1. Reading & Responding to Contemporary Picture Books
Children’s Literature

2. View Rapunzel
What motifs & patterns do you see in this fairy tale?

3. Motifs & Patterns Archetypal characters Protagonist – Antagonist
Hero – Heroine
Villain
the maiden, the hag/crone/witch/wise woman
the Fool, the “Third Brother/Son/Sister”
…others?

4. Magical helpers
Animal
Old man/woman
…others?

5. Plot
Hero’s journey:
a quest, obstacles to overcome, test of strength etc..
linear or circular
Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces

6. The Hero’s Journey
Linear Journey
Circular Journey

7. Settings Symbolism: Magical elements Binaries:
forest=danger/mystery
Magical elements
Binaries:
light/dark, good/evil
Settings: generic [forest, palace, castle, cottage in the woods etc…]

8. What’s the point in identifying all these elements?
Some scholars would argue that ALL stories essentially contain variation s of these elements.
If we recognize the “original” then when we come across variations or adaptations…
we see something familiar,
make predictions,
make connections
construct meaning
WE are going to read postmodern picture books which break the traditional canon!

9. Intertextuality & Postmodern Literature

10. Traditional Tales
In The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar writes:
“For all their rich variety, fairy tales have a remarkably stable – and therefore predictable – structure. […] The cast of folkloric characters is remarkably limited when compared to that of literature, and the plots in which the characters of folktales more unfold in a relatively uniform manner” (xxiix)
“For many adults, reading through an unexpurgated edition of the Grimms’ collection of tales can be an eye-opening experience. Even those who know that Snow White’s stepmother arranges the murder of her stepdaughter, that doves peck out the eyes of Cinderella’s stepsisters, that Briar Rose’s suitors bleed to death on the hedge surrounding her castle, or that a mad rage drives Rumpelstiltskin to tear himself in two will find themselves hardly prepared for the graphic descriptions of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest that fill the pages of these bedtime stories for children” (3).

11. The New American Canon: Rainbow Literature
Multicultural literature
Social Realism, Historical Fiction
Real/Implied/Ideal Reader
Aesthetic vs. Efferent reading
Dual narrative: visual & verbal text
Authenticity
Accuracy
Cultural appropriation
Stereotype vs. Cultural convention
Perspective:
Insider vs. Outsider voice
Subjectivity
Authorial perspective
Narrative perspective [1st person, 3rd person, omniscient]

12. Schools of Literary Criticism:
Black Aesthetics – Black Arts Movement of the 1960s; Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s
Minority Criticism – emerged out of the 1960s civil rights ere
Magical Realism– Latino/a, Hispanic literature
New Historicism
Awards:
Pura Belpre Award
Coretta Scott King Award
Refer to

13. Activity 3
Using the terms generated as a class read a picture book and discuss:
What traditional patterns or motifs are embedded in the text/illustration?
What is familiar & unfamiliar?
What connections can you make to other stories, books, films?
Why might your book be described as “postmodern”? What might this mean?