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Recently, I discovered that there are several children’s literature courses from LaTrobe University in Australia available for download via iTunes U. I would like to listen to them all eventually, but I’ve begun with the one that interests me most - Genres in Children’s Literature. Over the next couple of months, as I listen to the lectures, I will be sharing my insights about the different genres covered, and hopefully, what I learn from the course will inform my future book reviews as well. In Lecture 7 of Genres in Children’s Literature, David Beagley introduces the graphic format through a presentation about caricatures, comics, and cartoons. Even though I always read the funnies in the Sunday paper as a kid, when I got to library school I remember being very puzzled by the graphic novel genre, and skeptical about the educational value of reading books written in the format of a comic book. It is only within the last few years that I have come around a little bit on this point, and sometimes I still find it difficult to decide where graphic novels stand in relation to traditional text-only novels.
This lecture has helped me strengthen my understanding a little bit by laying out for me the way comics actually work. Though I think I knew a lot of the things Beagley mentions, I still found myself fascinated by the way the human mind interacts with the graphic format. I have always said that I enjoy reading graphic novels because I can actually feel my brain working differently, but it was enormously helpful to actually be told that, for example, the reader fills in spaces between static images with the actions that we expect to come between those moments. This ties directly into the idea that graphic novels can help readers - especially reluctant ones - understand the concept of story structure, and that reading the symbols in the illustrations is actually quite similar to reading words. It’s a lot more helpful to be able to explain that to a skeptical parent, than for me to just stand there telling them, “No, really, these are books, too.”
I also loved thinking about the different lines and strokes used to visually represent non-visual phenomena, such as smell. I was never expressly taught that squiggly lines rising from an object indicates that the object gives off an odor, but of course, I know how to read this in a comic strip or graphic novel. This lecture has made me want to pay closer attention to those little details and evaluate how well they contribute to a story as a whole.
This lecture also traced the history of serial comics from the 1740s to the present, which gives a great background for understanding how we have come to have the graphic novels we have today. I was especially interested in the development of the voice bubble, which is such an integral part of the way comics are written today. It never occurred to me to imagine a time without it! (I was somewhat puzzled during this portion of the lecture as to why David Beagley thinks Peanuts is still going, when the last new strip ran over 12 years ago, but perhaps he was just referring to the fact that old strips still appear in the newspaper.)
Beagley’s discussion of graphic novels will continue in Lecture 8, Graphic Novels, Anime, and Manga - I’m somewhat wary of those last two, so I’m curious to see what I might learn!
Want to listen along? Click
1 Comments on iTunes U: Genres in Children's Literature, LaTrobe University, Lecture 7, last added: 7/23/2012
Recently, I discovered that there are several children’s literature courses from LaTrobe University in Australia available for download via iTunes U. I would like to listen to them all eventually, but I’ve begun with the one that interests me most - Genres in Children’s Literature. Over the next couple of months, as I listen to the lectures, I will be sharing my insights about the different genres covered, and hopefully, what I learn from the course will inform my future book reviews as well. Today, I'm posting about the fifth lecture,
Postmodern Picture Books, which became available on March 11, 2012 and the sixth lecture,
Postmodern Picture Books: Anthony Browne, which became available on March 15, 2012.
The first lecture on postmodernism focused mainly on the historical movements and events which led up to the postmodernist movement beginning in the 1960s. Beagley talked about the fact that in postmodernist works, all absolutes are challenged and many different readings can be valid. He said that postmodern books can be ironic, with layers of meaning, and that often they turn well known stories on their heads, making them into something new. Postmodernism, this lecture tells us, is marked by three things: subversion, when the stable elements of a story are cut away; deconstruction, where what makes up a story is more important than the outcome of the story itself; and meta-fiction, where a book has a self-conscious awareness that it is a book. Beagley mentioned several times that postmodernist books are playful and filled with inside jokes.
In the second postmodernist lecture, Beagley dug deeper into these concepts using the work of well-known picture book author Anthony Browne. In particular, he focused on two of Browne's picture books, a traditional, linear story from 1976 called
A Walk in the Park, and a postmodernist retelling of the same story entitled
Voices in the Park. Unfortunately, I think all this lecture did was explain why I tend to dislike stories that don't follow a traditional path. Beagley pointed out that postmodern picture books deliberately keep the reader aware that he or she is reading a work of fiction. The reader is never able to just lose himself/herself in the world of the book. I tend to judge books based on how well I am able to immerse myself in them, and how easy it is for me to let go of myself and live vicariously through the characters. I don't know if I've ever really known what to do with books where things don't come to one, clear, emotionally satisfying ending.
While I don't think I'll ever be a fan of postmodernism, these two lectures gave me some idea of how to approach books of this type. I am a bit puzzled as to how I might review a book that is so subjective and so dependent on each individual reader's experience reading it, but it also seems doubtful that I will begin reviewing them any time soon.I think it's safe to say I'm glad to be done with picture books and moving onto the next segment of the course, about graphic novels.
Want to listen along? Click here for Lecture 5. Click
0 Comments on iTunes U: Genres in Children's Literature, LaTrobe University, Lectures 5 and 6 as of 1/1/1900
This is really cool. I'm subscribing to the course now!