Children's Literature Association Quarterly

Speaking of children's responses to stories, Arthur Applebee remarks that many of the details they will give special notice to are "irrelevant from the adult's point of view—as when Peter Rabbit is deemed a sad story because poor Mr. McGregor has no lettuce" (p. 100). We could call this response to Peter Rabbit naive, and then ask with James Britton: is the "naive response different in kind from that we desire for literature, or merely different in intensity of feeling or complexity or comprehensiveness or verisimilitude? In other words, are such responses . . . the bad currency we seek to drive out, or are they the tender shoots that must be fostered if there is to be a flower at all?" (p. 32)

The child who feels sad because Mr. McGregor has no lettuce is wrong; we see many lettuce plants growing behind the scarecrow made from Peter's jacket and shoes. But we would be wrong, I think, to discount this response because it lacks maturity, or because it misses the point that Peter Rabbit is a witty story with a happy ending. Every response will be partial. What this child seems to have instinctively understood, in fact, is that Peter Rabbit is about a place that appears attractive and safe, but that is not what it seems: the garden is an ironic pastoral, and the child is right to be saddened by it. In short, the child's response can tell us something important about the child.

Not working directly with children, I must take their responses to literature where I can get them. As part of a section on Reader Response in my children's literature class I use Kaye Webb's Puffin anthology of poetry, I Like This Poem, not only because it contains poems chosen by children, but because it also contains after each poem a brief statement from the child who chose the poem expressing why he or she likes it. What I try to show is that the children's responses, as simple and subjective as they are, imply much that we can learn from. My intention now is to look at five poems and a child's response to each, in order to encourage those who work with children not only to respect the child's response, but also to work with it.

My first example is Robert Louis Stevenson's "Windy Nights":

Whenever the moon and stars are set,    Whenever the wind is high,All night long in the dark and wet,    A man goes riding by.Late in the night when the fires are out,Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,    And ships are tossed at sea,By, on the highway, low and loud,    By at a gallop goes he.By at the gallop he goes, and thenBy he comes back at the gallop again.

Nigel Masding, whose comments appear in a section of the anthology devoted to poems selected by six and seven year olds, likes this poem "because it makes me think of night-time and helps me to go to sleep, and because I like to think of that sort of thing. I read it when I am ill and it makes me happy. I read it when I am uncomfortable and it makes me feel better."

What is striking about this response is the sense of security it reflects: the poem soothes the child and even helps him feel better when he is ill. And yet the poem is about dark nights, storms, and a strange rider. In short, the poem is mysterious: "Why does he gallop and gallop about?" The child says he likes "that sort of thing," and his inability to be precise captures neatly the ambiguity of the poem. Although there is something foreboding about the dark rider and his association with night and storms, there is also something reassuring in the fact that he returns "Whenever the trees are crying loud." Also at work here is the reassurance of convention: children learn at an early age that mystery...