Charlie, age 4 years 6 months has dictated
his first story. It was the occasion of his ‘Dada’s’ birthday and his Mum asked
him if he wanted to make a birthday card. Charlie said, “No, I want to write
him a story.” So his Mum collected together card, pens, glitter and pencils and
waited for Charlie to begin. This was the result:
Little Red, Gold
and Silver and Pink and Green Riding Hood.
By Charlie
Lyle-Williams
Little Red, Gold and Silver and Pink and Green Riding
Hood went to visit her granny for tea.
Granny was waiting for her granddaughter to arrive.
The wolf was in the wood which was full of trees that
were green, yellow and silver.
Suddenly the giant stepped into the wood and he said,
“Who dares to steal my tea pot!” He was angry.
“And who has been drawing us?”
Little Red, Gold and Silver and Pink and Green Riding
Hood said, “It was somebody I don’t know.” And the giant said the same.
John and Zui were next to the giant. “Hello!” said the
giant, “I missed you a long time ago.”
John and Zui said, “We didn’t draw you, it was
somebody else we don’t know.”
John and Zui thought about it some more and then John
said, “It was the wolf who drew you!”
Rabbit said, “It was the wolf.”
Charlie’s first story portrays an imaginary
world peopled with fairy tale characters – an innovative ‘Red Riding Hood’, a
wolf and a giant who interact with real world characters – his Uncle John and
Aunt Zui. Giants exist and are angry, a wolf lurks in a wood that is both real
and imaginary – the trees are silver as well as green and yellow (the story was
written in Autumn just as the leaves were turning and he did have glitter in
his hands at the time). Ordinary things are happening: a child is going to
visit her granny for tea; her granny is waiting for her, but there is a wolf
and a giant in the wood. Charlie has a
firm grasp of the role of author and reader as he communicates directly with
his readers to tell them the giant is angry.
In authoring this story Charlie knows it is
a great present for a birthday. He often receives books as presents and he
wants his Dada to have such a present. His Mum recounts how proud he was as the
present was unwrapped and received with such pleasure. He is delighted to be
acknowledged as competent at this thing that is so valued in his family. He
wanted to share his accomplishment with me and asked his Mum to phone me so he
could tell me all about it as soon as he had finished it. He knew that this was
an important ‘first’ for him – his first authored story and he anticipated my
positive response and excitement and the delighted reaction he would get from
his father when he received his gift.
Charlie has had lots of opportunities to
experience the pleasure of books and he knows that stories are authored by
people. He has met real-life authors on several occasions. We have told him
lots of stories that are made up as well as written down. Since he was two he
has frequently been a joint author of stories and it was just a matter of time
before he wanted to become a written author, not just an oral collaborator.
By asking his Mum to write down his story
he shows he has figured out how to use writing for a particular purpose, it
tells us that he knows something of the complexity of writing as a tool of
social communication. In doing so he has taken an important step in mastering the
complex sign system that is writing. By asking his Mum to write it down he has
accomplished authoring in interaction with someone else, and this surely is an
important pre-requisite to internalizing the act of writing for himself. He
knows that his words can be retrieved later by his father when he explores his
birthday gift.
For Charlie his first authored story
carries enormous meaning. It is not just a written story, it is a birthday gift
for a much loved parent with whom he has shared lots of stories. He also knows
that writing can be accompanied by drawings and recognizes the possibilities of
drawing for conveying meaning. Charlie’s mark-making in the past has been used
to make graphic representation of the meaning he is making from the world (see
my blog on Charlie ?) and for Charlie illustration is used to accompany his
words, not the other way round as is more common for a child of his age. He
uses other tools to enhance meaning; the silver trees in the story have glitter
glued to them, his central character has red, gold and other glitter to show
her many colours. His Mum reports that after he had created the visual
character he began by saying, “Little Red Riding Hood” and she pointed out that
she was not just red and Charlie then listed all the colours making this story
a co-construction between mother and child. When illustrating the story he
first tried to draw a house but he was unhappy with that and his Mum took the
opportunity to turn it into a teapot and Charlie then changed the story
accordingly and then asked his mum to draw the house. He wanted to draw a
rabbit and got as far as the ears but was unhappy with it so she finished it
off for him. He is able to create a giant and the figures of Uncle John and
Aunty Zui (their gender indicated by the colours pink and blue). Charlie clearly
understands the boundaries between written words and drawing and their
relationship.
