experiences match the daily serial reading of a novel which the class awaits each day
with hungry anticipation. In such a circumstance, it seems foolish to delay a group’s
pleasure by extensive work on what has been read so far. Usually, some brief talk to
draw threads together and to whet appetites suffices; afterwards, some moments’
discussion ensures understanding and throws interest forward to the next lesson’s
instalment.
As students grow older, however, they may be asked to study novels on their own, in
pairs or groups, or as a class. Since reading tastes are idiosyncratic, it makes sense to
allow space for those tastes to be exercised. Readers need to feel control over what they
read and how they read. When this is not allowed—even at post-16 or undergraduate
levels—the probability is that, the course once completed, students may scarcely open a
book for themselves again. They do not become readers.
A well-tried structure to help students in their work is to plan in terms of ‘before,
during and after’ the reading of a novel.
Some novels grab their readers’ attention on the first page; others gain from some
preparation before the book is started. Teachers might spend a lesson around a topic
which will prove important in the early stages of a novel, without revealing that work on
the novel is about to begin. Groups may speculate on what kind of a book is suggested
by a cover or a title; or about what kind of a book might follow this particular opening
sentence or paragraph, perhaps photocopied for work before the book is issued. Useful
touchstones for this kind of work are that it should be suggested and shaped by the
book itself, that it should be brief, and that it should draw readers in by thoroughly
intriguing them.
Activities devised by teachers during the reading of a novel are important in keeping
students engaged with the book along the way. There can be a need to refocus a class
from time to time, to check that essential elements in the plot are clear, that
relationships between characters are firmly established in readers’ minds. Where
characters are on journeys, as they often are in children’s novels, student-made maps
which can be added to day by day are usefully displayed on walls or included in
individual folders. Occasionally, a tactic such as the teacher taking on a role as a
character, available for questioning, is valuable in heightening anticipation about what
might happen next and confirming what has gone before.
A wealth of approaches has been developed for work after completion of the first
reading of a novel. There can be a temptation for the project-minded teacher to move
swiftly away from the text to concerns raised incidentally in the novel. The test is to ask
whether a proposed activity takes readers more closely into the book, requiring them to
re-read sections, to look carefully at the language, the characters, the ideas which this
book offers. Classroom displays where this principle has been applied are often
characterised by wallcharts, maps, alternative designs for book covers, friezes, collages
reflecting major themes or events in the book, and writing of all kinds from rapid notes
to character studies, from reviews to letters to the author, sometimes with a reply.
Groups might re-create aspects of the novel as radio plays, dramatised episodes or
monologues. To work in this way is to understand the sources of readers’ pleasure, and
to design work which will enhance that pleasure through close reading.
APPLICATIONS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE 595