I
am sorting through my file jackets, ( yes, I know that they are more cream than manila, but I love the exotic sound of manila); you know those ones marked 'miscellaneous',
which when you open them, you move the bits of paper, articles, pictures, etc.
around and around, and then somehow mysteriously they go back into the folder, or into another equally
mysterious folder marked 'miscellaneous', but which may be of another colour,
marked perhaps, Book House Trust or
CAPNET, left over from a very important meeting
so it cannot be discarded yet, even many years later. Consequently, I am finding some gems which refer to children’s
literature, and so with your permission, I’ll be sharing them with you from time
to time. It makes me feel as if the paper gem has done some good. Here is the
first. It’s clipped from somewhere, I don’t know where; it appears to be
typed/printed from a time when the only
font we used was Times New Roman, 10 pt.
So if anyone recognizes it as theirs, or recognizes its source, apologies, and
please let me know. I’ll credit you.
Kinds
of Plot
Young
children tend to read for plot. If little happens in a story, they tend to
reject it in favour of a more eventful
one. Good literary values go unnoticed. One
of the reasons for giving children good stories is to help them to become sensitive
to those qualities which distinguish well-written materials.
Even
plots can be pretty poor ones but still acceptable to children who have not
been educated to sense the virtues of a good plot. They value action, suspense,
surprise and obvious humour, whether or
not the action is needed or warranted, the suspense important to the overall
structure, the surprise justified though surprising, and the humour appropriate
to the tone of the entire story.
There
seems to be only one thing children will not tolerate in plot, and that is
confusion and clutter. Too much, too long, too complicated a story loses its
young readers.
So
what do you think? Does this still apply?
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