Carol, Cushla, Rebecca, Anna, Dan and Ben
1980; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/chq.0.1597
ISSN1553-1201
Autores ResumoCarol, Cushla, Rebecca, Anna, Dan and Ben Peggy Whalen-Levitt Perhaps the best reason for keeping a diary of your own child's experiences with books is the personal one articulated by Dorothy Neal White nearly thirty years ago: Shortly after my daughter's second birthday I began to make some rough notes about the books that I read to her, notes which grew gradually into this reading diary, a mixture of her views and mine about the picture books we shared. Herrick looking at his daffodils has no keener sense of the passing of time than any parent looking at a child. Struck [End Page 21] with the enormity of the idea that children grow, I began to make my record for the same reason that one puts photographs in an album, in order to remember. The photography album gives no real record of growth, but it gives clues for the memory. So too with this diary. (White, 1954, p. 3) While no such diary has been published in its entirety since the publication of Dorothy White's Books Before Five in 1954, accounts and excerpts from four parent diaries have been published during the 1970's: New Zealander Dorothy Butler, using the diary of her daughter, Patricia Yeoman, as a foundation, gives a moving account of the place of books in the life of her granddaughter Cushla—a child seen coping with handicaps caused by a genetic defect; and Australians Maureen and Hugh Crago, Margaret Graetz, and Virginia Lowe report on the literary experiences of their children, Anna Crago, Ben and Dan Graetz, and Rebecca Lowe. Whereas these accounts most certainly serve as "clues for the memory" of their respective recorders, they also provide those of us interested in children and books with much valuable information. Therefore, let us consider this genre of observational study, the parent diary, and what we might hope to learn from it.1 Perhaps because of the personal purposes served by the parent diary, there has been, as a rule, a rather informal approach to methodology. Maureen and Hugh Crago are the exceptions here, in making explicit both what they are looking at and how they will record it: First, we can aim to collect a large amount of accurate data by reporting as fully as possible the child's comments and questions while books are being read aloud, those made while the child examines books on his/her own, significant nonverbal behavior prompted by books, related play, fantasizing storytelling. (Crago, M. & H., 1976, 136) It is fair to say, however, that even in the articles by the Cragos and in the published accounts of Butler, Graetz and Lowe, we are more apt to see summaries of the children's actual experiences than we are to encounter full descriptions of them. It must be taken on faith that such descriptions of experiences in context are indeed available in the diaries. My own feeling is that these summarizing efforts are, at the moment, premature, and that a far greater service would be rendered if access were provided to the diary entries themselves. Furthermore, toward the end of comparing these various records, some continuity in methods of observation should probably be sought. We need to step back a moment and ask, "What constitutes a satisfactory description?" "What, for example, should be the unit of observation?" On the assumption that social context influences meaning, a good argument can be made for taking the event—involving or relating to a child's interrelationship with books—as the unit of observation. Descriptions of these events would probably benefit from inclusion of the following components, adapted from Dell Hymes' "Model of the Interaction of Language and Social Life:"2 1. Date 2. Place (for example, the home-including the nature of the particular room or section of the room in which the event takes place; the yard; the car; the bus stop, etc.). 3. Time (morning, afternoon, evening). 4. Scene (such socially defined occasions as mealtime; bedtime; bath time; changing time; birthday, etc.). 5. Participants (parents; relatives; siblings; peers, etc.). 6. Book being manipulated; read; looked at; referred to; used as a basis for symbolic play, etc. 7. Speech...
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