As we were reading the passage about lighting the fireplace
at Mary Lennox's room, my young friend asked: "How did they start the fire
in The Secret Garden? Do you know if they had matches?" I wasn’t sure, we
had to look it up, but that question led to a more general discussion about
inventions.
This is only one example of the many issues that we cover
(and discover). Reading aloud is a great opportunity for instruction and
delight: we think of and develop ideas, discuss our opinions and share personal
stories.
In the last couple of years I have been reading books with a
young friend whose eleventh birthday will be coming soon. She doesn’t like to
read, but she loves to get to know the characters in our books, and to explore
the motives behind their actions.
Recently we read Sunday's Child by the German author Gudrun
Mebs. This book is a variation on the genre of the boarding school novel. But
Sunday's Child is told from the point of view of an eight year old girl who
lives in an orphanage, she is the protagonist and the narrator.
Every Sunday many children are taken out for the day by
families, and this girl (who remains nameless) is longing to have a family as
well. At one point in the story a single woman, a writer of children books,
becomes her Sunday mother.
I asked my friend what was the purpose of this comparison?
She answered that comparing the strange woman to the bunny made it easier for
the girl to connect to Ola and to love her. I was speechless.
Telling the story in the first person and from the point of
view of the young child, allowed me to
introduce my young friend to the
concepts of the unreliable narrator and the implicit author. It was easy to
look for instances when the girl’s perception and understanding of reality were
different from what actually had taken place, and to remember similar examples
from our own experience.
Personally I am convinced that literature offers the best
preparation for life. In other words, it supplies the essential life skills.*
Literature enriches the repertoire of responses and provides tools to analyze
the world. Since literature is made of examples—stories with characters and
situations, it is a much better guide for the young and the perplexed than
philosophy for example. Moreover, literature is a great training for
recognizing nuances and understanding
subtexts.
This morning while I was skating I listened to the episode
Act V in This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/218/act-v
The entire program was devoted to a theater production of
Hamlet Act V by inmates in a high- security facility in Missouri. It seems that
Shakespeare’s lines penetrated the shields of the toughest prisoners and
brought about change. Thus, the actors/prisoners were able to connect to the
characters in the play from the depth of their own experiences.
This program reminded me of another important quality of
literature. For years I believed that, unlike medicine for example, literature
could not save lives. But recently I had a change of heart.
My father in-law, an old fashioned family doctor, believed
that a cup of tea and three days off work were the best cure for most
complaints. In a way, reading good literature with my young friend is that type
of medicine. But I feel that experiences like the Hamlet production at the
Missouri prison, could literally save lives.
And in case you wonder, in 1911 when The Secret Garden by
Frances Hodgson Burnett was published, matches were used to light a fire.
*In the home page of Unicef, life skills are those that
enable individuals to deal effectively
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