Perhaps the most important thing I will take away from this course, is to never underestimate the critical thinking skills of a child. From the first day when we discussed the story of children in the classroom struggling with the idea that all the characters in the books of their school library were white. Until this class, I simply didn’t know children were so sensitive to this type of placement in society. Children have the ability to recognize, analyze, and attempt to solve inequities in society. As educators, its important to foster this sense of ownership over the world that children feel, so that when they become adults they’ll be compassionate, caring, and engaged. Encouraging this type of learning requires a great deal of flexibility as well as the patience to listen to children. We as adults are often guilty of thinking of ourselves as the sole possessors of knowledge and understanding. Our arrogance blinds us form a great deal of learning that can only be taught to us by children, who see the world in an entirely different and refreshing perspective.

Critical literacy opens that two way street of education, where the student learns from the teacher, the teacher learns from the student, and perhaps more importantly, the students learn from one another. Asking students to be engaged with their surrounding worlds is not to much to ask, but absolutely necessary for their human development. Critical literacy sets a precedent that we have the power and obligation to take responsibility for our actions, and right the wrongs plaguing society. 

For my counter narrative, I wanted to update the story of a helpless Cinderella being saved from her evil sisters by a benevolent prince. In this way, I wanted to update the entire feel of the narrative, and make it a more contemporary story, thus I began looking at how Cinderella was referenced in pop-culture. The most obvious adaption of Cinderella that turned up was the use of a “Cinderella Story” in reference to underdog sports teams overcoming long odds to win against heralded opponents. The second common usage of Cinderella was in pop songs; everything from Snoop Dogg’s Cinderfellas, to Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row. 

The classic story of Cinderella remains unfortunately too relevant in today’s major label music industry. Here, talented female artists are pigeon holed into limiting roles as sex symbols versus artists. Their appearance is as important to the handlers of the major labels as is their musical content. This isn’t so much a commentary on the sensualness of today’s pop stars, but more on the message its sends to young women who dont look like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. In the music industry the female artist is often times as helpless and passive as the original retelling of Cinderella. 

So instead I wanted to change the perception of Cinderella, (and female artist) as artistic, proactive, business savvy; one who takes control of her situation and refuses to play the victim. There are plenty of contemporary examples of female musicians who better represent this new Cinderella, although they are being signed increasingly by independent music labels. Artist like Ida Maria, Janis Joplin, Jenny Lewis, and to a large extent Lady GaGa all represent powerful and talented female artists, which is precisely the message I want to send in my counter narrative text. 

^Ida Maria            ^Jenny Lewis

Marc Brown, the iconic author of the Arthur series provides an excellent site for children and teachers alike. There is a games section for the kids, as well as different ideas on how to use Arthur in the classroom to teach literacy and a variety of lessons. 

http://marcbrownstudios.com/

This website holds the interactive cannon of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Kids can interact with the illustrations on the page, as well as turn the page on the digital booklets. Like the Marc Brown website their are a variety of games and other components that incorporate the characters and morales of the stories. 

http://www.grimmfairytales.com/en/main

Africa is an often misrepresented continent in Children’s Literature. Here, a collection of Africa’s most famous fables from a variety of cultures have been collected and given historical context. One feature of the website acts as a museum of natural history, explaining the function such motifs in the stories like elephants and the use of their ivory tusks in different African Cultures. 

http://africa.mrdonn.org/fables.html

The Scholastic Publishing company offers a list of books it finds to be prime examples of, and tools for demonstrating, multiculturalism. They list a series of books all detailing the life of a variety of native american tribes. 

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3757

http://www.parentsconnect.com/questions/diversity_kids_exposure.jhtml

I wanted to focus my study of critical literacy in media by focusing specifically on advertisements for children’s cereal. 

To begin with, there appears to a consistent use of cartooning of famous characters in children’s stories and imagination. Captain Crunch uses a pirate, Trix a bunny rabbit, Lucky Charms a leprechaun. Perhaps these advertisers are trying to draw the connection between the subjects of children’s bedtime stories and dreams with their first meal of the day. Either way, it appears that those responsible for marketing these products have figured out that children are the targeted market in the household. What a child wants in terms of cereal for breakfast will be the biggest factor in determining what a parent buys at the grocery store. Why else would all these advertisements include cute animals with high pitched voices if they weren’t trying to attract the attention of young children? 

By using familiar story archetypes to establish a connection with the brand of cereal they are selling, children subtly trust the brand, and even develop a loyalty to the product. It is interesting to note that among the most popular cereal brands, all the human’s depicted are male, and all the animals are narrated with male voices. This poses interesting questions are why haven’t cereals developed mascots that appeal more to young girls, unless they are implying that at young ages, its male children who establish the trends in cereal consumption. 

