to clarify and thus eliminate some of the questions, but decide on one that is still intriguing. During this time the teacher tours the groups, to help steer them to an interesting final question per group of four that will be presented to the class for discussion in plenum. The following questions might be productive to gain an understanding, a ‘reading’ of Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads: 1.  The students may be puzzled as to when in the twentieth century the story takes place.

Students offer their ideas; perceptive students may have found some of the clues in the text. When playing football after school, a group of 13-year-old boys who call themselves the Bad Lads use the names of football stars who were very popular in the 1960s and early 1970s (Best, Pelé, Yashin and Müller).

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A major strand in the story is the refugee status of a boy who joins their school, Klaus Vogel from East Germany, whose father is in a prison camp in Russia and whose mother has disappeared. There is also the discrimination against Mr Eustace, including acts of vandalism led by the older boy Joe. Mr Eustace was a conscientious objector (called a ‘conchie’) during the World War II – the boys’ parents had mostly fought during the war. 2.  The students may want to know where the story takes place.

In this case the clues are mostly in the language. When Klaus arrives from East Germany ‘within a few days he could speak a few English words in a weird Geordie-German accent’ (Almond 2009: 18). Geordie is the dialect of the north east of England. The boys laugh when Klaus translates Ja! using the Geordie Aye! 15-year-old Joe exercises authority over the 13-year-old boys partly through his use of language. He calls individual boys son, as a Geordie adult would talk to a boy. 3.  Another question might refer to Mr Eustace. Why does the ‘Bad Lads’ gang persecute him?

Again there are indications to be found in the text. First, Joe criticizes the hedge surrounding Mr Eustace’s front garden: ‘Would your dads let your hedge get into a mess like this?’ he said. ‘No,’ we answered. ‘No. It’s just like he is. Crazy and stupid and wild.’ ‘Like who?’ whispered Frank. ‘Like him inside!’ said Joe. ‘Like Useless Eustace!’ (Almond 2009: 14, emphasis in the original)

Joe wants the Bad Lads to burn down Mr Eustace’s hedge. The bully Joe has clearly been influenced by his environment to form a very negative concept of what it is to be a conscientious objector. He transfers the wildness of Mr Eustace’s hedge to the cultural category of ‘conchie’, to stereotype a conscientious objector as freakish and uncivilized, as Other. Previously the Bad Lads had not done much harm, mere ‘little kids’ tricks’ (Almond 2009: 13). They are described as ‘mischiefmakers, pests and scamps’ (Almond 2009: 11), synonyms for kids who enjoy a rather naughty joke. Using synonyms in triples, as here and in the preceding excerpt, not only adds rhythm and reinforces the message but also is supportive

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of language acquisition. When the 13-year-old first-person Geordie narrator is reluctant to burn down the hedge, Joe turns on him at once: ‘He was a coward and a conchie. And like me dad says – once a conchie . . .’ ‘Don’t do it, Joe.’ ‘You gonna be a conchie too?’ he said. ‘Are you?’ He looked at all of us. ‘Are any of you going to be conchies?’ ‘No,’ we said. (Almond 2009: 15)

The younger boys are afraid to be stigmatized or othered by the authority figure Joe, so they give in and join in the burning of the hedge. 4.  What is the significance of introducing a German boy, Klaus Vogel, to join the Bad Lads gang?

Klaus Vogel has been taught by his father the importance of being ‘free’. The freedom in question in this story is not so much physical freedom, but freedom within the mental dimension of ideas and values. Klaus has experienced lack of physical freedom: ‘The kid had been smuggled out in the boot of a car’ (Almond 2009: 17). Having won his physical freedom, he refuses to submit to the peer pressure to join in the bullying of Mr Eustace. Joe tries to dominate him by stereotyping him: calling him Herr Vogel, and mimicking his German accent: ‘Joe laughed. He mocked the word – “Nein! Nein! Nein!” – as he stamped the earth and gave a Nazi salute’ (Almond 2009: 25, emphasis in the original). Klaus’ moral courage in standing up to Joe, despite expecting and getting a beating, gives the Bad Lads the example they need to break free of the older boy. Both Klaus Vogel and Mr Eustace are outsiders in Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads, and they are both portrayed as courageous and educated. This draws attention to the culturally constructed negative stereotyping that the story refutes and criticizes, such as when threatening phenomena (e.g. war-like aggression on the part of the bully) are externalized by being projected onto an othered child (Klaus, a German boy). Clearly, there is plenty to discuss here in an EFL-literature classroom in a German context, especially as German characters are still often stereotyped in literature, such as in Mal Peet’s young adult novel Tamar, Carnegie Medal winner 2005, set in wartime Europe. Experiencing the unfairness of a German schoolboy as the target of stereotyping within the storyworld may help EFL students, for example in Germany, apply and transfer this understanding to new areas, such as the racial stereotyping of minority groups within Germany.

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In Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads the cultural construct of stereotyping, which is ubiquitous within societies as well as crossing international boundaries, is implicitly highlighted. Cherrington emphasizes that stereotypes are socially and culturally constructed and not immune to change and reworking. (.  .  .) In its simplest terms, an easily grasped characteristic (usually negative) is presumed to belong to a whole group. (.  .  .) Stereotypes can also offer false justifications of serious discrimination against different groups of people, such as foreigners and other minority groups, and lead to verbal and physical abuse, violence, murder and even genocide. This is because, in performing the function of providing shorthand information about a particular group, or acting as a measuring stick, false assumptions and preconceptions can take over from valid knowledge. (Cherrington 2004: 574)

The reader of the story connects with the young Geordie first-person narrator, who first admires Joe: ‘But he was tall and strong. He smelt of aftershave, he wore a black Ben Sherman, black jeans, black Chelsea boots. We hadn’t broken free of him’ (Almond 2009: 24). As the narrator’s eyes are opened, so the reader with the narrator comes to see the importance of Klaus Vogel’s sense of agency, his empowerment through learning and understanding the importance of freedom, even at a cost. Thus Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads fulfils the Oxfam principle: ‘Equipping young people with knowledge, skills and values to participate as active citizens.’ O’Neil describes ‘teaching for justice’ in the following way: First, learning to consider and acknowledge alternate points of view can work to expand a child’s sense of justice and equity. Along with this idea is that of resisting stereotypes for self or others, and, in a similar vein, that of developing a sense of agency when confronted with presumably fixed outcomes. (O’Neil 2010: 44)

In summary, Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads fulfils the need for emotional texts in the EFL-literature classroom that ‘create involvement and where learners are emotionally touched or even disturbed and have to deal with controversial issues’ (Volkmann 2011: 30).

Studying the relativity of cultural narratives with Mussi’s Scout’s Honour I believe that all of the texts I have discussed in this chapter encourage the first Oxfam principle for global education: ‘asking questions and developing critical

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thinking skills’. I will show in this final section how Scout’s Honour, a postcolonial text, fosters in addition the principle ‘acknowledging the complexity of global issues’ (Oxfam 2006: 3). Educationalists have long maintained the need to see and understand connections: ‘No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literatures’ (Arnold 1857). However, students in the intercultural communicative classroom need not only recognize connections, but they also need to see how they can be interpreted from different perspectives: ‘Knowledge of the shared values and beliefs held by social groups in other countries and regions, such as religious beliefs, taboos, assumed common history, etc., are essential to intercultural communication’ (Council of Europe 2001: 11). Scout’s Honour is a playful investigation of the relativity of cultural narratives, which tend to promote the conservation of cultural heritage (Stephens and McCallum 1998). It is the record of a tape-recorded interview between two interviewing officers and an 11-year-old Ghanian, Prometheus Prempeh. The schoolboy is charged with attempting to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. A social worker is present at the interview, and, later, a solicitor for the defendant and the Secretary of State from the Ghana High Commission enter the interview room. The story reads as a play as it is confined to dialogue – there are no narrated descriptions. However, it differs from a play script in that there are no directions for scenery, and no stage directions. The protagonist shares his name with the ruler of the Ashanti people at the time the British were increasing their colonial influence in the area (most of which is in present-day Ghana). King Prempeh I was exiled to the Seychelles in  1900 by the British, who had offered to take the Ashanti Empire ‘under their protection’. (The British allowed Prempeh I to return to Kumasi as a private citizen in  1924.) Prempeh I had refused the offer of protection, stating: The suggestion that Asante in its present state should come and enjoy the protection of Her Majesty the Queen and Empress of India I may say is a matter of serious consideration, and which I am happy to say we have arrived at this conclusion, that my kingdom of Asante will never commit to any such policy. Asante must remain as of old at the same time to remain friendly with all white men. I do not write this in a boastful spirit but in the clear sense of its meaning. (http://blackhistorypages. net/pages/nanaprempehi.php, accessed 12.11.11)

Scout’s Honour is a challenge to received wisdom on an eminent and popular figure of British history, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, in the British cultural

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memory the heroic founder of the Boy Scout movement. A number of artefacts of symbolic cultural significance are brought into play, such as the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the Ashanti royal throne known as the Golden Stool. Prempeh, a Kumasi Boy Scout, is on a world jamboree to London. He was found wearing ‘Her Majesty’s Crown Jewels’ at the time of his arrest (Mussi 2009: 46). His defence is extremely convoluted and (apparently) naïve. It involves scouting rituals, such as ‘good deeds’ and scouting mottoes, such as ‘Be Prepared’, as well as several games of marbles: ‘The other boys laugh at me, sir, but they don’t realise how much you can do with a marble’ (Mussi 2009: 47). As Prempeh with his child-like game of marbles accidentally brings about ‘the concussion, broken tibia and fractured femur sustained by three officers respectively, plus the serious injury to a fourth and Mr Owusu’s fall’ (Mussi 2009: 63), and is able to advance through ten security barriers in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, a sense of parody is introduced, mocking the stereotypical Western narratives of developing countries as chaotic, backward and childish. The 11-year-old Prempeh has a fine sense of irony, which he demonstrates with his own storytelling of the attempted theft of the Golden Stool (War of the Golden Stool 1900). This story within the story bears echoes of Prempeh’s adventure with the Crown Jewels in the style of ‘mise en abyme’, and deepens the relevance and reveals the main motivation of the Boy Scout prank: Well, before Lord Baden-Powell was a lord, he came on holiday to Ghana. And that’s where he heard about the Golden Stool. And then he had an idea, like his friends had done in India about that Koh-i-noor jewel. His idea was to add the Golden Stool to the Crown Jewels. If you can get precious things for your country like that, sir, you get turned into a lord. The Golden Stool, you see, is like the Crown Jewels of the Ashanti nation, sir. It’s this big golden throne, so that’s why Mr BadenPowell had to attack Kumasi, because he wanted to get it, and sit on it, and get turned into a lord. (Mussi 2009: 58)

Thus the theme of historical memory is introduced in Scout’s Honour, as it is, according to Patrick Williams, in many other postcolonial texts: ‘Questions of historical memory (.  .  .) are repeatedly returned to and invoked as centrally important’ (Williams 2005: 454). This applies to events, such as the War of the Golden Stool, to historical figures such as Lord Baden-Powell and to artefacts such as the Koh-i-noor diamond. The British acquired the Koh-i-noor when Punjab was proclaimed a part of the British Empire in India in 1849. When in

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India in July 2010, the British Prime Minister David Cameron would not agree to the returning of the diamond to India: Last year Tushar Gandhi, the great grandson of independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, said it should be returned as ‘atonement for the colonial past’. But Mr Cameron – who is on a two-day visit to India – told the Indian TV channel NDTV this would not be happening. ‘If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty’. (BBC News, UK Politics: www.bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-politics-10802469, accessed 09.04.11)

The tone of Scout’s Honour is one of humour and light-hearted critique of power abuse and British double standards. At the climax of the narrative, however, Mr Narnor, the Secretary of State from the Ghana High Commission, explicitly voices the counter-hegemonic point, which hitherto has been half-hidden in the comic scouting jamboree storytelling: ‘The attempted theft of the Golden Stool, plus Baden-Powell’s reprehensible, brutal and illegal attack on the city of Kumasi, perhaps illustrates a point that the boy is trying to make’ (Mussi 2009: 59, emphasis in the original). Acting out this scene would be an intensive way of practising interpretation in the EFL-literature classroom, reading between the lines, searching for meanings and different perspectives. This can be prepared in group work, with some of the groups writing a description of the various characters, including their physical appearance. This must be inferred after a close reading. A normal play script would include this information, but it is missing from this (fictional) tape-recorded interview, giving the students the opportunity to create the missing directions. Other groups could prepare the description of the stage setting, which is also omitted, and the stage directions, which influence how the scene is performed, and a list of props that are needed. It is advisable to divide research of the various artefacts, events and historical figures mentioned between a number of groups, who then prepare a wall frieze for class display. There could be a poster collage on Lord Baden-Powell, the Scout Movement around the world, the Girl Guides Movement and the Ashanti people of central Ghana, an ethnic group more populous than Scotland and Ireland together. Using the ample information to be found on the internet, displays can be put together on the Koh-i-noor diamond, the Golden Stool, the Crown Jewels and the Tower of London. The story Scout’s Honour is an illustration of Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly’. Of great concern in Scout’s Honour is the revealed relativity of values, and questions of social meanings and power. Practising critical cultural literacy

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can reveal how cultural objects of analysis can be read in different ways, and helps reveal ‘the part played by culture in reproducing and challenging social power relations’ (Jordan and Weedon 2006: 254). Clearly focusing on only two of the stories in FREE? can offer no more than a glimpse at the wealth of potential the authentic, intense short-story form affords, where every word counts, to co-experience the extraordinary consciousness of the marginalized characters portrayed. These short stories, and the multimodal texts introduced under the heading ‘Global issues and children’s literature’, can be understood as an introduction to the global ‘interconnectedness’ of human actions and reactions. Kathleen O’Neil expresses this as follows: Coming to see history as an interconnected web of actions and reactions can prepare a student for making sense of the present. Openness to divergent points of view need not lead to a relativistic acceptance of any and all explanations of an event, but can instead initiate deliberation and reflection. Willingness to investigate a particular issue thoroughly should more than anything lead to a deeper understanding of the event and its impact on all participants involved in it. (O’Neil 2010: 45)

I have tried to show in this chapter how the practice of engaged reading can encourage the lifelong habit of skilled reading, which, in turn, will empower students not only with the wealth reading offers, but also with the sociocultural empowerment critical cultural reading may afford.

