One more day to discuss the importance of literary standards of excellence…
3. Good Literature Develops Our Literary Palate
If the aesthetic merit of a book matters, how do we teach young children to discern it? We learn the difference between great and badly-written literature by studying the rules of grammar, composition, and rhetoric. We also learn this practically by reading good examples. It’s hard for a five year old to explain the difference between the clean prose of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the sloppy writing of the latest mediocre kid-lit writer, and that’s why it’s so important to fill his mind with good writing so that he’s developed a taste for excellence. Children who hear proper English spoken all the time naturally pick it up and may cringe at poor grammar even before they’ve studied it in school. (I naturally say “This is she” on the phone because my mom modeled that for me years before I learned about the difference between “she” and “her.”) The child exposed only to well-written literature can learn in time to distinguish for himself when he picks up junk, even if he can’t yet elucidate the exact literary techniques in question. (This applies to illustrations, too. We try to expose our kids to great illustrators—Tasha Tudor, Beatrix Potter, Robert McCloskey, Ezra Jack Keats, and Gyo Fujikawa are some of our current favorites—because why not spend time looking at real art instead of computer-generated mediocrity?) You wouldn’t train your child’s palate by serving them only chicken McNuggets and spaghettios; why are so many parents content to give their kids literary junk food and yet expect that they’ll be able to appreciate Austen or Shakespeare?
Parents can train their child’s literary palate. Growing up, my mom spent just as much or more time discussing the writing style of my books as the moral questions. I was an early and voracious reader, and I don’t think she could possibly have had the time to keep up with everything I read, but we read enough together that I had a very good sense of what she’d think of a book’s style even if she hadn’t read it. You don’t have to have been an English literature major like me—my mom was trained in microbiology!—to point out to your child a beautiful turn of phrase or a melodramatic and unsatisfying plot line. C.S. Lewis said that “a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last.” (“On Three Ways of Writing for Children”) If you as an adult find a children’s book unsatisfying, it’s a good bet that your child doesn’t need to read it. If you still find yourself captivated by the illustrations or storytelling of a children’s book, it’s usually a sign that the book was created with care and attention to the rules of good writing.
At the very least, parents who don’t have the time to keep up on their kids’ reading can educate themselves on the authors (generally, books found both on the Newberry or Caldecott Honor lists and in a Christian compendium such as Books Children Love or The Book Tree will be works of both moral and literary excellence). It’s a lot of work, but parenting is a full-time job!
And of course we should pick the cream of the crop when we’re doing our family read-aloud time. My whole family grew as readers by listening to my dad read aloud David Copperfield, The Lord of the Rings, and A Christmas Carol. I don’t know anyone who objects to the values or the beautiful writing of The Chronicles of Narnia, so that’s a great place to start!
Now I know this is pretty controversial subject matter with some of my friends, so we’ll pause here for comments and discuss why this is all important to us next week!
(to part six)