I did my community research in a library in a small library in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn New York. Although there was rather limited shelf space, it was obvious that the bookstore specialized in children’s literature. There were entire sections of the library devoted to the works of Eric Carle, and Judy Blume. For the entire length of my stay, there was a steady stream of young people entering and exiting the store, although I bet the mean age of the patrons reflects more on the neighborhood, Williamsburg, then the nature of the library. Perhaps what was most interesting was how few of these people actually had children with them. Instead, it appeared most of patrons were looking at children’s books for their own sake. After a conversation with the librarian working at the time, she explained the special nature of this library.  The library operated both as a library, but as a bookstore as well. Meaning, you could either checkout a book, or simply buy it. The people looking at the children’s literature section were most likely going to buy the books, for gifts and decoration she explained. Books like Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Suess and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak were their two most popular sellers. 

From the little time I was there, it appeared that the overwhelming majority of the patrons of the library were White, twenty something, and female. The children’s books themselves were significantly more diverse than the people attempting to check them out. There were books written entirely in Spanish, Japanese translations of classics like Cinderella with anime narrations. Although these books weren’t given their own titled sections like those given to Carle and Blume, they weren’t hidden either. It appeared that the library prided itself on collecting children’s literature from across the globe, in as many languages as it could find.

 However, given the bohemian neighborhood, it seemed as if the library/bookstore co-op was had these books not because they were serving a diverse community, but for the novelty of having an incredibly global children’s literature section. In relation to our discussions about children seeing themselves in the literature they read, it would seem as though this library was point these books on display for white adults rather than multi-ethnic children. 

I began my community observation at the Barnes and Nobles in Bethesda Maryland on a late sunday afternoon. There, like many other bookstores I suspect, is a large colorful kids section complete with maps and pictures of animals, soft chairs and carpet, not to mention books. It was interesting to see that for every small or colorful chair intended for a young child, there was another regular sized chair for the accompanying adult. In fact, the majority of children I saw entering the children’s section were entering with an adult. Although the adult sometimes left the child in the children’s section and went on to search for more age appropriate literature, most of the parents sat down with their children and began flipping through picture books. I was unsure if this was an acceptable practice, to read an entire book inside the bookstore without the intention of buying the book, yet a number of employees walked in and out of the children’s lit section without saying a word. In some cases, parents sat on the plush chairs reading historic biographies or magazines like the Economist while their children sped through the Adventures of Curious George. It appeared that the bookstore experience has evolved from what it once was; a place to buy books. Instead, its morphed into an educational experience to be taken with your young children. I suppose this is way large and small bookstores alike have begun partitioning off sections of their stores for chic coffee bars. If the goal is to turn a trip to Barnes and Nobles less like a trip to the grocery store, and more like a trip to a museum, then by all measures they people who envisioned this have been wildly successful.  

I remember sitting in my 7th grade English class with Mrs. Bressler being handed a parent’s consent form, asking them to allow their children to read “The Giver”. Previously, the teacher had explained the controversy over such books that deal with utopian societies such as the one describe in The Giver. She explained that people often took issue with the books critique on contemporary society, regardless if that critique was intentional or not. It seemed strange to me then, that a book which dealt with an entirely fictitious society, would cause such discomfort in our own society. I especially didn’t understand the idea that somehow reading this book would poison our naive minds. Were they really expecting a group of suburban 7th graders to abscond from society, and create our own reality modeled after the utopian describe in the book? 

Some books are banned for their use of language (I am thinking of The Catcher in the Rye specifically) or their portrayal of racial or ethnic minorities, and others still are banned because they offend people’s religious sensibilities (Harry Potter as an example). However ludicrous these objections may or may not be, the question remains, what harms is inflicted upon the child from reading the book? Perhaps the focus of the conversation about banned books should be centered around things like “what challenges does this book present?” “why do people take exception to this book?’ “how is the author trying to stimulate debate and reflection in society?” rather than what will reading this book do to our children. 

My initial thoughts about finding children’s books that dealt with issues of sexism, classism or racism immediately led me to the Bernstein Bear books that I had grown up with as a child. But perhaps this was too obvious of an answer. 

So instead I’ll turn to Dr. Suess to search for issues of inequality subtly or overtly layered into his whimsical texts. Studying an author who so seldomly dealt with realistic characters or worlds will provide an opportunity to study closely the symbols and euphemisms Dr. Suess was so masterful at using. Furthermore, it’ll provide a more creative and complex platform to discuss issues of classism than those seen in traditional children’s books. 