Note 1 The translations can be found on the United Nations Human Rights site: www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/SearchByLang.aspx.

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Harry Potter and Critical Cultural Literacy

In the previous chapter, empowerment through engaged reading on global issues with radical children’s literature was considered. In this chapter, arguments and ideas for applying the concept of critical cultural literacy to the highly popular work of fantasy, the Harry Potter series, are put forward. I suggest language learning in complex social contexts (e.g. multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multilingual classrooms) underlines the need for a greater understanding of how to achieve or elicit critical literacy, which has to do with supporting students to ‘read the world’ while ‘reading the word’: we can go further and say that reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the world, but by a certain form of writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious, practical work. For me, this dynamic movement is central to the literacy process. (Freire and Macedo 1987: 35, emphasis in the original)

I have often referred to Barthes’ concept of the readerly and writerly text (1990), and pointed out that a more writerly, non-formulaic text allows the reader to be active and co-create the text. However, it is possible to approach any text with a writerly method, in order to write or rewrite – using the words of Freire in dialogue with Macedo – the world behind the text, and discover the ideology that, often without the conscious awareness of the author, imbues the text. Marsh and Millard (2000: 6) warn ‘(f)rom a dystopian perspective, there is also a need to be on our guard about the new media’s power to persuade and seek to control’. Therefore, the more popular cultural forms as well as canonical literature should be subjected to a critical approach: Critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, to interrogate the relationship between language and power, to analyze popular culture and media, to understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and to consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice . . . (Lewison et al. 2008: 3)

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Simultaneously, as this is the world of the students, their own world that should be the seedbed of their literacy according to Freire, it must be acknowledged as a worthy and worthwhile subject of study in teacher education. Harry Potter has the power to motivate and delight. At the same time, it necessarily, sometimes ironically and sometimes subconsciously, reflects flaws within contemporary Western society from which it originates. Kramsch (1996: 8) proposes a framework for teaching culture that ‘fosters linguistic vigilance and discursive circumspection’ in order to make language teachers ‘agents of social change’. She suggests a new definition of the language teacher for the future: ‘not only as the impresario of a certain linguistic performance, but as the catalyst for an ever-widening critical cultural competence’ (Kramsch 1996: 8). There are already signs that teacher education in TEFL is moving in a number of countries towards dealing with Global English and Global Issues. Simultaneously, an ‘everwidening critical cultural competence’ is, I argue, of high priority, as ultimately leading to learner empowerment. Therefore, Harry Potter will also be examined here with a critical cultural eye. The series of seven books is a motivating introduction to fantasy fiction with fairy-tale motifs (discussed critically by Zipes 2001), as well as owing much to the popular (British) school-story genre (Reimer 2009) and to the Bildungsroman (Appelbaum 2009). My discussion of Harry Potter focuses initially on characterization, with an introduction to a range of techniques for working on character, such as role-on-the-wall and intra-personal role play. The aim is to illustrate how these techniques can help students represent and verbalize the meanings they discover through literary readings of contemporary children’s literature. Finally, I will consider ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism as well as class and gender issues in Harry Potter, hoping to establish whether the series offers material for working on critical cultural literacy in the EFL classroom. The 2008 Scholastic report on reading among 5- to 17-year-olds across the United States, which surveyed 501 children, found: Kids can extend the book experience online through fan sites, message boards, author sites, etc. Kids can connect with classmates and friends online around books. Kids can search for and sample books online. (Yankelovich 2008: 5)

The internet thus enables a borderless and boundless, transcultural participatory culture of reading, which is an excellent opportunity for training intercultural communicative competence. A major advantage of Harry Potter is that in the centre of this amorphous digital culture (the epitext of fan sites and blogs)

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there is an appealing text upon which booktalk and critical cultural literacy can operate in the EFL-literature classroom. The Scholastic and Yankelovich report also found that ‘(d)espite weaker reading relationships, boys are as likely as girls to have read Harry Potter, be interested in reading (or re-reading) Harry Potter, and even to have read all seven Harry Potter books’ (Yankelovich 2008: 49). Nonetheless, many parents and teachers have not read these books, and many are not good role models as to reading, which may explain why the 2008 report confirmed the findings of the 2006 report (cited in Chapter 1) that ‘Parents underestimate the degree to which kids have trouble finding books they like’ (Yankelovich 2008: 6).

Extensive reading with Harry Potter The Harry Potter series is a ‘resource’ that is vastly magnified by the myriad websites dedicated to the Potter phenomenon, which provide reading material that seems to fascinate all but the most reluctant readers, on the minutiae of the Potter world. In addition, this is an opportunity for a training – that some students despite being digital natives still need – in the use and usefulness of highly efficient search engines. This Harry Potter epitext is a productive digital reservoir upon which students and teachers can repeatedly draw in different ways, for example, checking half-forgotten characters, events, settings, spells and creatures from earlier books. Extensive reading is also known as free reading or pleasure reading, and is shown by many language acquisition research studies to be an effective, highly efficient as well as pleasurable contribution to language acquisition (comprehensive overview in Krashen 2013). Just as children’s drama has been called the impoverished Cinderella of the curriculum (Hollindale 2001: 220), so extensive reading has been called the ‘Cinderella of reading strategies’ (Strobbe 2013: 46). Extensive reading demands access to a choice of motivating and suitable reading materials, a demand that takes time, well-prepared teachers and sufficient financial resources to satisfy. Although teachers routinely blame the over-crowded curriculum and lack of time as obstacles to an extensive reading programme, I argue that the worst-offending cause is probably the vicious circle of non-access to motivating reading material at all educational levels: primary, secondary and tertiary. Moreover, teachers often ‘fail to instil enthusiasm for reading in their students’ (Ghosn 2010: 30), for teachers who have a disinclination to read for pleasure themselves carry this with them

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into their classrooms. Once teachers, they ‘teach what they were taught, often resorting to the books they had read during their school or university years’ (Thaler 2008: 101). This is highly disadvantageous for the approach of extensive reading, as ‘(o)ne important aspect in reading promotion – and in the concept of extensive reading – is that students read what they want to read. It is absolutely essential that teachers provide their students with a long list, including different genres’ (Strobbe 2013: 50). The full Harry Potter series might be offered in the EFL classroom in a combination of optional extensive reading, with a supplementary wider choice of texts, and whole-class intensive reading as shown in Table 8.1. It is important to note that additional books (e.g. realistic and postcolonial young adult fiction, graded readers, graphic novels and non-fiction) must be offered as alternative fictional and non-fictional discourse for the extensivereading approach to language acquisition, so that the books on the left of the table would be one option within a wide range of choices. In an influential essay written before the Harry Potter series first began to appear, Perry Nodelman identifies what he calls a ‘self-confirming description’, which may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy: If we assume children have short attention spans and therefore never let them try to read long books, they do not in fact read long books. They will seem to us to be incapable of reading long books – and we will see those that do manage to transcend our influence and read long books as atypical (.  .  .). (Nodelman 1992: 32)

The self-fulfilling prophecy that follows is that in treating children as childish, ‘we may well doom them to a conviction in and inability to transcend their Table 8.1  A suggestion for offering the Harry Potter series for optional extensive reading and whole-class intensive reading Extensive reading: e.g. 12-year-olds and older

Intensive reading: e.g. 15-year-olds and older

1.  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 2.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 3.  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 4.  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 6.  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

5.  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 7.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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inadequacy’ (Nodelman 1992: 32). The commonly held position that children and young adults do not read long books unless extrinsically and instrumentally motivated to through school tasks and tests has been disproved by the success of the Harry Potter series. Rather, particularly because these books could be enjoyed outside school, their success is without precedence. However, there is no doubt that peer-stimulated reading through social media (following massive pre-publication publicity heralding each new book of the series) has contributed greatly to their phenomenal success. The fact that millions of young readers around the world ‘are willing to tackle a novel of 636 pages is a refreshing challenge to the long-held assumption that they can only cope with slim books’ (Agnew and Watson 2001: 322). I argue peer-stimulated reading is a must in an extensive reading scheme (as discussed in Chapter 6), and also works particularly well in teacher education, to ensure that more student teachers read, and read a greater variety of high-quality books. If we first briefly consider using the Harry Potter books for extensive reading within a single grade, its usefulness lies in its being a series of seven books that increase in complexity of language, content and literary intricacy as the implied reader (the reader the text seems to be addressing) also matures in knowledge of the world, interests and language skills – from that of a child to that of an adolescent. Step by step as the characters age, the series matures, from the formulaic but nonetheless gripping school story with extremely inventive magical elements, to a complex and far darker Bildungsroman. (In addition, in the intensive reading EFL-literature classroom, as will be later outlined, the Harry Potter books provide opportunities for a critical reading, a reading against the text.) Used for extensive reading, the less keen readers within a single EFL classroom might specialize in the earlier books and the stronger groups of readers take on the later, longer and more complex books. It is a part of the concept of extensive reading that the teacher is a good role model, and reads at least some of the books of the entire series. It is not necessary for the teacher to know the books better than the students; these books are written for children and young adults, and the students should be allowed to be the experts. Researching features of the Potter world on the web may not contribute greatly to literary understanding, but will certainly provide yet more opportunities for extensive reading and therefore more language acquisition, and is a motivating preparation for student presentations on, for example magical creatures in the Potter world, members of staff at Hogwarts or the different magical phenomena from Animagi transformation to Veela charm. A great deal of informal learning takes place in the affinity spaces (Gee 2004) of social media; Harry Potter fan

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sites with their passionately detailed observations and exchanges on the Potter world are just such spaces. Reading tasks are not necessarily included in an extensive reading programme (Renandya and Jacobs 2002: 298). However, a recommended method for students to document their personal responses to the text is a reading log, to note down quotations they find particularly stimulating, to record questions that might be answered by a rereading or explored in booktalk with peers who have read the same text or another in the series, and to compare the storyworld with aspects of their own lives. Additionally, a reading log helps students to clarify their own thoughts in order to gain insights. Parallel to interpersonal communication (e.g. booktalk in the classroom), Vygotsky considers intrapersonal communication to be a further aspect of the necessary sociocultural framework of learning. By this he means inner speech, for example while puzzling over a problem or reading, and private writing such as reading logs, as well as the whispered private speech of children by which they actively engage with input to build up their language competence (Saville-Troike 2006: 113–16).

Intensive reading: The ‘English Literature Canon’ versus Harry Potter in the EFL-literature classroom Whereas extensive reading is a means for furthering language acquisition, reading and writing skills, in addition to a positive attitude towards reading and increased world knowledge (Day and Bamford 1998), intensive reading is the norm for the in-depth work of the literature classroom. In this case, the teacher chooses a single text to be read and analysed by the entire class. When choosing a text for the mid- to upper-secondary school, the teacher (and teacher educator responsible for literary studies at the tertiary level) still generally first turns to an English Literature Canon for inspiration. However, in our postmodern era of uncertainties, a demarcation of the literature canon has become problematic: 1.  Should the teacher turn to all-time favourites such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde? Authors such as these are evergreens and beloved among many native-speaker readers. However, due to their complex language and lesser-known world pictures, they cannot normally reach EFL students before upper-secondary-school grades. They may also have lost their schema-

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refreshing characteristics (see Chapter 4); though of course they retain their status as ‘naturalized’ cultural capital. I argue that reading the classics must be prepared for in the EFL-literature classroom through an apprenticeship with children’s literature. 2. Should the teacher turn to a list of recent Man Booker Prize winners? The name English Literature Canon is misleading in the context of the prestigious Booker Prize, which seeks to honour the writing of leading authors around the world writing in English, from the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland or Zimbabwe. Whereas in the first decade of the Man Booker Prize, the prizewinning books were mostly by UK writers, the majority of winners in the past three decades have been postcolonial writers. Although excellent for intercultural learning in the upper secondary-school grades and with tertiary students, such as rehearsing a change of perspective and schema refreshment, I argue most adult postcolonial literature is too complex for teaching younger teen readers important literary skills and critical cultural literacy, such as reading between the lines and against the text. 3. Should the teacher choose to make use of graded readers, with modified language, based on literary classics? While rewrites of classics may have some disadvantages for extensive reading, for example when phonological language patterning and marked cohesive ties are lacking, they have grave drawbacks for intensive reading. The abridgement of story behind the plot, setting and characterization reduces the narrative, often with important thematic material missing.1 Moreover, as publishers generally have the international adult EFL market in mind, they mostly select classics of adult literature for abbreviation. ‘Simplifying’ the language does not make the themes of literature for mature readers accessible to adolescent learners. Language comprehension requires that the reader or listener can construct mental representations of the discourse in their minds (Rose 2006: 88). The reader must bring sufficient pre-knowledge or experience to the text in order to reconstruct the background and context in which the events of the storyworld take place. This is greatly enhanced in the Harry Potter series by the readily recognizable literary genres that Rowling weaves intertextually into her narrative. 4. There is an alternative to the ‘English Literature Canon’ – graded readers recently and especially written for the language class, usually by accomplished freelance authors and internationally renowned EFL teacher trainers, often known as language learner literature. These will probably suit some readers in the extensive reading class; however, such readers are for the most part unsuitable

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for the literature class. International publishers are so keen to standardize their readers to a level that will be accepted by a conservative international market, such as the US market, that many themes particularly relevant for the turmoil of adolescence are taboo.2 5. Popular young adult literature, such as the Harry Potter series, combines motivating material and authenticity with literary challenge. The literary as well as educational potential of children’s literature is recognized in the many postgraduate children’s literature programmes that have recently opened at universities in the British Isles, including Roehampton University, London, University of Glasgow, Trinity College Dublin and the Centre for Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge. The age of the reader matters a great deal in the L2 as in the L1 literature classroom, particularly with regard to a suitable level of challenge for thoughtful and critically aware reading. Additionally, the age of the reader contributes to whether the reading experience is perceived as authentic; for authenticity lies ‘not only in the genuine nature of the texts selected, but also in the relationship of the learner with the text’ (Rixon 2004: 68). The selection problematic is relevant to both primary and secondary schools, and L1 and L2 classrooms: ‘Selecting children’s literature to read to children and include in a literature-based reading framework is not a disinterested process, nor can it be accomplished by direct referral to a universal objective criteria’ (Serafini 2005: 48). Authenticity, manageability and motivation are interconnected, and are prerequisites for the empowerment of the reader.

