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LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
Literature, powerful, thought-provoking, insightful writing, has enthralled, inspired, questioned , through the ages.
A great piece of writing isn’t just a record of life and times for posterity, it is indeed capable of shifting and shaping opinion and society. More specifically children’s literature contains the same power.
Power to influence, instigate, inspire. However, to analyze the impact that children’s literature can have on society at large, the ways in which it can create confidence globally, we need to understand certain nuances.
ENTERTAINMENT WITH IMAGINATION
In the modern era, with the digital age and over exposure to the visual medium, it has been felt by large sections of society that children are consuming content that is making them duller, rather than more intelligent. In this kind of scenario, the importance of children’s literature is greater than ever.
The best part about literature is that it presents the best form of entertainment to children. While stories of fantastical lands, wizards and sorcerers delight children, they also don’t spoon-feed (like a lot of visual content), forcing readers instead, to develop their own images and interpretations.
This helps children become more creative, imaginative, analytical and critical. It really is the best kind of entertainment, the kind that endows readers with conscious and unconscious life skills!
A THTINKING GENERATION
First and foremost, children’s literature, with its plethora of offerings raging from fiction, novels, poems, books and magazines, informs and moulds an entire generation’s way of thinking, and greatly influences children’s worldview.
When I was a child, for instance, and I was exposed to literature, it is what captivated me towards animals and wild life. It sparked my life long interest, one that has endeared and turned me into a nature lover.
It has made me sensitive, aware, and kind. That of course is something that took place at a personal, micro-level.
Today, when an entire generation is exposed to literature that uses real-life issues as a backdrop or premise, topical, contextual concerns such as war, climate change, and gender equality; these issues become part of an entire generation’s concerns, by first familiarizing children with their existence and meaning, and then compelling them to examine them, and form their own opinions.
Literature, therefore, doesn’t just entertain, it also serves a deeper function of getting children to become thinkers.
WRITER’S GERM
Exposing children to timely reading and stories also sews the seeds of creativity and writing within them.
Not only do young learners gain exposure to different facts, points of view and opinion building; it instils in them an unconscious yet strong urge to write themselves.
If there is a young child who becomes keenly interested in reading, there are imminent chances that he or she will want to write too! And rather than being ‘taught’ how to write, the best way of learning is through reading and organically inculcating the nuances, tips, tricks, and methods of writing one’s own original material, be it fiction or non-fiction.
It is a kind of educational sensitization process, the best kind of orientation – much more effective than a later creative writing class or workshop!
GLOBAL CONFIDENCE
With the combined virtues of imbuing students with life skills and fueling their quest and concern for pressing issues; children’s literature has the unique ability to create an entire generation of tomorrow’s adults and leaders who will be self-aware, generally aware, sensitive, questioning, and enlightened.
The world today is in dire need of free thinking, imaginative, innovative do-gooders who can tackle a myriad of problems that plague the world, through thoughtful action rather than by force and supremacy.
And a generation fueled by a diet of literature can be that changeagent, inspiring and building global confidence and instilling mankind’s faith, once again, in humanity!