“Do you know what a coniferous tree is?’ the girl asked. The women had to admit she did not. ‘Tell me’ she said, but the girl just shook her head no.” (p.12)

This quote effectively encapsulates the trauma the mother must be going to as she prepares to leave her home. She is neither welcomed in the country she lives in, as evident by the fact that her husband has been detained on suspicion of helping the Japanese, nor can return to Japan where she might be equally ostracized. Her daughter is becoming more and more Americanized, and is clearly frustrated by her mother’s lack of familiarity with the surrounding culture. As her children grow older, they will continue to assimilate, while she’ll continue to be a mother in transition, stuck between what was, and what is, but a member of neither. 

Looked at from another perspective, it must be difficult as a mother to feel ‘useless’ to her children as she appears to be in this passage. Under normal circumstances, her daughter would look to her for guidance and teaching, validating her role as a mother. Yet here the roles are reversed, as the child appears to be leading the mother through situations unfamiliar and strange. The reality of the situation is that this will probably remain the case for some time to come as her daughter becomes more and more comfortable with the American cultural landscape. 

Lastly, and perhaps most painfully, the curt response of the daughter signals that she may already be aware of these facts (her mother without a country, and the role reversal of the pupil and teacher). She is still to young to realize just how vulnerable her mother must be, yet old enough to take advantage of the new circumstances. 

“Your mother is a very beautiful woman’. ‘I know, everyone says that. She is watching us’. ‘That’s her job’ he said. She’s tired. I can see it in her eyes. Tell her everything will be alright”. (P.35)

This brief dialogue between the daughter and a stranger on the train helps underscore the evolving dynamic between the daughter and the mother. The mother remains weary and watchful over the daughter, yet is completely powerless to change the present situation or offer protection. Instead it is the young daughter who is encouraged to take care of her mother. 

This is another example of changing of roles that the mother and daughter are experiencing, as the mother becomes increasingly despondent and frightened, it is up to the daughter to reassure that everything will be alright. 

Furthermore, this passage, as compared to the previous one, shows some emotional maturity and growth on the part of the daughter. Earlier, when her she asked her mother about the coniferous tree, she couldn’t help but take advantage of the new circumstances to which her mother hadn’t yet adapted. Here, she neither takes advantage of the situation for her own means, nor does she remedy it. Perhaps its beginning to dawn on the daughter just how traumatic this must be for her mother, and that it would suit her well to assure her mother. 

Hello my name is…a Rick Bayless restaurant fan 

Perhaps there is a certain bourgeois aspect to eating at Rick Bayless restaurant in Chicago; food is treated more as art than fuel, which in many ways reflects a judgement that food should be more than fuel. Yet, perhaps this value is only applicable to those with such disposable income to treat food as art, rather than a biochemical mishmash of starches sugars and proteins. In this way, being from a higher socioeconomic strata has allowed me access to the idea of craftsmanship and artistry in food that those living at the poverty line simply can’t afford in both a literal and figurative sense. 

Hello my name is…a proud Chicago native

Being from Chicago has both allowed me to access incredible institutions of culture and mythical ‘midwestern’ values and disadvantaged me in the eyes of arrogant east-coasters. Their image of Chicago as a city of gangsters, riots, and general urban decay (all untrue by the way) subtly links me being rough, and unrefined. There is a general perception held by many in counties, states, and suburbs surrounding New York City that anyone unaccustomed to NYC’s brisk pace is simply a simpleton. 

Hello my name is…an ethnic cuisine enthusiast

Hello my name is…an outdoor adventurer 

This, like the privilege to view food as art, is based on fact that I have disposable time to spend of hobbies like backpacking. Since my parents don’t expect me to pay for my own education, i’ve never known the need to hold multiple jobs at once. Thus, I have time for backpacking excursions. Beyond the issues of time, its always been a value of my parents to encourage their children to explore areas or activities they feel passionately about. 

Hello my name is…a pitchfork reader

Hello my name is…Jewish heritage 

In today’s contemporary society, being Jewish has often led me to positions of access. Scholarships and grants written for Jewish youth are plentiful, not to mention a large but tight knit social structure upon which to support me. Being Jewish gave me access to private education with well paid teachers and smaller class rooms, an unfortunately increasingly rare privilege in America today. 

I am not…bilingual 

I am not…over six feet tall.

I can’t remember where I read this, but there is an alarming disproportional percent of CEO’s over six feet tall compared to the average height of the population. The trend is even more pronounced with American presidents. The point being, there is prestige associated with tall men, and I simply by the limits of genetics I will never be apart of their high society. 

I am not… a Seinfeld fan. 

This actually prevent me from contributing in a fair amount of casual social settings. Obviously, not being familiar with the show prevents me access into The Seinfeld culture. This is manifested in a number of ways including not being included in Seinfeld references, or conversations discussing humorous memories of Seinfeld episodes past.