Empowerment of the reader with Harry Potter Motivation is arguably the most important precondition for empowerment and learner autonomy, as well as for learning in general. Motivation is strongly connected to manageability: ‘Readers will experience the greatest enjoyment when confronted with what they perceive as manageable levels of complexity and novelty. Experienced readers will consequently derive greater enjoyment from texts regarded as difficult than unskilled readers’ (Schneider 2005: 136). In September 2007, Amazon.de had altogether over 400 reviews posted of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling 2007). At the time, this final book was as yet unavailable in German, the translation was still in preparation. The adult edition, which differs from the children’s edition in the cover alone, was followed by 68 reviews, while 342 reviews followed the children’s edition on Amazon.de.

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Among the widest imaginable gamut of young German readers’ reactions posted on Amazon.de by the end of September 2007, from spell-bindingly extravagant devotion to the series to scathing criticism of the grand finale, one emotion predominated above all: the irreversible bittersweet of the final goodbye to Harry and his fellowship of friends. This comes through as the most motivating force for reading; young readers need to follow the fortunes of characters that have become their friends. One million copies of the English-version Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were sold in Germany in the month of August 2007 alone, according to one national newspaper: ‘Sprechen Sie Potter? How Harry is spreading the English language’ (The Guardian, 19.09.2007). Young adults who read 3607 pages (the full Harry Potter series) are obviously highly motivated to read. Other highly popular series of teenage fiction have had the same effect on many young EFL readers: It should be noted concerning the difficulty of literature that Flemish teachers sometimes tend to underestimate their students’ ability to cope with authentic literature. I know quite a few 13–14-year-olds who are in their second year of learning English who would not wait for the Dutch translation of the Twilight series and read – and understood – the books in their original English version. (Strobbe 2013: 47)

Fortunately, motivation can be catching, for instance, through peer-stimulated reading, as long as the literature teacher allows the learners to ‘perform’ what is very much their text, while considering it seriously as a work of literature that deserves careful attention. Furthermore, the many Harry Potter reviews are a testimony to the utter seriousness with which adolescent readers treat their literature. The familiar formulaic motifs of popular literary genres, such as fairy tales and school stories, create intra- and intertextual cohesive links throughout the series. This ensures that the young adult reader brings sufficient preknowledge to the text in order to co-create the storyworld. Creating coherence becomes a challenge that teenaged readers are well able to rise to, by unravelling further puzzles that permeate the series intra-textually.

Fairy tale motifs As noted in the previous chapters, fairy-tale motifs are usually familiar to young adult readers, a familiarity that is intensified these days through film and Disney corporation merchandising. According to Zipes, the ‘paradigmatic functions’ of marvellous tales help to facilitate recall, as the characters are easily identifiable

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(Zipes 2007: 4). Fairy-tale patterns represent a familiar web of intertextuality, and consequently (fairy-tale patterns) do not overtax young audiences. Similar to rhythm and rhyme in children’s songs, they are easy to grasp and easy to recognize in changing situations. For the child, every new fairy tale appears to be a variation of a scheme that has already been internalized, and a recognition of something known in the unknown is a source of aesthetic pleasure. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 8–9)

The reader experiences empathy with a number of readily identifiable characters. According to the reader-response theorist, Ralf Schneider, ‘empathy’, not the traditionally popular term ‘identification’, is the appropriate expression: ‘Cognitive-psychological investigations of emotion have shown that “empathy” is the more adequate term, since it captures a person’s ability to mentally represent another person’s situation’ (Schneider 2005: 136). The many fairy-tale motifs we can discover in Harry Potter encourage empathy – during the earlier books predominantly with Harry the hero: ●

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an oppressed or maltreated youngest child, stepson or stepdaughter, who is identified as the ‘chosen one’ (Harry); a clumsy but well-meaning oaf/giant (Hagrid); a helpful and comical magical elf (Dobby); a damsel in distress (Hermione in Philosopher’s Stone, Ginny in Chamber of Secrets); a ‘fairy’ godparent (Sirius Black) who is for the most part hidden (as he is in hiding), and communicates with the hero secretly to give advice; an omniscient and beneficent sage (Dumbledore); a power-hungry villain (Voldemort); magical creatures such as dragons, mermaids, trolls, werewolves, centaurs, giants, goblins, phoenix and unicorns; human to animal transformations; dangers in the form of enchanted forests (the Forbidden Forest), a haunted castle with underground chambers and secret rooms (Hogwarts), deepest lakes, home to magical creatures (the Black Lake); magical artefacts to aid the ‘chosen one’ (the broomsticks Nimbus 2000 and Firebolt, Godric Gryffindor’s Sword, which reaches Harry in the Sorting Hat, Cloak of Invisibility, Marauder’s Map, the Mirror of Erised, the TimeTurner, the Pensieve, the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand);

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physical omnipotence of the hero (who defeats dragons/monsters); magical omnipotence of the heroine (who does and undoes highly advanced spells).

Following the publication of the fourth book of the series, Zipes (2001: 186) points out: ‘Rowling’s books conventionally repeat much of the same sexist and white patriarchal biases of classical fairy tales’ (emphasis in the original). This conventionality assures Harry Potter’s popularity, as Rowling ‘remains within the predictable happy-end school of fairy-tale writers’ (Zipes 2001: 182). However, Rowling’s later books reflect the flexibility of the fairy tale: ‘Neither reactionary nor conservative in itself, it (the fairy tale) has been endlessly adapted over time’ (Rudd 2010c: 173). There are some pleasures of children’s literature that appear contradictory, for example enjoying an imaginative but comfortably familiar and formulaic text as well as the pleasure of resisting it. Young readers may well need both, for fairy tales ‘reinforce not their anxiety, but their courage. The buildup of emotional schemes may contribute strongly to the success of the fairy tale’ (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 12). It is significant that several of the magical gifts turn out to be harmful, such as the addictive Mirror of Erised, ‘desire’ spelled backwards. Ron, for example, sees himself in the mirror deceptively as Head Boy and Quidditch Captain (Rowling 1997: 155). This might be likened to the dangers of contemporary screen media, with content that glorifies celebrity and an imagined life of power and glamour, but finally diminishes, distorts and stupefies. Unlike many fairytale heroes, Harry is not seeking power and celebrity, to return as ruler of the kingdom. He decides against keeping the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone in the final book, choosing to give up the princely role celebrated by Peeves: ‘wee Potter’s the One’ (Rowling 2007: 597). Although fairy-tale schemes may be useful to children, it is also important to be able to see through them and overcome them.

School story motifs Like the fairy tale, the school story offers a familiar and comfortable pattern, providing a claustrophobic school environment beyond parents’ control but involving the mystique of a child-centred world and a concentration of happenings and adventures in a tightly knit social group. Many of the motifs of the Harry Potter school story would seem to be specifically typical of the exclusive UK boarding school, where the venerable and ancient school building

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and grounds (Hogwarts) takes on a dynamic role, where the children are ‘sorted’ into Houses on arrival, and where traditions, competition and rivalry rule. The caricatured teachers, who mostly lack any life beyond school, the quirky rules and the attraction of rule breaking, are all ironically enriched by the fact that this is a school for Witchcraft and Wizardry: Uniform First-year students will require: 1.  Three sets of plain work robes (black) 2.  One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear 3.  One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) 4.  One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings) Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name tags (. . .) Other Equipment 1 wand 1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) 1 set of glass or crystal phials 1 telescope 1 set of brass scales Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST-YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS (Rowling 1997: 52–3)

The hierarchy among students and their snobbishness with regard to their brooms and the correct equipment in the magical world reflects contemporary consumer society: ‘Seven highly polished, brand new handles and seven sets of fine gold lettering spelling the words “Nimbus Two Thousand and One” gleamed under the Gryffindors’ noses in the early morning sun’ (Rowling 1998: 86). This is a tradition-bound school in an elitist magical society, which foreshadows the victimization of Muggle-born wizards and witches (Mudbloods) that develops into persecution in the later books of the series. Hogwarts itself has the air of an elite English public school; the prevailing codes of conduct, the hierarchies among students, the sumptuousness of the surroundings and sense of tradition are all reminiscent of an establishment from the past when mainly the elite were entitled to an education . . . (Gupta 2009: 111)

However, it should be considered in the EFL-literature classroom, that Hogwarts does not merely echo school stories of the past (e.g. with the steam train

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Hogwarts Express and the traditional tuck shop in Hogsmeade, Honeydukes, where time appears to stand still), but also reproduces, with irony that becomes more trenchant as the series progresses, aspects of the hierarchical educational situation of the present. Close attention to the text is as important with Harry Potter as with any literary work in order to surface irony, whether intended or not. At the latest in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), the caustic satire on educational practices is of central thematic concern, particularly an autocratic and later corrupt institutional structure, lessons divorced from real-life practicality and lack of agency among the students: ‘the Order of the Phoenix stands out as a critique of both institutional constraints that schools face today, such as increased accountability, standardization, and high-stake testing, as well as critique of common curriculum practices’ (Birch 2009: 115). Dolores Umbridge represents the opposite of critical literacy, her theoretical lessons take place in a vacuum, questions are discouraged and can lead to sadistic punishments, and reading of the alternative, quibbling tabloid The Quibbler is banned. Hermione, however, uses her understanding of the power of active political literacy to defeat Umbridge. Her campaign involves effectively disseminating the truth using The Quibbler, at the same time helping to reinvent the tabloid as a more serious journal. A significant affordance for motivation in the EFL-literature classroom is that in school stories the central position is often occupied by a group of characters rather than a single protagonist: It may not be easy to find an alternative to the narrative opportunities of a setting such as school, where all the characters in a novel are constrained to be present, with consequent dramatic interactions which have the potential to reveal their personalities and develop the action. (Pinsent 2010: 241)

The central characters are close enough to the readers’ own school reality for empathy, as they are bound by the easily recognizable tribulations and arbitrariness of school rules and authoritarian teachers. Many Harry Potter characters also attract admiration or sympathy. The reader looks up admiringly to Hermione due to her keen intelligence, and looks down sympathetically at Hagrid due to his foolishness. The protagonist Harry is an ideal case for empathy, as the school-aged reader can admire him as the ‘chosen one’, sympathize with him due to the two fears that threaten him, of physical and social death, and simultaneously join in his development from ignorant boy to adventurous teenager. The figural narrative situation assures access to Harry’s perception and emotions, his insecurity and self-doubt, thus his status as the ‘chosen one’ is

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accepted by the reader. However, as already mentioned, Harry himself is unhappy with this inherited role; the ‘culture of celebrity’ is seen critically through Harry’s eyes. Altogether Hogwarts School offers a wide variety of popular characters, a typical trait of school stories: Thus a reader is invited not only to pick his or her own figure for identification, but  also to participate as it were in group activities. Whatever the type of identification offered by a successful children’s book – looking up, looking down, or joining in – it allows young readers to compensate for their inferior position in society. (Tabbert and Wardetzky 1995: 4)

As the Harry Potter series develops it becomes less of a formulaic school story, and more of a troubled Bildungsroman. The pattern of disillusionment, the discovery of the frailty of adults (including Harry’s own father), the deeper learning processes happening outside of conventional schooling and the search for identity are all experiences with which an adolescent reader can empathize. Here, once again, the chronotope of the threshold becomes important (Bakhtin 1981: 248, see Chapter 3), as Harry and his friends repeatedly act out adventures now on the boundaries of Hogwarts. The circular entrance room to the Department of Mysteries in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, with its revolving walls and 12 identical doors, is the clearest metaphor of an uncertain and unforeseeable future. It is at this particular literal and metaphorical threshold where, symbolized by the death of Sirius, Harry leaves childhood behind.

