兒童文學 Week 7

Bildungsroman： In literary criticism, a novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is extremely important.

protagonist：A protagonist is from Ancient Greek, meaning "player of the first part, chief actor". It is the main character in any story, such as a literary work or drama.
The protagonist is at the center of the story, should be making the difficult choices and key decisions, and should be experiencing the consequences of those decisions. The Protagonist can affect the main characters decisions. The protagonist should be propelling the story forward. If a story contains a subplot, or is a narrative that is made up of several stories, then there may be a character who is interpreted as the protagonist of each subplot or individual story.

Antagonist：a character, group of characters, institution, or concept that stands in or represents opposition against which the protagonist(s) must contend. In other words, an antagonist is a person or a group of people who opposes a protagonist.



Drama：Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action". In English, the word "play" or "game" was the standard term used to describe drama until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a "play-maker" rather than a "dramatist" and the building was a "play-house" rather than a "theatre." The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887).
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception.


tomboy ：A tomboy is a girl who exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of a boy, including wearing masculine clothing and engaging in games and activities that are physical in nature and are considered in many cultures to be unfeminine or the domain of boys. Tomboy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), "has been connected with connotations of rudeness and impropriety" throughout its use


Miss Potter： a 2006 Anglo-American biographical fiction family drama film directed by Chris Noonan. It is a biographical film of children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated sequences featuring characters from her stories, such as Peter Rabbit.


Charles Perrault ： a French author and member of the Académie Française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known of his tales include Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), Cendrillon (Cinderella), Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots), La Belle au bois Dormant (The Sleeping Beauty), and Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard). Some of Perrault's versions of old stories have influenced the German versions published by the Brothers Grimm more than 100 years later. The stories continue to be printed and have been adapted to opera, ballet (such as Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty), theatre, and film. Perrault was an influential figure in the 17th-century French literary scene, and was the leader of the Modern faction during the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.


picture book： A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor, and pencil, among others. Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now were Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter from 1845 and Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit from 1902. Some of the best-known picture books are Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings, Dr. Seuss' The Cat In The Hat, and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. The Caldecott Medal (established 1938) and Kate Greenaway Medal (established 1955) are awarded annually for illustrations in children's literature. From the mid-1960s several children's literature awards include a category for picture books.


nursery rhyme ：A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term only dates from the late 18th/early 19th century. In North America the term Mother Goose Rhymes, introduced in the mid-18th century, is still often used.


Poetry (the term derives from a variant of the Greek term, poiesis, "making")：a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

15  nursery rhyme you need to know(click)


three important newspapers in the U.S.A.
1.NY time
2.US day today
3.Washington Post

逃命吧：run for life

governess VS. tutor
governess：a woman employed in a private household to take charge of a child's upbringing and                             education.
tutor：a teacher, usually instructing individual pupils and often engaged privately

field trip校外教學

frying pot炸鍋

understatement ： Restraint or lack of emphasis in expression, as for rhetorical effect.

get into mischief：胡鬧起來

radish：The pungent root of this plant, often eaten raw.
白蘿蔔radish也是的一種喔，英文就是white radish
parsely： A cultivated Eurasian herb

damp=get wet
puzzle=confused
sieve：竹篩
rake：釘耙

on one's knee：跪下

兒童文學 Week 6

the tyger(poem)："The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous of his poems," and The Cambridge Companion to William Blake says it is "the most anthologized poem in English." It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works.

(正面敘述老虎的威嚴，側寫上帝造物的神奇)


keep calm and stop littering：請勿亂丟垃圾

I'm up = I'm awake

i can eat a horse= i can eat a lot.


Samuel：Samuel, is a leader of ancient Israel in the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. He is also known as a prophet by Christians and Muslims, and is mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur'an, although not by name.


Alliteration : Alliteration is a stylistic literary device identified by the repeated sound of the first letter in a series of multiple words, or the repetition of the same letter sounds in stressed syllables of a phrase. "Alliteration" is from the Latin word littera, meaning "letter of the alphabet", and the first known use of the word to refer to a literary device occurred around 1624. Alliteration narrowly refers to the repetition of a letter in any syllables that, according to the poem's meter, are stressed,as in James Thomson's verse "Come…dragging the lazy languid Line along". Another example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers".

example of  Alliteration："To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe
"To Helen" is the first of two poems to carry that name written by Edgar Allan Poe. The 15-line poem was written in honor of Jane Stanard, the mother of a childhood friend. It was first published in 1831 collection Poems of Edgar A. Poe. It was then reprinted in 1836 in the Southern Literary Messenger.

To Helen Revised 1845 version

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Edgar Allan Poe：Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.


symmetry：The correspondence of the form and arrangement of elements or parts on opposite sides of a dividing line or plane or about a center or an axis.

sick：1. Suffering from or affected with a physical illness
          2.Mentally ill or disturbed.


John Donne：John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England.
He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets(形上學詩人). His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.


"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"(full poem)："A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a metaphysical poem by John Donne. Written in 1611 or 1612 for his wife Anne before he left on a trip to Continental Europe, "A Valediction" is a 36-line love poem that was first published in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, two years after Donne's death. Based on the theme of two lovers about to part for an extended time, the poem is notable for its use of conceits and ingenious analogies to describe the couple's relationship; critics have thematically linked it to several of his other works, including "A Valediction: of my Name, in the Window", Meditation III from the Holy Sonnets and "A Valediction: of Weeping".

