CLASSIFICATION OF CHILDREN

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CLASSIFICATION OF CHILDRENS LITERATURE
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1. Traditional Literature

• Refers to those that have been handed down from
  generation to generation by word of mouth before
  the invention of printing
• They are a product of a race (e.g., the Teutonic
  or the Malay) and their features usually identify
  the people who put them together.

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• The body of traditional literature is sometimes
  referred to as folk literature.
• The most common types are
• Fairy tales
• Folktales
• Parables
• Fables
• Myths
• Riddles
• Catches
• Jingles, and
• Folk songs

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• Pourquoi stories tell why the sky is high or why
  the sea is salt or why the pineapple has a
  hundred eyes.
• Pourquoi is a french term meaning why.
• legends talk of the first banana, the first
  bamboo, or the first lanzon fruit.
• they explain the beginning of certain objects

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2. Poetry

• is not exactly the type of literature that most
  people get readily excited about. That is sad
  because, as children our first acquaintance with
  childrens literature was generally made through
  the little rhyming songs and jingles that we
  loved to repeat as we went about motions songs
  and choral recitations. Who has not sung Little
  Sally Water, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, or
  Pen-Pen, Leron-Leron Sinta? Those were our
  first poems!

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• Then you were taught The Owl and All Things
  Bright and Beautiful. Some of us were lucky to
  get introduced to the so-called Mother Goose
  Rhymes. They are nursery rhymes put together by
  Charles Perrault, a Frenchman who also wrote down
  the most popular Cinderella variant. When his
  collection was published, the book featured on
  its cover a picture of a big goose wearing
  motherly clothes and surrounded by listening
  young animals and children. Mother Goose
  introduced us to Mary and her lost lamb, Little
  Jack Horner, and Twinkle, twinkle little star.
• The way you took to reciting and memorizing
  nursery rhymes in your childhood is similar to
  the way a two-year-old today would readily sing
  or recite the latest jingle.
• Children also respond to simple lyrics that
  describe a familiar flower, the experience of
  hearing the rain on the roof, the aroma wafting
  from the kitchen when Nanay cooks ginataan, and
  the feeling one gets when Tatay comes home and
  being lost in his embrace.

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• There are nonsense poems that make children
  giggle, like the rhyme Monumento/Konting bato,/
  konting semento/Monumento. When they are a
  little older, children are fascinated by the
  measured limericks, funny and witty verses that
  follow the aabba scheme, and its distinctive
  rhythm. For example
• There once was a lady from Niger - a
• Who smiled as she rode on a tiger - a
• They came back from the ride - b
• With the lady inside - b
• And the smile on the face of the tiger - a
• Theres another that has a bit of sophistication
  in it
• There was a young lady named Bright
• Whose steed was far faster than light.
• She went out one day
• In a relative way
• And returned on the previous night.

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• Edward Lear is the most well-known of the writers
  of limericks. In the centennial of his birth a
  few years ago, England released several stamps
  featuring his famous lines and drawings.
• Other poems are narrative in mode rather than
  descriptive. They are easier to read, the
  narrative being an easier discourse for any type
  of reader to deal with. Your own or your
  parents recollection of narrative poems would
  probably include Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie
  and Hiawatha, both by Henry W. Longfellow, and
  Florante at Laura by Francisco Balagtas. For
  younger children, theres Winken, Blinken and
  Nod and The Duel by Eugene Field. Also, most
  of you probably still sing Apat na Pulubi to
  your children or the children of your other
  relatives.

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• Didactive poems are the openly preachy ones
  that we rarely see nowadays. Didactic mean
  teaching. An example of this kind of poem is
  A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
  It begins with
• Tell me not in mournful numbers
• Life is but an empty dream
• For the soul is dead that slumbers
• And things are not what they seem.

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3. Informational Books

• Are those that allow young readers to accumulate
  as much factual knowledge as they might be
  interested in.
• The selections include the very basic
  informational books such as alphabet book,
  numeracy books, and concept books, including
  those that introduce children to shapes and
  colors, and how-to-do-it books that teach them
  how to make paper boats or how to assemble a toy
  or how to bake angel cake.
• The most common are the content area books, i.e.,
  books that are read for the different subject
  areas history, mathematics, science, social
  studies, health, etc.