Looking at character in Harry Potter The rich repertoire of characters throughout the series reflects the fairy-tale theme, with characters that represent good versus evil, and the school-story theme, with many minor characters fragmentary and merely instrumental for the plot of friendships, bullying and adolescent relationships. The caricatured Dursley family, as ultra-conventional Muggles, provides a satirical frame to the epic story. Due to the absurdity of the exaggeration, the reader is distanced from the characters and a critical vantage point is unavoidable, there is no indeterminacy involved in this ‘heavy-handed’ (Zipes 2001: 181) characterization; readers are easily able to identify the ironic tones with which consumerism and societal rivalry in the Muggle world are represented. The imaginatively magical opportunities of witchcraft and wizardry at Hogwarts initially appear to represent

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exactly the emancipation from mundane, consumption-dominated normality that an adolescent reader may crave. However, the critical reader will soon discover that there is no lack of satire in the exploration of the social psychology of the magical world. Consumerism is mirrored in the magical world, and the foolishness of a celebrity culture in the person of Gilderoy Lockhart. Tabloid journalism is parodied in the person of the reporter witch Rita Skeeter, with her misrepresented interviews, misleading headlines, pseudo-scientific reporting and scandalous celebrity stories. And politicians who interfere in education are parodied in the person of the power-abusing, despotic and sadistic Umbridge, ministry representative on the teaching staff at Hogwarts, who finally represents the evil bureaucracy of fascism in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is an interesting exercise to debate and share ideas as to where the main characters might be situated on a continuum of characterization – from very flat and one-dimensional to very round and multi-dimensional. ‘Protagonists are not necessarily round characters, and secondary characters need not be flat. Many secondary characters of (. . .) Harry Potter are more round than the rather flat protagonist’ (Nikolajeva 2005: 159). Adolescent readers may not necessarily agree with children’s literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva, that Harry himself is a rather flat character. They are likely to empathize with his predicaments, and his troubled awkwardness in articulating his fears. Provided the student can quote from the primary text to support his or her understanding of Harry’s character, their individual interpretation must be honoured by the teacher. Harry’s adolescent Angst, interspersed as it is with real hardship and tragedy, as well as burdened with a corrupt magical society, is also mitigated for the reader by robust humour. The unsympathetic ex-headmaster Phineas Nigellus pronounces sardonic comments on Harry’s frustration and distress in Order of the Phoenix: ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have better things to do than to listen to adolescent agonising’ (Rowling 2003: 438) and later, after the death of Sirius: ‘I know how you’re feeling, Harry’, said Dumbledore very quietly. ‘No you don’t’, said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong, white-hot anger leapt inside him; Dumbledore knew nothing about his feelings. ‘You see, Dumbledore?’ said Phineas Nigellus slyly. ‘Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity’. (Rowling 2003: 725, emphasis in the original)

Harry’s enactment of ‘adolescent agony’ is likely to resonate with adolescent readers, especially when contrasted with Nigellus as a representative of cynical adulthood.

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Another aspect of characterization is the extent to which characters develop. Dumbledore becomes a far rounder character when we discover, after his death, that he indeed knew how Harry was feeling when Harry had inadvertently contributed to the death of Sirius. Dumbledore as a young man had also experienced guilt, shame and irrevocable loss, as he tragically contributed to the death of his younger sister. Students who manage to read the whole series will be recompensed with the pleasure of experiencing the fully dynamic characterization of Dumbledore and Snape, as it is not until after their death that they become convincingly whole and coherent as characters; this is enabled by the ingenious device of the Pensieve, which contains memories of the past. In the case of Harry Potter, perseverance as a reader is rewarded. As Harry Potter is also a Bildungsroman, we expect at least some of the Hogwarts students to be dynamic and develop, rather than remaining static (see Nikolajeva 2005: 158– 60). In considering the aspect of static versus dynamic characterization, the reader should consider not only how he or she sees a main character through their actions and dialogue, but also how other main and secondary characters see him or her. A fully rounded character will be seen in opposing ways. Where this ambivalence is lacking, as in the case of Harry’s love interest and future wife Ginny Weasley, the portrayal remains less persuasive. She appears as a static character with two very different phases, rather than a dynamic figure with a convincing development. The first phase reaches a climax with Ginny’s role in Chamber of Secrets, as the innocent girl in distress, to be rescued by Harry, the heroic knight (a case of foreshadowing). The later phase shows Ginny transformed from the timid and extremely vulnerable girl to a bold, popular and independent-minded student, reaching the climax at the end of Half-Blood Prince (Rowling 2005: 499), when at last she and Harry kiss. However, it can be argued that a convincing development connecting the two stages is lacking in the narrative. This can be examined by the technique ‘role-on-the-wall’.

Role-on-the-wall It is difficult to achieve a critical distance with regard to protagonists of gripping young adult fiction. This is, however, essential for critical cultural literacy to be achieved. Stephens (1992: 69) warns that ‘(u)nqualified identification with focalizers attributes a coherent reality and objectivity to the world constructed by the text’. Clearly, no text is or can be objective reality. When there are no distancing techniques within the text itself such as irony, an unreliable narrator, metafictional playfulness or intertextual allusiveness (Stephens 1992: 70), as

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described in Chapter 4, the literature classroom can create distancing strategies. The technique illustrated here, role-on-the-wall, suitable for any age group of learners, is always helpful as well as supportive of visualization of the storyworld. This involves drawing a big poster-sized outline of different main characters. The students in groups choose a character and a colour to suit that character, draw the outline and write characteristics, adjectives or whole sentences, inside the outline in the colour of the character. When the outlines are full of ideas about the character the posters are swapped so that each group gets a different character. The groups now note down the feelings of ‘their’ characters, in the colour of ‘their’ character, on the posters of the other characters, but now outside the outline. This activity is creative and collaborative, and can lead to real insights. In Figures 8.1 and 8.2, student teachers3 have drawn Professors Dumbledore (brown) and Snape (black), but the comments surrounding them have been written from the point of view of Harry (green), Hermione (blue) and Ron (red). All in all, five posters bear the opinions of five different characters, as created by five different groups of students.

Focalization and indeterminacy The most opaque character throughout the series is that of Severus Snape. The reader is left guessing until the end of the final book as to his loyalties and motivation. The figural narrative situation means the events are seen from Harry’s perspective – and, consequently, the narrator may not be entirely reliable whenever the reader is led to distrust Snape. Snape can be and is interpreted very differently by different co-creators of the text. Appelbaum sees Snape as a puppet master who is secretly orchestrating Harry’s liberating apprenticeship throughout, for a central tenet of the Bildungsroman is that ‘teachers must be disobeyed in order to emphasize the autonomous choices of the apprentice’ (Appelbaum 2009: 88). He suggests the enormous popularity of the Harry Potter books is consistent with their role as cultural products reflecting a postmodern era of emerging sociopolitical realities and the provisional nature of knowledge. Hence the idea that these books ‘belong’ to us because we live in ‘Harry Potter’s world’. More relevant to the current discussion is Snape as political artist. As the only character to win the trust of both Dumbledore and Voldemort, both the Order

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Figure 8.1  Professor Dumbledore of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters, he sculpts the outcome. (Appelbaum 2009: 95)

Snape’s actions are regularly misinterpreted by Harry, who, as focalizer, consequently misleads the reader. Seen through Harry’s eyes, Snape is unfair, vicious and ultimately the murderer of Dumbledore. The moral ambiguity of Snape is a distancing technique as suggested by Stephens (1992: 70), and one that has fascinated readers throughout the series. The device of the Pensieve allows us to get a glimpse of Snape’s memories shown as cinematic flashbacks and provides some contradictions in our, and Harry’s understanding of Snape, Sirius

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Figure 8.2  Professor Snape

and Harry’s father, James Potter. Just as in real-life friendships and enmities there are far more questions than answers, so Rowling provides in respect of Snape an open text characterized by indeterminacy, thus it is an empowering technique. There is a signal for the most perceptive readers just over halfway through the series, in the Order of the Phoenix, that Snape is acting as a spy for Dumbledore: ‘That is just as well, Potter,’ said Snape coldly, ‘because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.’ ‘No – that’s your job, isn’t it?’ Harry shot at him. He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in a temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far. But there was a curious, almost

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satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered. ‘Yes, Potter,’ he said, his eyes glinting. ‘That is my job.’ (Rowling 2003: 521)

The Harry Potter series is of epic proportions, by virtue of its range and complexity of themes, its imaginative scope and the depth of its development. Examples of foreshadowing that provide the series with cohesion, such as that above, are most likely missed on the first reading. A serious study of any literary text requires reading the object of study more than once. Fortunately, in the case of Harry Potter, some students may be sufficiently motivated to re-read the series, and fill in the cases of foreshadowing, which are valuable to appreciate the final coherence of the work.

Harry Potter and global issues I would finally like to return to global issues, to consider how a highly pleasurable series may also offer scope for the empowering gratification of critical cultural literacy. Our subjectivity – how we position ourselves and are positioned in relationship to others at any one moment in our sociocultural environment – is determined to some extent by an imposition of a certain ideology on us subliminally, for example, an individual is partly constructed at different times through media and peer groups, and through class, ethnicity and gender expectations. Thus our agency is limited to a greater or lesser extent by the subject positions offered to us by society (Stephens 1992). It is not unusual in children’s literature for the quest for agency to be a paramount thread, and the Harry Potter series is no exception. The protagonist’s actions are to some extent predetermined by the prophecy, as predicted by Sybill Trelawney and first mentioned in the Order of the Phoenix: The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches (. . .) and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . (Rowling 2003: 741)

Nonetheless, the Sorting Hat allows Harry a choice in the first book, and he chooses chivalrous Gryffindor House rather than ruthlessly ambitious Slytherin (Rowling 1997: 88–91). In the following book, Dumbledore reminds him of the

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significance of that choice: ‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities’ (Rowling 1998: 219). Subject positions of the reader of any text, whether literary or non-literary, canonical or non-canonical, are of pedagogical concern. Response to texts is a sociocultural practice, as readers respond to literature according to certain ‘subject positions’ which they acquire through socialization by cultural institutions, and which they act out in various cultural practices. When readers respond, they take positions appropriate to their gender, class, race, and other social roles, and thus define and construct their identities, revealing their membership to certain cultural groups. (Lee 2013: 140)

However, the empowered reader is able to exercise some discernment to recognize ideological scripts in books, and to choose to read against them in order for the cultural practice of reading and responding to become a critical cultural practice. While working within reader-response theory and valuing the individual student’s meaning making with the text, the teacher in the EFL-literature classroom should, nonetheless, discourage a total identification with the focalizer of any given text. This would be to accept uncritically the subject position offered – and the reader would then take up the position of the implied reader. Because writers assume that their own ideology is universal truth, texts always act as a subtle kind of propaganda and tend to manipulate unwary readers into an unconscious acceptance of their values. The representation always threatens to become a reader’s reality. But if readers notice the absences in a text and think about the ideology they imply, they can protect themselves from unconscious persuasion. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 156)

Nodelman and Reimer call this reading against a text, as seen in Chapter 4; it is also known as resisting reading and reading against the grain. This is not only a vital literary skill, it is a key life skill too. Critical literacy discloses language as a social construct; as such language cannot be neutral and free of ideology. The discursive background of the author, student, teacher and literature scholar will inevitably colour the way the text is written and the way it is read. Despite learning to read texts critically – and recognizing implicit ideology – the resulting interpretation will still be an individual or community of readers’ negotiated recreation of the text.

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Gender issues As seen in the previous section, an author cannot escape his or her subjectivity; therefore absences unnoticed by the author are almost inevitable. Schoefer remarked ‘(b)ut I enjoyed the fantastical world of wizards, witches, beasts and muggles as much as anyone. Is that a good reason to ignore what’s been left out?’ (Schoefer 2000: 4). A critical reading of Harry Potter uncovers gendered silences, a process that is crucial for the empowerment of the reader, for ‘children’s literature must be seen in terms of its influential role in providing and constructing a variety of reading positions, offering different degrees of autonomy for the reader in the text’ (Thacker 2001: 3). It is chronicled in Harry Potter how some of the witches are extremely efficient at household spells, such as Molly Weasley and Hermione Granger. Moreover, in Deathly Hallows, ‘Madame Delacour was most accomplished at household spells and had the oven properly cleaned in a trice’ (Rowling 2007: 93). Tonks, by her own admission in Order of the Phoenix ‘never quite got the hang of these householdy sort of spells’ (Rowling 2003: 53). The wizards, however, are as silent on the matter of the household as is the caricatured Muggle patriarch, Uncle Vernon. Does this mean the household is beneath their notice? This seems strange, as the witches are clearly aware if they are proficient at ‘householdy’ magic or not, and why should the wizards be less responsible for household magic? Another gendered absence has been noted: ‘There are no gay people nor gay couples in these books and they end up with a virtual parade of heterosexual married pairing’ (Heilman and Donaldson 2009: 157). An interesting discussion in the EFL-literature classroom could be whether Harry Potter privileges the adventurous hegemonic male to the detriment of more gender-sensitive characterizations. The male professors are frequently round as well as dynamically developing characterizations, with a history and family background that is portrayed by a variety of means such as Pensieve flashbacks, lengthy oral narratives, diaries, letters, newspaper reports and a biography. This provides a rich array of text types (on Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape, Slughorn, Mad-Eye Moody and Lupin) that can be studied and compared in the EFL classroom. Students can be invited to create their own text types, as Figure 8.3 illustrates, a lively visualization of the fearful first task in Goblet of Fire. This is a skilfully chosen text type (comic), from the perspective of the merry and careless task commentator Ludo Bagman, who ‘looked somehow like a slightly overblown cartoon figure, standing amid all the pale-faced champions. He was wearing his old Wasp robes again’ (Rowling 2000: 305).