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet, when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just

And makes me end where I begun.

The analogy here—of a compass in the process of drawing a circle—draws contrasts between the two lovers, where one is fixed and "in the centre sit[s]" while the other roams; despite this, the two remain inextricably connected and interdependent, staying inseparable despite the increasing distance between the two compass hands. Achsah Guibbory identifies a pun in "the fix'd foot... Thy firmness makes my circle just"; a circle with a dot in the middle is the alchemical symbol for gold, an element referred to in a previous stanza.

"Death Be Not Proud"(full poem)： Sonnet X, also known by part of its first line as "Death Be Not Proud", is a fourteen-line poem, or sonnet, by English poet John Donne, one of the leading figures in the metaphysical poets of sixteenth-century English literature. The poem was not published during Donne's lifetime and was first published posthumously in 1633. It is included as one of the nineteen sonnets that comprise Donne's Holy Sonnets or Divine Meditations, among his most well-known works. Two editions published shortly after Donne's death include some of the sonnets in different order where this poem appears as eleventh in the Songs and Sonnets (published 1633) and sixth in Divine Meditations (published 1635).

No Man Is An Island - Poem by John Donne

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 

It tolls for thee. 

Magnum opus：Masterpiece, magnum opus (Latin, great work) or chef d'œuvre (French, master of work, plural chefs d'œuvre) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill, profundity, or workmanship. Historically, a masterpiece was a work of a very high standard produced in order to obtain membership of a Guild or Academy.



The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book is considered to be his "masterwork". Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.


La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy)：is the title of Honoré de Balzac's (1799–1850) multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848).
The Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels or analytical essays) and 46 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles). It does not include Balzac's five theatrical plays or his collection of humorous tales, the "Contes drolatiques" (1832–37). The title of the series is usually considered an allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy; while Ferdinand Brunetière, the famous French literary critic, suggests that it may stem from poems by Alfred de Musset or Alfred de Vigny. While Balzac sought the comprehensive scope of Dante, his title indicates the worldly, human concerns of a realist novelist. The stories are placed in a variety of settings, with characters reappearing in multiple stories.

Theme song of Charlotte's Web----Ordinary Miracle

兒童文學 Week 5

Camomile： Chamomile or  is the common name for several daisy-like plants of the family Asteraceae that are commonly used to make herb infusions to serve various medicinal purposes. Popular uses of chamomile preparations include treating hay fever, inflammation, muscle spasms, menstrual disorders, insomnia, ulcers, gastrointestinal disorders, and haemorrhoids. Camomile tea is also used to treat skin conditions such as eczema, chickenpox and psoriasis.



Beatrix Potter： an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Born into a privileged household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted.

Though Potter was typical of women of her generation in having limited opportunities for higher education, her study and watercolors of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.

Beatrix is an Italian name-----Beatrice evolved from
Ex：Beatrice Portinari(the principal inspiration for Dante)



Dante： a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.


The Divine Comedy ： a poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

the guide during Dante's journey
Inferno：guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil
Purgatorio：guided by the Roman poet Virgil, except for the last four cantos at which point Beatrice                        takes over as Dante's guide.
Paradiso ：guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology



Charlotte's Web：a children's novel by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published in October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as "Some Pig") in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.


conflict of the Charlotte's Web：

fancy wording of Charlotte：

Greeting with other's
"My name is______. What's your name？"
"Great name"

"ignorance is blessing."= 無知便是福

promise to keep/ break/ make...= keep/ break/ make... the promise 遵守/打破/立下 約定

校長
高中以下：principal
大學：president

spring pig= the pig born in spring

childhood phase：childhood fantasy

gravy：meat sauce 


mashed potatoes with gravy

fair：1.A beautiful or beloved woman.
          2.a market.
          3.in conformity with rules or standards; legitimate

兒童文學 Week 4

Animal fantasy

Charlotte's Web：Charlotte's Web is a children's novel by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.

E. B. White：an American writer. He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White". He also wrote books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, an accomplishment repeated from earlier surveys.

Awards and Honors

1960 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal

1963 Presidential Medal of Freedom=>(Harper Lee, the writer of How to Kill a Mocking Bird had won the medal, too.)

1970 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

1971 National Medal for Literature

1977 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Letters of E. B. White

1978 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for Letters[10]

1953 Newbery Medal honor for famous children's book "Charlotte's Web"

Are you mocking me？你在嘲笑我嗎！！

下蛋：lay eggs

• I'm blue blood = I'm a nobility

• There are many nouns use as verbs in Charlotte's Web
ex："I would like treasure the friendship."
        "I think it is only fair to tell you ..."

fair： Loveliness; beauty.


the apple of discord=> To the fairest.




the magic mirror=>Mirror,mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all

• Wilbur's common on Charlotte=>brillant、beautiful、loyal to the end




Winnie the pooh and the royal birthday

• one of the children literature that the main character doesn't have a misery childhood-- Anne of Green Gables

the dark side of children literature--Roald Dahl

                                                                          Roald Dahl：a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.

astro-：about stars
astrlolgy：What is your star sign？你是什麼星座？
asterisk：星記號