Bernard M. Paderes MA Linguistics Litt 516 (Children and Adolescents Literature) Dr.

Jennie Jocson Once Upon a TimeHappily Ever After I think that Childrens literature, as a discipline, is the study of the characteristics, histories, and surveys of stories, poems, and plays intended to be read to children, or in some cases, narrated to them. I think that the purpose of childrens literature, aside from entertaining children by stimulating their imagination, is to pass on the cultures, traditions, and values of the society they belong to. I think that it needs a specific discipline because children have limited language and cognitive abilities in processing texts. When I was young, I remember collecting books. I would even engage in a competition with my cousin on who had a bigger collection. Though I had a number of books, I did not remember being excited to read them; instead, I would demand my folks to read them for me. I did not like reading no matter how short the texts were. I would just look and marvel at the illustrations then asked someone read the story to me. I did not just ask people to read my books for me, I demanded the story to be performed before me, with all the dubbings and theatrics. Of all the books I remember having had as a kid, I should say that I remember these the most: Berenstain Bears series because the stories have clear lesson at the end; the classic fairy tales of Enid Blyton because of their illustrations of fairies and wizards.; All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradburry, a selection from my reading book in 3rd Grade, because compared to most children stories, it did not have a happy ending nor a clear lesson in the end well, actually, I even found it traumatic ; As for the local literature, I remember seeing the Batibot adaptation of Farncisco Arcellanas The Mats, which I later discovered to be a classic in Philippine literature because of its ideal depiction of a Filipino family and its values.

When I was in my teenage years, I thought of childrens stories to be lame because of their one-dimensional characterization, overly simplistic plot, and moralizing tone. But then, I also liked them for the same reasons. In addition to these, as a child, the most important feature of childrens literature (limiting the definition to a book) for me were the visual illustrations. Sometimes, eventhough I had read the story a lot of times, I would still look through a book in order for me to enjoy how the characters were illustrated and how different they were from the other books. I never get tired of reading books about Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella because each book had its own way of illustrating the characters and the setting. And since the Internet was still just a military tool at that time, I admired how publishers struggled to attract children to engage in literature by creating pop-up books, localized illustrations and translations, 3D illustrations, and read-along audio cassettes.