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Figure 8.3  A comic version of the first task

There are groups of teasing, joking, rule-breaking male students: the Weasley twins, Sirius Black and James Potter, Draco Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle and the young Horcrux-creating Tom Riddle, alias Lord Voldemort. There is, however, a silence on the backgrounds of the female professors and students, so that they appear school-bound and convincing development is denied to them, for example, McGonagall, Trelawney, Lavender Brown, Cho Chang, Pansy Parkinson and the Patil twins. Whereas the male ghosts have the freedom of the school, the female ghost Moaning Myrtle remains either in the bathroom where she was killed, or in another bathroom connected by the plumbing system. We do discover something of the background of Luna Lovegood, particularly in Deathly Hallows, and she is immediately a more rounded and dynamic character. The absence of detail and wider background, in contrast to the Dursley family (two boys), Weasleys (six boys and one girl) and Malfoys (one boy), suggests that the ‘good’ females may be there in the plot to fulfil the traditional supportive role. The most mobile and dynamic females all happen to be wicked, and only one of them a (sort of) teacher, Dolores Umbridge, Rita Skeeter and Bellatrix Lestrange. To the cultural critic Christine Schoefer: Harry’s fictional realm of magic and wizardry perfectly mirrors the conventional assumption that men do and should run the world. From the beginning of the first

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Potter book, it is boys and men, wizards and sorcerers, who catch our attention by dominating the scenes and determining the action. Harry, of course, plays the lead. In his epic struggle with the forces of darkness – the evil wizard Voldemort and his male supporters – Harry is supported by the dignified wizard Dumbledore and a colorful cast of male characters. Girls, when they are not downright silly or unlikable, are helpers, enablers and instruments. (Schoefer 2000: 1)

The characterization of Hermione is as an indispensable and supportive, helpful and motherly young witch. She can brilliantly interpret the actions of her co-scholars; she is well read and hard working; she is intuitive, fair-minded and harmony loving. She is also ambitious and adventurous, though her ambition is mostly fulfilled in solving the riddles surrounding Harry’s various quests rather than any achievements in her own name. Hermione understands Harry’s tragic flaw, which Voldemort exploits, leading to Sirius’ death in Order of the Phoenix: ‘You . . . this isn’t a criticism, Harry! But you do . . . sort of . . . I mean – don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a – a – saving-people thing?’ (Rowling 2003: 646, emphasis in the original). She is not blinded by her feelings, she continues to support Harry when Ron deserts him, and is not afraid to be outspoken. She snaps at Ron, her future husband: ‘Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have’ (Rowling 2003: 406). However, there are a striking number of absences surrounding Hermione’s role. She is isolated among male figures, and has no sisterly support from female friends: the other female students of her year are giggly or nondescript. Schoefer notes ‘And she has no girlfriends. Indeed, there don’t seem to be any other girls at the school worth her – or our – attention’ (Schoefer 2000: 2). And Eliza Dresang remarks: ‘What is notable, however, from a feminist point of view, is the almost complete isolation of Hermione from anyone else other than Harry, Ron and Hagrid. She is essentially without the context of “sisterhood” ’ (Dresang 2002: 231). Heilman and Donaldson (2009: 146) describe Hermione as ‘primarily an enabler of Harry’s and Ron’s adventures, rather than an adventurer herself ’. And whereas she is the only female to destroy a Horcrux, ‘this is only mentioned in passing, not described in rich detail like the heroics of the boys’ (Heilman and Donaldson 2009: 146). The silence at the end of the final book on Hermione’s adult role in life is worrying. Has she fulfilled her outstanding potential, as, for example, the Minister for Magic or the Headmistress of Hogwarts? We merely see her, literally, as another Mrs. Weasley, with the least to say of the three friends in the Deathly Hallows epilogue ‘Nineteen Years Later’ (Rowling 2007: 601). It has been said that boys grow in children’s literature and girls shrink

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(see  Nikolajeva 2005: 150); the ending of the series suggests that this is the outcome for the heroine of Hogwarts. In the EFL-literature classroom, the technique of intra-personal role play (Legutke and Thomas 1991: 121) will help students notice both significant gaps intended by the author, for instance, regarding the feelings of secondary characters (only Harry’s unexpressed feelings and thoughts are imparted to the reader), and absences of which the author is unaware. Intra-personal role play is an interpretative drama process that encourages deep thinking about facets of characters; a single character is portrayed by two students, who each illustrate different angles of the same character. So for Harry, one student could act out his brave and generous identity, the other his stubborn and fallible self. Two students portraying Ron might show his good-humoured and forthright side, and his jealous and hasty self. Two students portraying Victor Krum can on the one hand act out his morose and even menacing side, as displayed by his dangerous tactics during the Quidditch World Cup in the Goblet of Fire, and on the other hand his timid and affectionate side as revealed by Hermione after the Yule Ball: ‘He’s really nice, you know (. . .). He’s not at all like you’d think, coming from Durmstrang’ (Rowling 2000: 386). Ron does not readily accept Krum as a ‘nice’ character, nor does the generous and anti-anthropocentric Hagrid. Conflicting and racist attitudes evinced by characters the reader normally feels empathy for can possibly be analysed and better understood through intrapersonal role-play: It is argued that culture, performance, drama and drama in the classroom are inextricably linked in educational contexts in general and in EFL teach­ing in particular. (. . .) Drama appears as a genre specifically suited for cognitive, emotional and even physical learning about signifying practices of both the target cultures and one’s own culture. (Volkmann 2008: 184)

In the Yule Ball chapter, Goblet of Fire, Hermione attends the ball having first transformed her appearance to such an extent that first Harry and later Ron do not recognize her, just as the Ugly Sisters fail to recognize Cinderella at the ball: The oak front doors opened, and everyone turned to look as the Durmstrang students entered with Professor Karkaroff. Krum was at the front of the party, accompanied by a pretty girl in blue robes Harry didn’t know. (Rowling 2000: 359)

During an intra-personal role-play activity, one student might try to act out an extremely knowledgeable and self-reliant Hermione, the Hermione of whom a

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cultural critic wrote in  2000: ‘Thankfully, she is not hung up on her looks or the shape of her body’ (Schoefer 2000: 2). The other student expresses the selfdoubts and insecurity that have now led Hermione to take up the Cinderella role at the Yule Ball, with its magically glamorous but very limiting definition of femininity. Hermione changes her teeth, her hair, her robes, and she ‘was holding herself differently, somehow’ (Rowling 2000: 360). This apparent need for a transformation in order to become the fairy princess will be comfortingly familiar to female teenage readers, as it is a prevalent motif of fairy tales as well as pulp fiction and screen media. Its attractiveness may be due to familiarity and cultural conditioning; however, the time-consuming, expensive and often health-risking processes involved also deny agency. When Hermione enters the Yule Ball she connotes ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ rather than looking. Nodelman expresses this as the convenience of observers: Furthermore, I said ‘he who fixes others in his gaze’ deliberately. In the history of art and in contemporary pin-up photography, it has traditionally been females who are subject to a male gaze, and therefore defined as appropriate subjects to be gazed at – available, passive and yielding to the convenience of detached observers. (Nodelman 1992: 29, emphasis in the original)

It should be noted that cumulative cultural texts, including the media and favourite fiction, sadly support girls in acquiring insecurity. Also for this reason the educational goal of learning to read texts critically is vital.

Class issues Hestermann claims teaching how the Harry Potter phenomenon, like Disney, can enculturate the reader/viewer should aim to ‘enable students to reach a selfunderstanding necessary to unravel the intricacies of self-identity in a postmodern world, turning our children and young adults into active participants, not just passive consumers’ (Hestermann 2006: 321). I suggest an examination of the representation of class in Harry Potter in the EFL-literature classroom is of high relevance for the empowerment of students, and their understanding of subject positions offered them in a world that is institutionally still largely determined by class. Farah Mendlesohn has pointed out that Harry Potter’s distinction as the ‘chosen one’ is due to his inheritance rather than any hard-earned heroic status. Despite Harry’s maltreatment and deprived childhood at the hands of the Dursleys, ‘and specifically because the trope she is employing is that of the

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returning prince, Rowling does not create the classic “wounded child” of heroic fantasy. Instead, Harry Potter is relentlessly nice’ (Mendlesohn 2002: 162). In fact, as the series progresses, Harry repudiates the role of the returning prince, and at the end he rejects the Hallows and the princely role they symbolize, a development that Mendlesohn could not have foreseen at the time she was writing. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to discuss in the EFL-literature classroom why Harry’s heroic status must be associated with conventionality and the middle class: ‘He is white, Anglo-Saxon, bright, athletic, and honest. (. . .) He does not curse; he speaks standard English grammatically, as do all his friends; he is respectful to his elders; and he has perfect manners’ (Zipes 2001: 178–9). For it is very noticeable that those few wizards who are given working-class accents are infantilized and made to appear foolish: ‘Hagrid’s position is particularly interesting in terms of the class structures of the book. Hagrid, more than any other character, fits the requirements of the 1950s lower class sidekick and shapes the presentation of Harry’ (Mendlesohn 2002: 165). Hagrid is shown to be warm-hearted, but inept at keeping secrets and an alcoholic. He needs Harry and his friends to rescue him from the scrapes his love of magical creatures leads him into. Despite the fact that he was schooled at Hogwarts himself, his speech patterns are very unlike those of the professors and young scholars around him, but instead ‘with fractured grammar, muttered expletives, and a deafeningly loud voice, emblematic of a lack of education, not only in the formal rules of language arts but also in the social graces’ (Park 2003: 185). It would seem to be for reasons of comic effect, and to underline the graciousness of Harry, Hermione and Ron, that his half-giant status is demonstrated with every word he speaks, that his lack of intelligence and self control actually fulfil the stereotypes associated with his ethnicity, thus permitting Harry and his friends to demonstrate their ‘tolerance’, and to show that Harry is a ‘good chap’. (Mendlesohn 2002: 166)

Another wizard that is portrayed as combining a working-class origin with stupidity is Stan Shunpike, the conductor of the Knight Bus. His Cockney speech patterns are designed to provide humour, ‘ “Woss that on your ‘ead?” said Stan abruptly’ (Rowling 1999: 31). Even his difficulty with literacy is ridiculed: ‘Stan had unfurled a copy of the Daily Prophet and was now reading with his tongue between his teeth’ (Rowling 1999: 33), and Stan continues to call Harry ‘Neville’ even after he, with evident slowness, has discovered Harry’s true identity. At the

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Quidditch World Cup he is overheard trying to impress a group of Veela: ‘ “I’m about to become the youngest ever Minister of Magic, I am.” Harry snorted with laughter. He recognised the pimply wizard’ (Rowling 2000: 113). Other young wizards including Ron make fools of themselves in the same scene, due to the magical beauty of the Veela, yet it is Stan that we are invited to laugh at. The house-elves, with their enforced and demeaning service to one particular wizarding family, suggest parallels with slavery. Their obsequiousness is also presented for comic effect. This seems to make the social commentary on the servitude of the house-elves misfire; in fact, even Hermione’s campaign in their favour is derided by all around her. In the later books this misjudgement is not entirely resolved: ‘There is nothing funny about slavery, and the author’s depiction of an enslaved class as something to entertain her readers is reprehensible’ (Park 2003: 185). Reading against the text is necessary to surface the significance of laughing at oppression: while the books argue superficially for fairness, they actually portray privilege (. . .) they argue for tolerance and kindness towards the inferior while denying the oppressed the agency to change their own lives. In this they embody inherently conservative and hierarchical notions of authority clothed in evangelistic mythopoeic fantasy. (Mendlesohn 2002: 181)

I argue that an examination and discussion of how the lower-class characters are denied the dignity of agency and empowerment in the Harry Potter storyworld could be an important step towards critical cultural literacy. However, the lack of agency of suppressed sentient species can also be debated as revealing parallels to classicism and racism in the real world, an ironic aspect of Harry Potter that in many respects is carefully crafted: Rowling is nuanced and detailed in her depictions of how racism and imbalanced power relations can form and persist for centuries: among the various species relations in her oeuvre, we witness such historically complicated processes as the internalization of inferiority, the institutionalization of unequal access to power and participation in the political discourse, and the rewriting of history. (Dendle 2009: 166)

Thus Harry Potter simultaneously offers an invitation to the reader to question the results of institutionalized structures of power, and that privileging certain groups must disadvantage others.

