HONS: Children’s Literature – Dr. Chris McGee
I wasn’t truly sure what to expect of this course besides reading children’s books of course, but the outcome of the course was way better than I could have imagined. I assumed we’d just read picture books and talk about what would teach kids the best, but we did the exact opposite and it changed my outlook on children literature.
Dr. McGee was the best professor for the course, and his enthusiasm led many of our discussions and thoughts in the class. You could tell he loves literature, but he definitely also loves good children literature, and he loves teaching what good children literature is.
We learned what didactic books are, which is literature that teaches kids lessons and morals in a “hidden” way in a story, such as Aesop’s Fables and other similar tales. We also learned that children do not benefit from didactic stories all the time, and sometimes reading shouldn’t teach anything, it should just be fun.
We started the class by reading Matilda and Coraline, which are both amazing, non-didactic books. We then moved onto Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries, which are extremely didactic and stereotypical. As someone who read the latter two growing up and was obsessed with both, I found myself slightly disappointed on the experience I had with them and, quite honestly, how crude and slightly sexist both were. I’m glad I’ve grown to understand the issues with them, but I do wish I had examples such as the books we read in the class to balance what exactly I was reading when I was younger.
We had different exams in forms of comprehension essays, examining different concepts in both books from the class and outside books. Our first exam was on a book from outside the class, which was exciting for me because I went back into some of the books I had read in middle school and selected one to see how my understandings had changed over the time.
My artifact is my second exam, which was an examination of a book we read in class. I chose Diary of a Wimpy Kid for mine, and I examined different points in bullet points, which was allowed for the class. That kind of organization actually helped more than just writing an essay and allowed for me to go more in depth without worrying about having to write an introduction and conclusion essay full of fluff and unnecessary information.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JEYDn8BVDqP2JBhPigimKp3KYLUFttrMmLPtsIO9Yvo/edit?usp=sharing