The importance of children’s literature, NOT just to the children, but the adults, also! Translated…
Awhile ago, there was a sixth graders’ reading list, including the titles of “Moby Dick”, and, “History of the Nation”, the classics. A lot of the people thought this was nothing easy for the elementary age children, and many believed, that there were, the readers that were, already adjusted, to this age group to read, that it can help the children understand the classics in an easier way, that there’s NO need, for the students to read the originals.
As a father of two before school age young children, a translator of illustrated books, I’m, totally onboard with this idea. The two kids that I have, have amazing ability to model us and learn from us, the words or phrases they’d heard often, soon enough, come out of their lips; even though they can’t read a ton of words yet, they’d carried “The Journey to the West”, the illustrated version, and read along, or used the phonetic spellings, to sound out the characters. Whatever they’d learned, they’d, shown it out, sometimes the English words I’d stated in the video conferences, will get sucked into their, tiny brains secretly.
Like how one day, they’d blurted out, “Foodpanda!” “Wow, how did you know?” “it’s in the advertisements!”
children’s section of a bookstore…
Whenever they’d heard something they never heard before, they’d normally, immediately come to me, and inquired, “What does that mean?” “why?”, for instance, the electromagnetic, the ultraviolet, carbon dioxide, viruses, and, it’d, caused me, to wreck my brains, to come up with a way to explain to them in terms that they can, understand, so they can, understand it. This sort of a “training”, had helped me a great deal as I worked on the illustrated book I’m working on.
In my writing modes being varied, while I did my research papers, my general studies papers, the children’s books, it’s the same concept, but, the audience being, varied, the words I used to present the ideas, are, different then. The hardest, was writing for the kids. I’m very, awed with how the professional editors’ understanding of the varied level of understanding of language of children. “This is too hard a word, you may need to add an explanation.” “They hadn’t learned this idiom yet, but they will learn it after the summer, so, you can save it for references for them in the future.”
After high school, everybody started, separating in her/his areas of expertise, while, in the fields not our expertise, we’re all, novices. Even in the science illustrated books, some of the knowledge I’d only learned, back in university, but now, the younger generations of readers can come into contact with these ideas from the easy to understand illustrated readers.
So it’s like I often stated, “when the adults go and shop in the bookstores, do go to the YA and children’s section too, that would be the portion of the store which uses the easiest to understand words, to explain some of the more, hard to comprehend ideas.
So the next time you head over to a bookstore, do go to the children’s section, it’s just, that you may, be requested, to take your shoes off upon entry.
And so, this still just showed, how those childhood readers are, important, they’re, our first contact with the outside world, we’re, socialized by these, children’s literature, and besides, as I’d found out, there are, the adult theories in psych that are working in those, children’s books, the easy children books, like the ones by Leo Lionni, and yeah, I’d, reviewed some of his books for my term papers back in college.
Life, the Obstacle Course 