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Race issues Despite the strongly crafted critique of racism in Harry Potter aimed at fascism, a critique of real-world subliminal prejudice has been identified as lacking at certain stages of the series. One wonders whether the omission of foreign languages from the curriculum at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry hinders the multicultural agenda that is said to inspire the Triwizard Tournament in Goblet of Fire. Oziewicz discusses the ethnocentrism of the storyworld, a perspective structure privileging Hogwarts at the centre and marginalizing Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbatons Academy, while stereotyping their students. Goblet of Fire features ‘representations of the non-British other as not just strange but lacking or flawed. The construction of otherness derives from three interrelated components: descriptions of foreign places, depictions of foreign characters, and selectivity as to what is noticed and ignored by the narrator’s gaze’ (Oziewicz 2010: 7). This recalls Said’s ‘Imaginative Geography’ (1978), the West watches, the East (in this case Durmstrang and Eastern Europe) is watched (Geography is also missing from the curriculum at Hogwarts). Polyphony is lacking in Goblet of Fire as the cultural hybridity is caricatured, for example the exaggerated accents of Fleur and Krum when speaking English. Therefore, the unmasking of bias should be practised in the EFL-literature classroom by employing critical cultural literacy. Children cannot be insulated from prejudice, stereotypes, misunderstandings and superficial thinking, so probably the most important single aspect is the need to educate young readers to recognise bias – in themselves, in literature, in society, and so take it into account in their reading. Books that display bias may even be a useful tool in this process. (Mikkelsen and Pinsent 2001: 78)

In a literature seminar studying Harry Potter with ongoing EFL teachers in Germany, my students also experienced Durmstrang as Other, although it clearly has a German name. Oziewicz describes Durmstrang as a German-sounding institution, located somewhere in northernmost Scandinavia, led by the Russian-sounding headmaster Igor Karkaroff, and represented in the tournament by its Bulgarian champion Victor Krum, Durmstrang is a medley of scary stereotypes about what one can come across east of France. Given that it seems to be the only wizarding school available for wizards of nationalities other than the British and French, Durmstrang is a collective representation of the wild East. It is attended by Germanic, Scandinavian and Slavic pupils

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and shrouded in utmost secrecy. It has always been renowned for its Dark Arts. (Oziewicz 2010: 10)

The necessary critical reading in the EFL-literature classroom discloses ethnocentrism, revealed through the depiction of the non-British schools of magic. Hunt writes, referring to colonialism and postcolonialism in children’s literature: The virus of imperialism infected English public schools, was to some extent their driving force and that of the school story (. . .), the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, and centred on gender role-models which influenced girls’ stories and even fairytales. (Hunt 2001: 260)

Much classical literature as well as children’s literature is infected by this ‘virus’, and in an educational context this must be interrogated. In questioning-inrole (or hot-seating), different students take on the role of different characters. They are questioned and challenged by other students as to their motives and feelings, and a great deal of tenacity and creative thinking is required to discover feelings that are not clearly expressed in the books, but merely hinted at. The Yule Ball chapter in Goblet of Fire would be very suitable for questioningin-role, as it features students and professors from all three schools, and also controversy: Harry and Ron shamefully neglect their young dance partners, Parvati and Padma Patil. The Patil sisters are – unfortunately – token British Indian characters, duplicated as twins, and merely used to enhance the drama of Harry and Ron both being without their first choice of partner. After the Yule Ball, the Patil sisters are relegated to the background once more. The object of the Yule Ball – taking place on Christmas Day – is for the students from different countries to intermingle. However, Ron, to some extent supported by Harry, behaves in a most patronizing way to Hermione and to Krum. Ron is furious, presumably due to jealousy, about Hermione’s partner Krum: ‘He’s from Durmstrang!’ spat Ron. ‘He’s competing against Harry! Against Hogwarts! You – you’re –’ Ron was obviously casting around for words strong enough to describe Hermione’s crime, ‘fraternising with the enemy, that’s what you’re doing!’ (Rowling 2000: 367)

Both Hagrid and Ron, characters many readers empathize with, make racist comments following romantic disappointments at the Yule Ball. Hagrid tells Harry: ‘The less you lot ’ave ter do with these foreigners, the happier yeh’ll be. Yeh can’ trust any of ’em’ (Rowling 2000: 489). The Harry Potter series is

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extremely long and complex, techniques are important to help reveal the causes for this bigotry among popular characters, as details can easily get lost in the convoluted stories. It should be revealed how at least some of the characters are able to overcome their prejudice: ‘it is important that child readers see clearly the way that bigoted characters’ experiences are broadened or their awareness heightened by exposure to a different perspective’ (Mikkelsen and Pinsent 2001: 77). All characters can be questioned in role, and the questioners can also take on a role, such as other students from Durmstrang or friends from Hogwarts. The class can stay seated as usual while answering in role, and it works well if the language teacher also takes on a structuring role, such as school prefect: ‘the effectiveness of drama is enhanced when teachers lead from within the drama – even for very short periods of intervention’ (Franks 2010: 248). In questioningin-role, as in all drama work, the students must change perspective to that of the Hogwarts or Durmstrang character they are portraying. The storyworld is thus lived through in the drama, which ‘provides the potential for developing the contexts in richer ways; if the language is embedded in action which has more genuine motivation, it is likely to be less mechanical and carry more emotional content and meaning’ (Fleming 2004: 186). Educational drama processes such as questioning-in-role and intra-personal role play are particularly supportive of critical cultural literacy. The later books in the series deal allegorically with fascism, as the main source of evil in the wizarding world. The themes are highly relevant for an EFL-literature classroom. They develop from ‘a question of “purity” and the struggle of the “pure bloods” to maintain their position at the top of the hierarchy by taking over total control whilst depriving everyone else of any kind of democratic participation’ (Holt 2006: 344), to become yet more sinister, ‘Nazi Germany is a clear model for the interest of many wizards in preserving the “pure-blood” character of the Wizarding world’ (Appelbaum 2009: 94) and finally ‘the persecution of the Muggle-born in the final volume is reminiscent of the worst genocides in human history’ (Nikolajeva 2009: 228). A number of professors are also victimized: Dumbledore and Charity Burbage for political reasons, as they support the cause of democracy, and the ‘half-breeds’ Lupin and Hagrid for racist reasons. This is intricate political allegory on a level that young adult readers are, nonetheless, able to follow and understand due to the already mentioned, educationally vital ‘metaphoric axis of the imagination’ (Kramsch 1996: 3). In Deathly Hallows, Muggle-borns are persecuted in horrific scenes in the Ministry itself, once the Death Eaters, on the side of Voldemort, have taken

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control. We have been prepared throughout the series, largely by Hermione, to understand that ‘social justice antiracism assumes that racism lies not only in individuals, but also in the institutions that grant privileges and power to certain racial groups in a society, and restrict other racial groups from the same’ (Horne 2010: 79). In contrast to Harry, who works against racism on a personal level by supporting Dobby, Hermione’s critical understanding of bias in the History of Magic class leads her to political action, the creation of the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare (however, belittled by Ron and consequently for the reader as S.P.E.W.). Unfortunately, the reader has to wait until the final book until one of the oppressed sentient species, the goblin Griphook, voices his anger at the speciesism, clearly as a parallel to racism, of the wizarding community (this is taken up again under ecocritical issues). This is important as an example of how Harry, in the final book, begins himself to acquire critical cultural literacy: ‘Rowling’s depiction of Griphook also begins to draw Harry’s, and the reader’s, attention away from defining racism in merely personal terms, and toward seeing racism as a structural, institutional, and political system’ (Horne 2010: 91). Impressively, ‘Griphook gives voice to the institutional and cultural oppression inherent not only in Voldemort’s rule, but within normal, everyday wizarding culture itself ’ (Horne 2010: 93). Nonetheless, with regard to global issues, the reader can hardly avoid the ultimate analysis after the final pages, that ‘we are left with a fairly conservative message that all has been set aright’ (Appelbaum 2009: 92). There is no suggestion that the defeat of Voldemort and the overturning of racial oppression within wizarding society will be extended to a new social justice approach of anti-racism and a growing awareness of wizards’ arrogance towards other sentient species, other than Harry’s personal new empathetic awareness, as the hero of the Bildungsroman. Jackie Horne considers the development of a social justice paradigm to overcome structural racism in the wizarding world is missing at the end, which instead ‘demonstrates an all-too-likely outcome of multicultural antiracism – making the privileged feel better about themselves without doing much to change the oppression of the other’ (Horne 2010: 96).

Ecocritical issues The global issue of human interactions with nature are interwoven in the text throughout: ‘Hagrid values animals intrinsically, for the sake of their uniqueness and peculiarity, rather than for their utility’ (Dendle 2009: 165). However, his rejection of anthropocentrism seems to be exceptional in the wizarding world. As Dendle points out, most of the wizards and witches mirror the hypocrisy of

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our own arbitrary human-centred relationships with animals, they admire unicorns for their beauty but will throw garden gnomes around, who are capable of learning some speech, to improve the aesthetics of their gardens. As with the house-elves, wizarding interaction with the natural world is frequently described for comic effect, and there are ‘humorous scenes that often involve the exploitation and sometimes pain of lesser creatures’ (Dendle 2009: 164). This is disturbingly so, as the boundaries between different forms of life are perplexingly fluid: and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood. ‘The moment their acne clears up, they’ll be ready for re-potting again,’ Harry heard her telling Filch kindly one afternoon. ‘And after that, it won’t be long until we’re cutting them up and stewing them. You’ll have Mrs Norris back in no time.’ (Rowling 1998: 175)

Thus Peter Dendle concludes that the search for ‘a consistent moral ethic of wizards’ treatment of various creatures is probably as futile as searching for one in the Muggle world. Certain species, for historical, emotional, and cultural reasons, are dear to us, while others are expendable’ (Dendle 2009: 171). This is demonstrated by the quotations from Goblet of Fire included in students’ visualizations of a less-appealing magical creature, the Blast-Ended Screwt (Figures 8.4 and 8.5).

Figure 8.4  Blast-Ended Screwt

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Figure 8.5  The stages of Blast-Ended Screwts

Unlike non-human species of the real world, in Harry Potter some magical beings can communicate with the witches and wizards, and are able to voice the  arrogance of man. First, the centaurs, interestingly addressing Hermione, the  most learnt Hogwarts scholar, attempt to educate her on speciesism: ‘Perhaps you thought us pretty talking horses? We are an ancient people who will not stand wizard invasions and insults! We do not recognise your laws, we do not acknowledge your superiority’ (Rowling 2003: 667). In Deathly Hallows, Griphook the goblin shouts at Ron ‘Wizarding arrogance again! That sword was Ragnuk the First’s, taken from him by Godric Gryffindor! It is a lost treasure, a

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masterpiece of goblinwork! It belongs with the goblins!’ (Rowling 2007: 409). As Harry’s eyes are opened by Griphook (far more than in his History of Magic classes), we are taught to understand the goblin attitude to their works of art, the significance of the origin of artefacts from the goblin perspective and that they are not consumer goods to be owned by the conqueror or purchaser for evermore. A similar argument has been put forward with regard to colonial theft (discussed in Chapter 7). Classroom discussion could centre on whether (and what) mankind is stealing from other species. Returning to Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, it has been claimed that ‘(t)he chronotope binds together these elements of story, geography and self, reminding us of the local, vernacular, folk elements of literature, which are rooted in place’ (McDowell 1996: 378). The sense of place is very strong at Hogwarts, in that all interactions need to occur in actual time and space. The virtual reality of television and computer screens does not form any part of the magical world; phones, cars and electricity are limited to the Muggle world; and information must be searched for by time-consuming research in the library. Harry, Ron and Hermione find the answers to all their vital questions and predicaments within the school buildings or on their many outings through the school grounds, including the Forbidden Forest and the neighbouring village of Hogsmeade. Without the aid of the internet, it takes the friends weeks of research to discover the identity of the (real-life) historical character Nicolas Flamel (Rowling 1997). The Hogwarts settings are not described in poetic detail, because they are lived in to the fullest degree, so there is a real sense of the environment as animate, for example, the defensive Whomping Willow and the Muggle car that turns wild at Hogwarts in Chamber of Secrets. Six of the seven evil Horcruxes are finally defeated and destroyed at Hogwarts, even when originally hidden elsewhere. Only Salazar Slytherin’s Locket is destroyed beyond Hogwarts, in the Forest of Dean, one of few surviving ancient woodlands in England. Is this an implied criticism of our reliance on technology in the Muggle world? Sheltrown considers Rowling engages critically with technology, ‘the Harry Potter series creates opportunities to reconsider our own technologies, an important first step in the critical consideration of technology’ (2009: 57). Sheltrown refers to the fact that much Muggle technology is seen through wizarding eyes as ‘weird’. Particularly, the media is satirized and overtly criticized, through the character of Rita Skeeter in Order of the Phoenix: ‘So Daily Prophet exists to tell people what they want to hear, does it?’ said Hermione scathingly.

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Rita sat up straight again, eyebrows raised, and drained her glass of Firewhisky. ‘The Prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl,’ she said coldly. (Rowling 2003: 501)

Nicholas Sheltrown summarizes the empowering implications of the portrayal of technology and media: The important point here is that through her treatment of big media, Rowling provides young readers further opportunity to think critically about the role of media in the economy of ideas. As a text, Harry Potter provides an effective platform for dialogue about technology and media. (Sheltrown: 2009: 63)

When in Deathly Hallows Harry, Hermione and Ron are prevented from returning to Hogwarts, they wander a literal and metaphorical wilderness, for it is Hogwarts that symbolizes friendship, loyalty and learning. The separation of culture from nature is condemned through the toxic, dehumanizing effects of Voldemort’s many attempts to defeat death: the heinous use of unicorn blood in Philosopher’s Stone, the Philosopher’s Stone itself, Voldemort’s sadistic reincarnation at the end of Goblet of Fire, the attempt to gain the Elder Wand and unite the Deathly Hallows (which is Dumbledore’s downfall, but which Harry manages to resist), and finally the evil of the Horcruxes. Hermione’s enchanted beaded bag is one of the central images in Deathly Hallows, from an ecofeminist perspective it echoes the earliest kind of cultural device in human evolution to secure survival, said to be a container to hold gathered seeds, nuts, berries and other vegetable food (Fisher 1980). It seems to be Hermione’s handbag that secures their survival in the wilderness, not their wands. Harry’s wand gets broken on Christmas Eve, at Godric’s Hollow where his parents died, and he finally rejects the invincible Elder Wand. This seems to be symbolic of a new development in Harry’s and Hermione’s struggle (Ron deserts them temporarily in the wilderness), one that overcomes what Ursula Le Guin calls the old explanation of culture ‘as originating from and elaborating upon the use of long, hard objects for sticking, bashing, and killing’: We’ve heard it, we’ve heard all about the sticks and spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news. And yet old. (Le Guin 1996: 151)

The image of Hermione and Harry wandering the natural world in the final book, protected more by the capacity of Hermione’s enchanted handbag than by their wands, harmonizing with a new and ‘yet old’ perspective on human culture,

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helps confirm Harry’s role finally, alongside Hermione’s, as peaceful, vulnerable and caring. This is promising, and arguably undermines the regrettable tendency in the last scenes to achieve closure and ‘confirm the social order based on conventional Western values, on solid beliefs in undisputable dogmas, and on unquestionable authorities’ (Nikolajeva 2009: 239). Detecting absences and implicit ideologies is a literary activity that should be applied to canonical classics as well as young adult literature, and does not necessarily imply inferior literary worth. Harry Potter is magical and gripping, and the later books embody a complex study of intolerance and bigotry. Like all texts ‘worth bothering with’ (Chambers 2011: 162), the Harry Potter books need to be read more than once to be fully appreciated. C. S. Lewis maintains, ‘We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties’ (Lewis 1982: 17). Indeed, the magic of Harry Potter has received unprecedented approval and appreciation by boys as well as girl readers of all ages: ‘We cannot sing the praises of Rowling high enough,’ says Charlie Griffiths, director of the National Literacy Association. ‘Anyone who can persuade children to read should be treasured and what she’s given us in Harry Potter is little short of miraculous.’ (Quoted in McGinty 2003)

However, as media representations have a great influence on the collective imagination, young people should be given every opportunity to learn how to resist cultural conditioning. Reading texts like Harry Potter in the EFL-literature classroom can provide all the advantages of extensive reading and motivating in-depth intensive reading, as well as offering opportunities for learning the important critical cultural skills of reading between the lines and reading against the text. As reading against the text requires self-reflection, the ability to be aware of one’s own sociocultural frame, it is a cognitively progressive metaskill. I argue it is an educational goal that requires an apprenticeship of constant practice over many years of literary reading.

