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Jims and Jameses in Children’s Literature
Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim—though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that this one was called Jim. Mark Twain, as the opening of a parody of Sunday School Stories, written about 1865…
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Common Characteristics Of Best-selling Children’s Books
As outlined by Nodelman and Reimer in The Pleasures of Children’s Literature, here are the common-characteristics of best-selling modern children’s books. They are written and sold as part of a series. They have a simple and straightforward writing style. Central characters are enough like their intended audience for readers to relate to and identify with them. These characters tend to…
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The difference between story and plot
Story is the chronological order readers discover when they ask “what happened next”? Plot is the order readers experience when they pay attention to what happens next as they read. Plotting is what storytellers do when making decisions about how to unravel their story. Storytellers don’t tell the entire story. They pull out the interesting bits from the narrative…