Guidelines for Projects in Children's Literature

Fall 2006: English 301
Guidelines for Projects in Children’s Literature

Dr. Tina L. Hanlon

Ferrum College
thanlon@ferrum.edu

General Guidelines

Your project topic and date of oral report must be approved no later than Nov 8. Dates for reports will be negotiated in connection with related topics being covered in class at the time. If you want to submit a proposal in writing for your project, use the format given at the bottom of this page. Your presentation is on Nov. 10 at 1:30 p.m. if you are preparing a poster at the environmental symposium. See the additional web page on poster guidelines.
You may do your oral report and major paper on the same topic or different topics.
A conference with the professor before your oral report is required, to review plans for your class presentation. The conference must be held the week of Oct. 30 if you are preparing a poster for the environmental symposium. Come in as often as you like to consult on progress on your project.
You may work on a joint project with another member of the class.
Your oral report time will be restricted to 10 minutes per person. (Be sure to plan carefully so that you cover your topic within the time limit, rather than being cut off unfinished.) If you design a web page or some handouts that you give us ahead of time to look at, or you are presenting a poster at the symposium, it is acceptable for your in-class oral report time to be shorter than other reports. We will designate a day for a brief look at the environmental posters in class.
The audience for your project is this class. Feel free to bring in guests; engage the class in discussion or debate; or ask us to pretend we are a special kind of audience, such as a first grade class. The class will be asked to offer comments and questions after your report.
You may suggest readings to the class that would help us prepare for your oral report ahead of time, but do not assume that we have done extra reading on your topic or that we will want to hear lengthy summaries of books the class has not read.
The project grade will be based on your oral report, and you must turn in a written list of sources used for your project (including any people you consulted). You may want to include an outline of work you did for the project, especially if your major paper will have a different focus. If you are working with someone else, each person must submit a list of sources and indicate what she or he did individually for the project. If you are pursuing a topic that other students would likely be interested in, handing out an annotated bibliography or some other handout would be beneficial, but this is not required, as long as you give the professor a list of sources in MLA or APA format.

Format for Reports

Any pertinent format or media may be used in the oral reports: give an overview of the work you did on your project and/or use handouts, blackboard, recordings, videotape, overhead projector, Powerpoint, etc. Be sure to arrange in advance for any equipment or photocopying you may need.
This can be a traditional academic research report, or you might do one of the following:

Prepare a display or public program on children’s literature.

Design a web page based on a specific topic in children's literature. (If it relates to Appalachian literature or dragons in children's literature, or environmental issues, talk to Dr. Hanlon about developing a page for one of her web sites.) This could be a web page with background material for readers, including bibliography/webliography, or materials developed specifically for teachers or children.

Develop a lesson plan for presenting any kind of literature to children in any age group.

Write and/or illustrate a piece of children's literature yourself. Report on your sources of inspiration, methods and materials, and results.

Arrange a discussion or demonstration of children's literature through drama, readers theater, storytelling, puppets, music, or some other medium.

Topic Suggestions for Oral Reports and Major Papers

These are all general ideas; within the subject you are researching you will need to develop a very specific focus for oral reports and papers. You may also propose a topic not covered on this list.
Use anthologies, their bibliographies and subject indexes, the Touchstones list (on reserve), lists of award-winning books, reference books such as The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, or consultation with experts (such as teachers or children) to generate ideas for topics and find other important literary works not included in the required readings for the class. Other web pages for this class provide links to many Internet resources you might use (see also reminders about research at bottom of this page).

1. Focus on a specific genre or subgenre, such as ballads, limericks, wordless books, animal tales, high fantasy, utopias, science fiction, space fantasy, time travel fiction, tall tales, ghost stories, pourquoi tales, trickster tales, Arthurian literature, alphabet books, fables, drama for children, toy fantasies, dream fantasies, island adventures, realistic problem novels, family stories, series fiction, fairy tale films, autobiography, any other type of nonfiction book, . . ..

2. Discuss other works by, background on, or essays by one author or illustrator we are discussing, or one not on the scheduled readings for the class.

3. Examine a theme or type of character as presented in different works, such as uses of food for gratification, reward or punishment; the foolish adult; the person who changes sizes; the misunderstood artist or writer; relationships between child and animal, or child and adult; “home alone” adventures of children; the encounter with a magic object; friendship; importance of names or clothing; use of music; views of death; depiction of a historical event, period or person.

4. Focus on a specific literary or artistic technique in children’s literature, such as decorated borders in picture books, color, cumulative effects in rhymes and tales, word play, horror effects, etc.

5. Focus on a national or regional tradition, such as Japanese or Appalachian or Native American or Irish or Russian or Caribbean or African folk tales or myths or poems.

6. Explore some issues relating to minority images in children’s literature or multicultural literature, or cultural biases in children’s literature. The minorities involved may be defined by gender, class, ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation.