Notes 1 There can be wide and unbridgeable gaps, ‘chasms’, in the content of graded readers. Modified texts are often homogenized in language and content. Marianne (2007) identified a pivotal thematic absence in a simplified version of The Cay by Theodore Taylor (1969), which the teacher, who knew the original version,

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neglected to notice when teaching non-native speaking (NNS) students using the modified graded reader. The Cay in the original is a committed, probing Robinsonnade for younger readers, set in the Caribbean during World War II. With its central theme of racism and prejudice, the original work of children’s literature is very suitable for engaged reading with young teenagers. It is accessible, and can promote literary literacy as the adolescent reader is well able to create a mental model of the situation of the boy protagonist, and how his eyes are metaphorically opened to racial bias when his sight is lost during a shipwreck, and he is protected and ultimately saved by the guidance and self-sacrifice of a black Caribbean man. However, the research conducted with the graded reader revealed: if the ESL teacher has not noticed the lack of thematic racism and prejudice in the modified version and teaches the text as though that information were there (as happened), then there is the less easily identified problem of how the NNS students feel about not being able to see what the teacher thinks is so clearly there. (. . .) it is reasonable to speculate that NNS students may attribute the fact they missed the themes of racism and prejudice to their own poor reading skills or English language skills in general (. . .). Whereas the modified version of The Cay (Strange 1997) may be accessible to ESL readers in their first 1,000 words of English, the themes of racism and prejudice were not (.  .  .). It is vital that teachers who use modified texts pay close attention to exactly what is in the text and how it is crafted. Not doing so may lead NNS students to experience a sense of failure to get the right interpretations, dependency on the teacher to get the right interpretation, a lack of enjoyment in the reading process, and inadequate background knowledge for later school use. These may in turn impact on students’ personal reading-for-pleasure motivation, attitude and confidence. (Marianne 2007: 66–7) Using extracts from adult literature and poorly modified graded readers reinforces the traditional authority role of the teacher; this tends to make the teacher defensive and the students insecure and works against learner empowerment. 2 Known as the PARSNIP principle, and adhered to by many if not all graded readers: no Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -isms or Pork. 3 Figures 7.2–7.6 were drawn by groups of student teachers in a TEFL-literature seminar at Hildesheim University, 2010.

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Conclusion Possibly because there is rather sparse scholarship on much of contemporary children’s literature, there is no rigid canon of required reading to the detriment of all other children’s texts. However, the meagre or non-existent attention to well-crafted children’s literature in TEFL teacher-education programmes leads most teachers to select graded readers that are simplified versions of classics of adult literature, such as Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations, to read with students who are still in their early teens. Simplified works of adult literature are seldom if ever as well crafted as first-rate children’s literature. They are also not necessarily cheaper to buy, even though often based on older works that are out of copyright. Moreover, despite the linguistic simplification, graded readers based on adult texts can be very discouraging for readers who are not yet adults. Students who are novices in the world, and lack adult schemata, can hardly be sufficiently familiar with the adult semiotic domain to fill in the gaps – and filling in the gaps by the author of the graded reader (or the teacher) is not the solution, as ‘an ability to tolerate and resolve uncertainty for oneself ’ (Vincent 1986: 211) is an essential literary competence. The inherent ludic and indeterminate yet carefully researched and detailed quality of firstrate multimodal and postmodern children’s literary texts is mostly absent in textbook texts for the EFL classroom, and graded readers are too often ‘pale imitations of original writing, in thin, stilted language, lacking all the linguistic, emotional, and aesthetic qualities that characterize real literature’ (Vincent 1986: 212). Illustrated graded readers (particularly older series that are unfortunately still in print and still in use) frequently lack the idiom principle, and display less playfulness and less artistic merit not only in the words and pictures considered separately, but particularly in the verbal–iconic interplay. The integrative and essential nature of the iconic elements in children’s literature is emphasized by the fact that since the inauguration of the Children’s Laureate in 1999, more than half of the laureates have been picturebook creators: Quentin Blake, Michael Rosen, Anthony Browne and Julia Donaldson. A course in Creative Writing for ongoing teachers of EFL can help students recognize the characteristics of good

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writing, and thus support them in distinguishing those graded readers that are well crafted, so that they can be included in the wide choice that must be offered for an extensive reading course. However, children can masterfully co-create the storyworld when reading sufficiently accessible children’s literature, but not necessarily with simplified adult texts. Teachers expect students to enter their (adult) semiotic domains. They don’t always respect the semiotic domains of the child, such as the magical Harry Potter world of muggles, mudbloods, quidditch and horcruxes, full of excess and immersed in adolescent angst, anger and quest for agency in a troubled world. Identity investment is a crucial aspect of engaged, successful and empowering learning. When students are well placed to co-create the texts they read, they have the opportunity to invest their identity in the text, becoming involved in its ideas and alternative reality. We know from affinity spaces such as blogs and online literature review sites, with their enormous potential for creative writing and interchange of interpretations, that students will invest in their favourite stories with tremendous dedication. The need for identity involvement in a literary apprenticeship is still ignored by curriculum designers, although it is steadily emphasized by scholars: ‘Unless recipients can establish a personal relationship with a work of art/a piece of literature, its specific potential remains dead to them. To establish a personal relationship, addressees must become involved in literary texts’ (Delanoy 2005: 55). The most important ingredients of intensive reading in the EFL-literature classroom are surely the concerned interest and enthusiasm of the readers and the literary worth of the text. To the humanist school of thought on language teaching (Traverso 2013: 183): ‘School can play an important role in affecting pupils’ emotional development and in the English classroom the use of children’s literature can be of great help in fostering positive feelings’. The extremely valuable works of children’s literature by leading authors should be at the top of any list, and the concept of an English Literature Canon should arguably be re-examined throughout teacher education, to counteract the ‘tendency of fossilisation of the literary canon at schools’ (Lütge 2012: 191). Widdowson (1975: 85) considers it ‘possible to think of a literature course which contains none of the “classics” at all, but which nevertheless prepares the way for a meaningful encounter with them at a later stage’. Leading contemporary and radical authors of children’s literature such as David Almond, Raymond Briggs, Anthony Browne, John Burningham, Lauren Child, Anne Fine, Neil Gaiman, Michael Morpurgo, Beverley Naidoo, Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling and David Wiesner expect their readers to think

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for themselves. They are writing for a critical audience of young people, as well as meeting the important criteria of high readability, age-appropriate topics and high literary quality (Vardell et al. 2006). Our pre-adult learners are not at a disadvantage in comparison with the teacher when, for example, graphic novels are chosen for the EFL-literature classroom, a vital consideration if we wish to impart confidence and insight to our students as autonomous readers and co-creators of the meanings of the text being considered. Brief extracts from longer texts can produce unbridgeable chasms for the reader, not thought-provoking gaps to fill, particularly as cohesion and even coherence are destroyed when texts are fragmented: ‘The extraction and isolation of a passage from a literary text for pedagogic purposes will necessarily involve the cutting of cohesive ties and the rendering of certain semantic relations within the original text meaningless’ (Cook 1986: 152). Just as taking time to look, reflect and respond is an essential aspect of visual literacy and interpreting pictures, so with verbal text students need the intraand intertextual links and the chance to immerse themselves in a storyworld in order to participate fully and, through classroom booktalk, insightfully and critically. Literary texts form an empowering gateway to new perspectives and intercultural awareness – in the case of English through the many literatures in English from nations throughout the world where English is spoken as the mother tongue or alongside the mother tongue(s). The imaginative scope of children’s literature, including realistic, fantastic, magic realist, nonsensical, anthropomorphic, transcultural, postcolonial and historical fiction, broadens the reader’s understanding of humanity and the world. Reading is an independent contributor of knowledge in a wide variety of domains (Stanovich and Cunningham 1993). Referring to extensive reading as an ‘efficacious tool’ with which to prepare for and enhance intensive reading, Renandya and Jacobs (2002: 300) state: Beyond powerful gains in language proficiency, reading offers more. It offers a richer understanding of the world and a place in the ongoing, worldwide dialogue on a universe of topics open only to those who are literate and who exercise their literacy.

The habit of literature is as an opening to lifelong learning. This needs to begin as early as possible, and with the playful multimodal literary texts for the young child, for ‘play as the intellectual work of young children’ (Styles 2000: 3) must be acknowledged and respected. Literary texts for children are created with

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safeguards to cater for readers whose grasp of the text will not be fully completed in one sitting. Can a truly worthwhile text ever be fully grasped in one sitting? These safeguards, such as the additional layers of narrative contributed by the pictures and layout, strong thematic links such as echoes of fairy tales, and marked linguistic cohesion such as mnemonic language patterning, are also extremely relevant to pre-adult language learners. A characteristic of complex literary texts for children and adolescents is their multi-layered, elliptical nature – demanding and enticing re-readings, and anticipating a slightly different creative response at each interaction. For these reasons young learners take naturally to children’s literature and will – given the opportunity – form the habit of reading. This is essential for learner empowerment: those who do not develop the pleasure reading habit simply don’t have a chance – they will have a very difficult time reading and writing at a level high enough to deal with the demands of today’s world. Although the research in second language reading is not as extensive as in first language reading, it strongly suggests that free reading in a second or foreign language is one of the best things an acquirer can do to bridge the gap from the beginning level to truly advanced levels of second language proficiency. (Krashen 2004: x)

Creative participation in children’s literature is the best literary apprenticeship. Narrative situations, focalization and point of view, irony and parody, different genres such as fairy tales, adventure stories and the Bildungsroman, intertextuality, metaphorical as well as patterned ludic language, can all be exemplified to the apprentice reader with children’s literature. For this, students need literature of the highest standard, also as a means of gaining the literary competences required for the study of canonized adult literature in the upper secondary school. Many narratives for children and adolescents are woven by writers who, as Philip Pullman described in his Carnegie Medal acceptance speech, use ‘all the resources of their craft’: But those adults who truly enjoy story, and plot, and character, and who would like to find books in which the events matter and which at the same time are works of literary art where the writers have used all the resources of their craft, could hardly do better than to look among the children’s books (. . .). All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by (. . .). We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. (Pullman 1996: www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/author/carnegie accessed 17.07.12)

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Critical literacy, such as uncovering implicit ideological scripts (e.g. residual racism, subliminal classism, trivializing the natural world and restricting gendered subject positions), is crucial for reading the world – empowering to the individual reader and also a democratic goal. Students need to learn strategies to be able to distance themselves from all texts sufficiently to be aware of potential manipulations, which the authors themselves may not have realized are enmeshed in their text. This leaves students freer to negotiate their subject positions, and resistant to manipulations: They can understand and choose from the wide variety of subject positions offered by both lived narratives and fictional texts, rather than allowing one particular subject position to be imposed upon them. They may lose the pleasure of immersion in the world a text creates. They will gain the greater pleasure of being empowered to construct themselves. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 179)

I have chosen for the most part to discuss contemporary and radical children’s literature for the EFL-literature classroom, as an important aspect of my argument is that increasingly children’s literature is available of highest literary quality as well as thematic depth. Recent children’s literature is most appropriate due to its frequent multimodal nature that supports second language understanding and access for the digital-native young readers, due to its multilayered nature that supports a thinking disposition in the classroom, and due to the high relevance of contemporary controversial themes that suit and motivate the thinking adolescent reader. I have introduced a number of exemplars, and suggested ways they might be employed in the EFL-literature classroom. However, the desirability of beginning literary education already with young learners and adolescents in the EFL classroom points to the requirement of a literary as well as a pedagogical study of children’s literature in teacher education. I conclude that a literary study of children’s literature in teacher education is necessary to equip ongoing teachers with sufficient know-how to select suitable texts and to analyse their potential for visual and literary literacy. In addition, a pedagogical study of children’s literature is required to discover the potential of children’s literature for creative writing and performance, intercultural learning and critical cultural literacy. This does not mean that practising teachers cannot already begin to try out children’s literature in the EFL-literature classroom. The best training in the long run is wide reading, booktalk and reflective classroom practice, inspired and enriched by the input of our creative students. It is only fair to provide children with a literary-literacy apprenticeship, giving them the chance to prepare themselves playfully and pleasurably through literary texts for

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the young – and later through texts for older children and young adults – for the very rewarding and challenging adult canon. There is a treasure chest of supremely valuable worldwide children’s literature in English that, for the sake of crucial educational goals, should be made widely available to the EFL-literature classroom with young learners and adolescents.

