Sunday, January 28, 2007

Zipes and Red Riding Hood

The Zipes reading was rather long and boring. While reading it I found that I would have to read back over the paragraph I just read because I wasn't retaining the information. However, once I made myself do that I did agree with him on a few issues. At first I was not too impressed with the title "There is No Such Thing as Children's Literature." As I continued to read the chapter I found myself agreeing with some of his argument. For example, when he says that most of the readers, writers, editors, critics and publishers are adults, as are the distributors and owners of bookstores - Pg.40. I find that to be very good for his argument because adults may have been children at one time, but usually that is a time that has passed long ago and all they have are memories that may be slightly jumbled. I think that it is sad that there is such a tedious process for publishing children's literature. I think that the editor and author should do the editing together so that it doesn't seem like their whole book has been changed.

As for the Little Red Riding Hood variations, I found those to be hilarious. I think that maybe the cannibalism was a little odd, but made it interesting. Like one of the girls mentioned in class, it seems like the stories toward the end were more like the ones we grew up hearing and maybe the ones in the beginning were stories that were being told to children a long time ago before publishing and editing. I think that it is good to censor stories for children, but the beginning Riding Hood stories were more realistic and, to me, I think they had a better moral. What do you think?

2 comments:

MissMay said...

I also agree that the Zipes reading was tedious and very boring. I also agree with Amiee on the fact that I did not agree with some of the things in the book, Zipes did make a cohesive arguement about how all children's books are "tainted" by adults. Something that comes to mind though is the idea of "Isn't a child's life always 'tainted' by adults?" A child usually does not have much of a say in anything he or she does, including after school activities or what school he or she goes to, so why would a choice of literature be any different?

The varitents of Little Red Riding Hood were a little gruesome to me. I do not know if I would want my children going to sleep after me telling them the first story, where the moyuse calls the young girl a slut. I would then have to explain what a slut was and I do not find that appropriate for a young child. In the Red Riding Hood I remember, both the grandmother and the young girl are saved from the wolf's belly by a log cutter that happened to see the wolf enter into the Grandmother's home. Although, I may not want my children to read such graphic stories, I do appreciate that they exist and are able to be read and analyzed by us, students.

Tae Tae (03/14/1986) said...

Although the Zipes reading wasnt as exciting as it could have been, I thought that his position on childrens literature was pretty valid. The statement that there is no such thing as childrens literature is one that can be easily mistaken and taken the wrong way. I agree that childrens literature is basically parental literature in disguise, and since it is the adult that will riot, protest, and get the books taken off the shelves, it makes scense to want to win over he parents as well. Im not saying that parental disgression is a bad thing but if parents keep certain things away from their children, I think they hinder them in a way because they are keeping them ignorant of certain things. I wouldnt hand my 8 year old a love novel, but like with Harry Potter, some children benefit from stories like this that help their imagination evolve.
I also feel that everything is culturally specific. Some children grow up faster than others and some communities would read the descriptive Red Riding hoods to their 4 year olds. One person in class said that its the job of a parent to deside what their child should read because they need that guidance, but I think that that is once again, just an American Viewpoint.