7. Study the influence of a particular artistic method or movement from art history or popular culture on selected picture books, such as surrealism in the picture books of Anthony Browne, the influence of cartoons on picture books, or Renaissance art techniques in illustrated fairy tales.

8. Compare variants of a folk tale or folk motif or myth as found in different cultures. There are many, many variations on Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, the girl vs. the wolf, the young giant-killer, the dragon slayer, the creation of the earth and people, the Flood, the forbidden door or room, the clever wife or daughter, the toy that becomes “real,” the runaway pancake or gingerbread man, conflict with a wicked stepmother or stepsisters, etc. AppLit's Annotated Folktale Index illustrates one approach to comparing different variants of the same tale.

9. Explore some issue relating to translation of children’s literature to or from other languages.

10. Discuss and/or demonstrate storytelling techniques or other methods of oral interpretation or leading discussions about literature with children.

11. Report on an important critic or critical issue in the field of children’s literature. Examples:

•Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment (Freudian interpretation & defense of fairy tales)
•Any of Jack Zipes’s books that explore folk tales from historical and sociological perspectives
•Defenses & criticism of fantasy by J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin or Jane Yolen
•Feminist criticism of folk or fairy tales (by Lieberman, Phelps, Zipes, Stone, Warner, etc.)
•Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures (important analysis of picture books)

12. Report on some controversies and cases involving censorship of children’s literature.

13. Report on how and where children’s books are reviewed or guides to selecting children’s books.

14. Report on children’s literary works as adapted for, or promoted through, another medium, such as film, drama, television, audio recordings, videotapes, computer programs. This could include comparing works of literature as adapted in different media, such as Disney versions of traditional stories (which have been much criticized and praised); discussing the pros and cons of using different media to acquaint children with literature; analyzing shows that introduce children to literature such as Reading Rainbow or Wishbone (on PBS).

15. Explore some dimension of the margins between children’s and adult literature, by examining works that span both worlds, such as Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, William Blake’s poems, Twain’s novels; or by comparing examples of children’s and adult literature to asses generalizations that are made about differences. (Some of the essays in Riverside Part VI give authors’ and critics’ views on this issue.)

16. Report on the pros and cons of adapting or condensing longer or adult works for younger audiences. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare is a classic example and there are many others.

17. Report on modern retellings or revisions of traditional literature, such as modernized nursery rhymes, new retellings of folk tales, and new types of fairy tales.

18. Focus on some examples or issues involving young adult literature.

19. Report on magazines for children, past or present, such as St. Nicholas, Cricket, Highlights.

20. Discuss examples of early children’s literature from a historical/social perspective.

21. Report on satires of children’s literature, which are very popular now. Are these satires for children or adults? Books by Sciezkza and Lane, parodies of Good Night, Moon and Pat the Bunny (Pat the Beastie), and many other satiric versions of fairy tales are in the bookstores now.

22. Compare illustrations by different artists of a classic work of children’s literature.

23. Discuss children’s books about the environment, or another type of science books. To find resources on environmental literature, see "Picture Books and the Environment," "Nature and the Environment in Appalachian Literature," Humans within Ecosystems web page, bibliography for "How Green Was My Bedtime Story."

24. Report on your work with a volunteer program involving children and books.

Reminders about research for project and major paper

1. Our librarians can be very helpful with research, including interlibrary loan requests, which must be submitted early to ensure that materials arrive in time to use them this semester (but some articles and books arrive very quickly these days).

2. Internet web sites do not always contain reliable information. Use the guidelines for evaluating Internet resources available through the library’s home page and at the top of my page Links to Online Texts. Your secondary sources must include something besides web sites.

3. To find reliable resources on the Internet, a good starting point is the Links at the Children’s Literature Association web site (see links on home page for this course).

4. Databases available in the library and through the library’s home page provide abstracts and full text of many articles online, as well as reference-book articles that give background on authors and full-text books online. Horn Book is the major children’s literature journal in our library. For Contemporary Authors Online and other reliable reference sources on literature, in the Ferrum College Library web site, go to links for Resources by Subject, then Language and Literature, then Literature Resource Center.

5. Public libraries contain many children’s books and other resources that are not available at Ferrum, such as the reference set on children’s writers Something About the Author, which often includes quotations from the author or illustrator. The Hollins U. library has many children’s lit. books, journals, and reference books.

Proposal for Project in Children’s Literature

Name:

Topic:

Statement of Purpose of Project:

Scope or Parts of Project (indicate how your portion fits into whole project if working with a group):

Procedures and Methods to be Used:

Resources to be Used (may include people and written sources):

Final Form in which Project will be Submitted:
(Must include oral report and notes or outline or essay)

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Schedule for Oral Reports 2006