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Index absences  127, 274–8, 290n. 1 Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The (Sherman Alexie)  214, 299 affordances  7, 37, 40, 42, 78, 108, 111, 122, 166–7, 188, 210, 231 agency  13, 52, 58, 93, 95–6, 119, 198–200, 206, 214, 228, 249, 266, 273, 279, 281, 294 Allie’s Class (Janice Bland)  195–6, 200–1, 299, 323 Amazing Grace (Mary Hoffman, illus. Caroline Binch)  60–2, 300 amplification through simplification  81, 89, 133, 171 Arrival, The (Shaun Tan)  76, 114, 214, 226–30, 301 aural iconicity  8, 79, 81, 160, 167, 169, 185, 187 authorial narrative situation  80, 119, 128, 137 see also figural narrative situation; first-person narrative situation Bildung  6–7, 184, 215, 318 Bildungsroman  7, 210–11, 255, 258, 267, 269–70, 285, 296 Bill’s New Frock (Anne Fine)  120, 300 booktalk  5, 12, 27, 32, 36, 38, 42–3, 77, 81, 117, 219, 227, 230, 241, 243–4, 256, 259, 295, 297 Boy Overboard (Morris Gleitzman)  211, 300 Breadwinner, The (Deborah Ellis)  211, 300 caretaker talk  41 carnivalesque  48, 50–1, 56–7, 144 Cay, The (Theodore Taylor)  290–1n. 1, 301 chronotope  96, 267, 288 Cinderella’s Rat (Susan Meddaugh)  136, 300

cinematic point of view see visual viewpoint CLIL see Content and Language Integrated Learning Clockwork (Philip Pullman, illus. Peter Bailey)  189–92, 301 close-up  47, 67, 70, 80–1 extreme close-up  47, 81, 103, 145, 147, 180 cohesion  8, 64, 105, 120, 150, 170–1, 273, 295–6 collaborative talk  41–2, 307 collaborative participation, – response  47, 201 collateral learning  33, 36–7 Come Away from the Water, Shirley (John Burningham)  52–5, 299 composite text  120, 130 composite meaning, – message  45, 130 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)  2, 37, 65 Coraline (Neil Gaiman, illus. Dave McKean)  75, 82, 84, 86, 88, 91, 300 Coraline Graphic Novel (Neil Gaiman, illus. Craig Russell)  75, 80–2 88–96, 300 Coram Boy (Jamila Gavin)  195, 243, 300 Coram Boy (Jamila Gavin, adap, Helen Edmundson)  195, 300 cross-curricular learning  36, 47 crossover literature  12, 96, 195 cutout mentality  19 Daddy’s Roommate (Michael Willhoite)  212, 235–6, 302 Day of Ahmed’s Secret, The (Florence Heide & Judith Gilliland, illus. Ted Lewin)  60, 63–4, 300 decanonization  14, 111, 139 demand image  49, 71, 239 demand gaze  65, 90

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dialogic  12, 20, 38, 44, 71, 114, 118–19, 121, 138, 210, 212 digital natives  34, 107, 256 Dinosaurs (Michael Foreman)  239, 300 display questions  44–5, 131 see also genuine questions dramatic irony  48, 51, 199 Each Peach Pear Plum (Janet & Allan Ahlberg)  121, 299 ecocritical issues  11, 40, 225, 237, 285 ecocriticism  40, 64, 71, 237 écriture féminine  204 see also feminine discourse encapsulation  81, 108 epitext  121, 195–6, 255–6 see also paratext; peritext escapism  77, 98 extensive reading  4–5, 36, 107, 243, 245, 256–60, 290, 294–6 see also intensive reading Fairy Tales: Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Musicians of Bremen and Three Billy Goats Gruff (Janice Bland, illus. Elisabeth Lottermoser)  118–19, 142–4, 176–9, 299 feminine discourse  1, 204, 206 see also écriture féminine figural narrative situation  80, 213, 266, 270 see also authorial narrative situation; first-person narrative situation Firework-Maker’s Daughter, The (Philip Pullman)  172–4, 301 first-person narrative situation  80, 132, 222 see also authorial narrative situation; figural narrative situation Flotsam (David Wiesner)  76, 226, 239–41, 301 focalization  80, 117, 119–20, 151, 174, 270–3, 296 foreshadowing  78, 86, 269, 273 FREE? Stories Celebrating Human Rights (Amnesty International)  114, 241–53, 299, 301

Frog Prince Continued, The (Jon Scieszka, illus. Steve Johnson)  139, 301 genuine questions  45, 131 see also display questions George and the Dragon (Chris Wormell)  127–9, 302 Good Night, Gorilla (Peggy Rathmann)  42, 48–51, 301 graded readers  7–8, 20, 47, 53, 58, 144, 161, 187, 224, 243–4, 257, 260, 290–1nn. 1–2, 293–4 Gruffalo, The (Julia Donaldson, illus. Axel Scheffler)  34, 300 Handa’s Surprise (Eileen Browne)  42, 45–7, 59, 299 happy ending  114, 140 Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Salman Rushdie, adapt. Tim Supple & David Tushingham)  195, 204–6, 301 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 263, 269, 288, 290, 301 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 261–2, 268, 275–7, 280, 284, 287, 289, 301 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 275, 278, 282–3, 286, 289, 301 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 269, 301 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 266–8, 270–3, 275, 277, 288, 301 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 263, 289, 301 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Joanne K. Rowling)  257, 301 ‘Her Pocahontas’ (Susan Deer Cloud)  225, 300 His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman, adap. Nicholas Wright)  91, 195, 301 hot-seating  190, 198, 283 hybridity  52, 131, 210, 214, 282

Index I Was a Rat! (Philip Pullman)  136–9, 301 idiomatic language  8, 152, 161, 165, 178 idiom principle  8, 293 implied reader  5, 130, 222, 258, 274 indeterminacy  8, 11–13, 19, 22–3, 32, 98, 111, 132–3, 231, 267, 270–3 indeterminate  13, 55, 59, 156, 170, 189, 293 inner speech  259 intensive reading  5, 77, 107, 257–61, 290, 294 see also extensive reading interanimation  21, 231 intermediality  78 interpellation  200, 206 intertextuality  8, 51–2, 62, 77, 121, 127, 137, 164, 189, 197, 230, 263, 296 and intratextuality  230 Into the Forest (Anthony Browne)  132–3, 299 intrapersonal interaction  259, 278 see also private speech, inner speech Iron Man, The (Ted Hughes)  167, 169–71, 174–6, 300 Island, The (Armin Greder)  113, 212, 227–8, 230, 300 It’s a Book (Lane Smith)  82–3, 301 Janet and John style  58, 115 Jim and the Beanstalk (Raymond Briggs)  148–51, 299 Jungle Book, The (Rudyard Kipling)  127, 300 King of Shadows (Susan Cooper)  196, 299 King of Shadows (Susan Cooper adapt. Adrian Mitchell)  195, 196–8, 300 Kite Runner Graphic Novel, The (Khaled Hosseini, illus. Mirka Andolfo & Fabio Celoni)  211, 300 ‘Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads’ (David Almond)  243, 246–9, 299 language modelling  39, 41, 183, 231 Leseknick  74 lexical chains  8, 185, 243 literary transaction  61

329

Love You Forever (Robert Munsch, illus. Sheila McGraw)  184–5, 301 magic realism  48, 71, 114, 120, 196, 202–3, 214, 295 Me and You (Anthony Browne)  115–17, 120, 299 mental model  98, 130, 160, 179, 291n. 1 mental representations  16–17, 62, 164, 168, 260 metalepsis  124, 147, 189 metanarratives  96, 111, 114, 137, 139, 155 metaphoric axis of the imagination  25, 74, 284 Monkey Puzzle (Julia Donaldson, illus. Axel Scheffler)  34, 300 multilayered literature  5, 21, 71, 130, 223, 238, 297 negotiation of meaning  38, 102 negotiation of understanding  18, 38, 55, 144 No, David (David Shannon)  42–5, 301 Not Now, Bernard (David McKee)  52, 56, 300 Oi! Get Off Our Train (John Burningham)  65, 69, 238, 299 Other Side of Truth, The (Beverley Naidoo)  214, 301 Our Granny (Margaret Wild, illus. Julie Vivas)  236–7, 302 Owl Babies (Martin Waddell, illus. Patrick Benson)  65–6, 301 Paper Bag Princess, The (Robert Munsch, illus. Michael Martchenko)  139–40, 300 paratext  112, 194 see also epitext; peritext parody  14, 136–9, 251, 296 participatory reading  22, 113, 120–6, 146, 155, 173 partly determining context  146 pedagogical promise  96, 112, 133 people prose  57, 80, 148 peritext  137 see also epitext; paratext perspective structure  80, 188, 209, 221–6, 134, 282

330

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phonological patterning  8, 34, 159, 161–3, 165, 167, 260 phonological intensity  171 phonological reduction  154 Piggybook (Anthony Browne)  52, 58–9, 113, 115, 299 point of view  42, 48, 74, 77, 119, 121, 137, 147, 155, 174, 222, 233, 270, 277, 296 figurative point of view  73, 80, 152 see also focalization; perspective structure; visual viewpoint polyphonic narrative  130, 137, 193, 210 polyphony  282 postcolonial literature  132, 192, 209, 212–14, 217, 219, 222–3, 250–1, 257, 260, 295 postcolonialism  222, 283 private speech  41, 159, 163, 203, 259 question mark stories  55 readerly text  98, 254 see also writerly text reading against the text  22, 113, 126–9, 155, 223, 258, 281, 290 recast  36, 41, 43 recto  54, 115, 117, 180 see also verso Refugee Boy (Benjamin Zephaniah)  213, 302 residual racism  215, 222, 297 risk taking  8, 10, 41 Room on the Broom (Julia Donaldson, illus. Axel Scheffler)  34, 300 salience  81, 91, 94, 100, 103, 147 scaffolding  31, 39, 41, 45, 105, 107, 144, 156, 166–7, 183, 231 schema, schemata  7–9, 11, 48, 90, 97, 107, 140, 172, 179, 182, 184, 193, 197, 215, 293 schema-refreshing  8, 69, 96, 139–41, 184, 199–200, 259–60 schema-reinforcing,  96, 140 school libraries  74, 140 school story  255, 258, 264–7, 283 scripting  51, 105 ‘Scout’s Honour’ (Sarah Mussi)  214, 249–53, 301 Shepherd Boy, The (Kim Lewis)  65, 67, 300

Sister Nations (Heid Erdrich and Laura Tohe)  225, 300 Slave Dancer, The (Paula Fox)  215, 222, 300 Smartest Giant in Town, The (Julia Donaldson, illus. Axel Scheffler)  35, 300 Snail and the Whale, The (Julia Donaldson, illus. Axel Scheffler)  34, 300 Snowman, The (Raymond Briggs)  42, 47–9, 299 Snow White in New York (Fiona French)  126, 180–1, 300 sound words  8, 79, 81, 148 storyworld  13, 24–5, 27, 42, 47, 63, 71, 73, 82, 90, 92, 94, 98, 112, 114, 119, 122, 133, 145–8, 188–9, 196–8, 209, 211–12, 214–16, 221, 227, 231, 242–3, 246, 248, 259–60, 262, 270, 281–2, 284, 294–5 Stranger, The (Chris Van Allsburg)  65, 71–3, 302 subject position  58, 120, 206, 274, 297 subjectivity  234, 273, 275 Susan Laughs (Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross)  181–2, 302 Three Pigs, The (David Wiesner)  144–9, 165, 301 tolerance of ambiguity  10, 38, 41, 88, 233–4 transculturality  214 transition (between schools)  39, 52, 73, 139 Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson, illus. John Lawrence)  75, 82–4, 88, 94, 301 Treasure Island. The Graphic Novel (Robert Louis Stevenson, adapt. Tim Hamilton)  80, 82–8, 94, 301 tricolon  8, 179 Trouble with Gran, The (Babette Cole)  52, 56–7, 299 True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! The (Jon Scieszka, illus. Lane Smith)  151–5, 301 Tunnel, The (Anthony Browne)  52–3, 299

Index Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, The (Gene Kemp)  195–6, 198–200, 300 typographic experimentation  8, 37, 78–9, 81, 91, 122, 124 unreliable narrator  12, 112, 152, 191, 269 verso  54, 115, 117, 180 visual iconicity  8, 79, 160, 169, 231 visual viewpoint  48, 72–3, 80, 86, 99 and cinematic point of view  80 Voices in the Park (Anthony Browne) 211, 230–4, 299 War Horse (Michael Morpurgo, adap. Nick Stafford)  195, 300 We Are All Born Free. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures (Amnesty International)  182–4, 299

331

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen, illus. Helen Oxenbury)  65, 67–9, 301 Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Book? (Lauren Child)  121–6, 299 Wild Girl, Wild Boy (David Almond)  195–6, 201–4, 240, 299 Wizard of Oz. The Graphic Novel (Frank Baum & Michael Cavallaro)  75, 80, 96–107, 299 Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The (Frank Baum)  75, 93, 96–9, 105–7, 299 writerly text  22–3, 98, 206, 254 writerly participation  33, 55, 98, 120 see also readerly text Zoo (Anthony Browne)  65, 70–1, 238, 299

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