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• Informational books on science concepts for early
  graders may be presented in the form of stories,
  as in Jose Aruego and Arianne Deweys We Hide,
  You Seek (camouflage), Adarnas Munting
  Patak-Ulan (the concepts of evaporation and
  condensation), and Si Duglit, ang Dugong Makulit
  (circulation of the blood) by pediatrician-writer
  Luis P. Garmaitan.
• Informational books would also include first
  dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases.

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4. Biography/Autobiography

• There are times when the biography and its
  related types are classified with informational
  books. The latter focuses on things, places, and
  concepts while the former targets personalities.
• A story of ones life written by oneself, as you
  know, is called an autobiography.

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• No Filipino writer of note has written An
  autobiography yet except Bienvenido Santos who
  gathered the letters he had sent his friends in
  his lifetime. From these, his life emerges, to be
  put together by the reader.
• A biography may be a straight biography, a
  fictionalized biography, or biographical fiction.
• A straight biography takes pains to share only
  documented facts about a particular individual.
  In style, it resembles history textbooks.

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• May Hill Arbuthnot, the expert on children and
  books, differentiates the two other sub-types of
  biography (Zena Sutherland, 1991)
• Fictionalized biographies are also based on
  research, but known facts are often presented in
  dramatic episodes complete with conversation.
• Biographical function, there are more authorial
  liberties taken, especially in the inclusion of
  (several) imaginary characters.
• An example of straight biography would be the
  Tahanan series on Filipino heroes, including Jose
  Rizal and his mother, Teodora Alonzo, Andres
  Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Emilio Aguinaldo,
  and Gabriela Silang.

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5. Fiction

• Fiction for children ranges from growing up
  stories to historical fiction from mysteries to
  science fiction from adventure stories to
  romance and fantasy and that special
  classification that falls under the heading,
  animal stories.
• Growing-up stories, as the name suggests, have
  themes that are close to the heart of the growing
  reader (based on the research which Diaz de
  Rivera conducted last 1988). The study yielded
  three most identified themes. The search for
  identity is first. Examples stories with this
  theme are Polly Camerons The Cat Who Thought He
  Was a Tiger, Elizabeth Guilfoiles Nobody Listens
  to Andrew, and The Story about Ferdinand by Munro
  Leaf.

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• The warmth of family and home is another favorite
  theme, as evidenced by their choice of Breakfast
  with Father by Ron Roy, Make Way for Ducklings by
  Robert McCloskey, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag,
  and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William
  Steig.
• Friendship and the community spirit is a strong
  third in the roster of favorite themes. This is
  evident in the titles cited, such as Mirra
  Ginsburgs Mushroom in the Rain, a retelling of
  Stone Soup by Marcia Brown, and The Biggest Bear
  by Lynd Ward.

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• It was found that they also like the theme of
  going away and coming back to a welcoming home.
  The journey motif enables young readers to take
  vicarious trips to new places, and meet new
  friends in the process. But they wish the young
  hero/es to always come home in the end. Typical
  of these stories are Little Ducklings Went
  Wandering and Where the Wild Things Are by the
  great Maurice Sendak.
• Note that in these stories, other types of
  fiction may be identified, like adventure
  stories, mysteries and fantasy, and animal
  stories, although they deserve a section of their
  own.

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• Historical fiction is a field that is richly
  tapped in other shores but only timidly tried by
  local writers. The only Filipino titles that
  come to mind are Makisig, Boy Hero of Mactan by
  Gemma Cruz and Kangkong 1869 by Ceres Albarado.
• A historical fictionist picks out a character,
  whether imaginative or actual, and situates the
  life of this character against the background of
  a historical event. In Cruzs story, it was the
  Lapulapu-Magellan encounter. The Alabado novel
  is set in Kangkong, one of several places where
  the Cry of Balintawak is said to have taken place.

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• Animal stories are a subtype of fiction but they
  deserve a special discussion.
• There are three types of animal stories
• stories that present animals as they are
• stories that depict talking animals and
• those that show animals as people