17 October 2008 Class Notes

• Lynda Sexson was the guest lecturer for class today. She talked about her upcoming film and things that it addressed.
• Is there such a thing as children's literature?
• Didactic: God------>speculative---->children begin to ask questions, morals, etiquette, pragmatic (ex. don't drink from a hot tea kettle)----->humor, nature
• All of those things (morals, etiquette, etc.) leads to literacy
• By becoming literate a child stops being a child.
• Nostalgia - a reminder of home, the old ways
• Books of nature--->leading to thoughts of God
• Influence of the Protestant Reformation..."anyone can learn to read"
• 1650 - John Eliott came to teach the Native Americans of Massachusetts how to read
• First bible printed in America was in the Algonquin language...
• Reading became a diversion for land
• Two world views colliding..."why do englishmen hate snakes?"
• John Newbery - the way by which we read is the way by which we think...
• Influence from the Enlightenment (think Thomas Jefferson whose library became the basis of the Library Of Congress) ---> notion of deism rather than theism.
• The notion that people can be rationale
• In 1803 Charles Peale opened a museum where for 50 cents, people could come in and see the bones from a mastadon
• John Goode wrote several books on nature but he had cracks in his world view
• JG would ask children not to think of the origin, not to think about where something came from.
• Wanted children to learn and become literate but not question certain things, only wanted them to reach a certain level of literacy
• Books on nature ---> some of the images conflict with the text
• Books were distributed by the American Sunday School Union and Religious Tracts among others
• iconoclasm: shattering/smashing of the image
• facsimile: made to look like an original
• "pocket books" from applewood books, nationalist enterprise
• "the blueback speller" produced by noah webster...wanted to regularize language in an American way
• Bluebeard, it is safe and scary at the same time when you are reading it, making it more appealing
• The world of books helps us with the world of words.