Full Description
"Acts of Reading" looks at the history of reading and texts for children from an educational perspective. The texts selected date from the eighteenth century to the digital age and beyond. They are examined through the eyes of their various audiences: the children, writers, teachers and parents, so as to explore the act of reading itself, whether oral, silent or performative, whether for pleasure or instruction. Also considered are the changing representations of childhood over three centuries and the influence of the visual on the acts of reading. The genres explored include commonplace books, fairy tales, poetry, fiction, fables, picturebooks, Arthurian legends, online messageboards, reading primers and "A Very Pretty Story" (1744).The inspiration for this collection is the case study of Jane Johnson's unique eighteenth century nursery library, which reveals how children were taught to read in one particular household and sheds light on perceptions of childhood and texts for children at the time. The opening chapters extend our knowledge of this historical archive, and the volume goes on to trace the progression of ideas around reading and childhood past, present and in the future.The nineteenth century is considered through the writings of Romantic poets, while the early twentieth century focuses on classic children's literature. The last three chapters show how our expectations and ways of teaching are being modified as a result of the changes in the book and its relationship to other media, including multimodality and ways of engaging with readers through digital technologies. Overall, this volume spans the vast range and depth of what reading means and has meant to children and the adults around them, so helping us understand that still mysterious process - the act of reading.
Contents
CONTENTSreading; Jane Johnson and her world: 2. Illuminating shadows: Jane Johnson's commonplace book; 3. Bringing 'wisdom into the hearts of young people': Aesop, Watts and Newberry as sources for Jane Johnson's fables and maxims; 4. The deeper game: Intuition, imagination and embodiment; Reading the past: Pedagogies, texts and teachers: 5. Five centuries of illustrating Aesop's Fables; 6. Reading lessons for 'baby grammarians': Lady Ellenor Fenn and the teaching of English grammar; 7. The Kildare Place Society: An influential force in 19th-century Irish education; 8. The child as common reader: The 'true complexity of reading' and the progress from hell to paradise; Reading, imagination and childhood: 9. Hiding places of power: The child as a site of resistance in William Wordsworth's poetry; 10. Cultivating the imagination: Coleridge and his circle of literature for children; 11. The Olympians: Neglect and imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian literature; Reading fictions: 12. Arthur de Caldicott and the New Literacy; 13. What do fairy tales teach? Updating and challenging the didactic canon; 14. Changing frames: From theatre on the page to galleries as a stage; Reading the future: 15. Reading in a digital age: Using new technologies to navigate texts together; 16. Teachers as readers in the 21st century; 17. And what do you think happened next?; List of contributors; Index.
