Children’s Literature in Jamaica Essay -- essays papers

Childrens Literature in JamaicaAs children in the United States, we grow up listening to the stories of Dr. Seuss and odd George as we fall off to sleep to the sound of our parents voices echoing in our dreams. As we start to grow older and the poetry of Shel Silversteins, Where the Sidewalk Ends no long-term holds our imagination as much as it did at eight years old, we begin to take stories that are a reflection of the environment we live within. We engaged ourselves in the lives of such characters as the Hardy Boys and Willy Wonka. What these stories lacked however, are the social issues that are ever present in todays society. Not all of American childrens belles-lettres is without social content, but the literature many of us grew up with was about(predicate) adventure and mystery. On the other hand, Caribbean childrens literature tends to base its give way on survival. The stories of Jamaican folklore for example, tell the tales of the original inhabitants of the Caribbea n Island and how they survived colonialism, slavery, poverty, and racism. From generation to generation these stories become been passed down in their original form through oral history. oral tradition is a method that I believe is no longer preserved in American culture. Rarely do you read of an case-by-case who was sat down on his grandparents knee to hear the childhood stories he or her was told by their grandparents before them. In todays society, all a child has to do to be entertained is lift on the television, or log on to the internet to hear and read the rhetoric of todays entertainment industry. Whether it is a lack of communication between parent and child, or a loss of innocence, the tradition of a parent telling the story of his or her ancest... ...ren are forced to treat with throughout life. BibliographyBerry, James, Everywhere Faces Everywhere, Simon and Schuster Publishing, tender York, 1996Bolden, Tonya, Rites of Passage Stories About Growing Up by Black Wr iters from Around the World, Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 1994Dance, Daryl, Folklore from Contemporary Jamaicans, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1985Dawes, Kwame, Wheel and source Again An Anthology of Reggae Poetry, Goose Lane Publishing, Canada, 1998Jekyll, Walter, Jamaican Song and Story, Dover Publications, New York, 1966Jennings, Linda, A Treasury of Stories from Around the World, Kingfisher Publishing, New York, 1993Ribelli, Piero, Jah Pickney Children of Jamaica, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston, Jamaica, 1995Sherlock, Philip, West Indian Folk-tales, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1966