Charlie’s writing has grown out of his
experience of stories and story-telling with other people – we have read to him
and told him stories and encouraged him to act out stories since he was a baby.
As we have immersed him in story he has had experiences that include attending
events where real authors have presented their work and signed his copy of
their book; he has joined in the acting out of an author’s story on a stage
with other children. He has also watched pantomimes of favourite stories like
‘Snow White’ and ‘Robin Hood’ and theatre productions such as “The enormous
turnip”. He knows that stories can be read and acted out and he has been given
every encouragement to dramatise stories for himself. He role-plays characters
from stories everyday.
I now turn to
look at the story itself and explore its structure to better understand what
Charlie has achieved.
Little
red, gold and silver and pink and green riding hood went to visit her granny
for tea.
Charlie begins by using a narrative voice
to begin the story by introducing the main character or subject of the story.
There are clear links to the traditional story of Red Riding Hood but extended
as he borrows from the story for his own purposes.
In the next line the setting is established.
The
wolf was in the wood which was full of trees that were green, yellow and
silver.
This gives the impression of a magical wood
which is reinforced through his drawings. An element of tension is introduced which
because of our prior knowledge of the role of the wolf in the Red Riding Hood
story suggests a coming crisis.
Granny
was waiting for her granddaughter to arrive.
The receiver of the visitor is introduced
through a ‘meanwhile, somewhere else’ device. The grammatical structure implies the
simultaneous nature of the waiting and the implication that someone will know
if she doesn’t arrive and alerts us to the possibility of something going
wrong.
Suddenly
the giant stepped into the wood and he said, “Who dares to steal my tea pot!”
He was angry.
A rift occurs as a new character arrives ‘suddenly’
giving the impression that this was unexpected and possibly threatening. The possibility is introduced that it is going
to be a giant rather than the wolf that prevents the girl from completing her
journey to her grandmother’s.
The plot is now advanced through dialogue
and at the same time tension is created by the giant’s words ‘who dares?’ This
new character is potentially dangerous. Then Charlie as author steps in to
stage-manage the story and he tells us, the readers of the story lest we be in
any doubt about the giant: “He was angry” leaving us in no doubt about the
giant’s emotional state.
This first piece of speech introduces the abstract
concepts of stealing and anger and reveals Charlie’s prior knowledge of folk
tales where people do bad things to giants (like Jack stealing the giant’s
belongings) and conveys the giant’s sense of justified anger in the face of
such events.
“And
who has been drawing us?”
An implied ‘and furthermore’ comes with the
giant’s second utterance and additional justification for his anger. He demands
an answer. This is an interesting turn of events (it is Charlie the author who
has drawn the giant) and who is the ‘us’ the giant refer to? It is perhaps the
wolf – the other ‘baddie’ in the story?
Red,
Gold and Silver and Pink and Green Riding Hood said, “It was somebody I don’t know.” And
the giant said the same.
Is our many coloured riding hood trying to
protect someone by not saying who has stolen the teapot and drawn him, or is
this a genuine ‘don’t know’?
John
and Zui were next to the giant. “Hello!” said the giant. “I missed you a long
time ago.”
We now meet new characters from Charlie’s
real life, his Uncle John and Aunty Zui. Charlie is now mixing fairy tale with
actual people in his life, but continues to use typical story language –‘a long
time ago’. In line with the trajectory of traditional tales these characters
create a sense of expectation that they are there to help the subject of the
story achieve her goal and arrive at her grandmother’s house.
John
and Zui said, “We didn’t draw you, it was somebody else we don’t know.”
Charlie introduces the device of repetition
‘somebody we don’t know’ and thereby creates an interesting effect
characteristic of folk tales and also introduces dialogue as characters speak
to each other.
John
and Zui thought about it some more and then John said, “It was the wolf who
drew you!”
I found myself speculating – is Charlie
using John to blame the wolf for the drawing, is this because a wolf is someone
who can be blamed because he is not a good character, or does the character ‘John’
genuinely think the wolf did do the drawing? Is Charlie trying to protect himself,
he was the one who did the drawing after all?
Rabbit
said, “It was the wolf.”
It is interesting that the soft toy that
has accompanied Charlie during the day and to bed each night since he was a
baby is a rabbit – is it an accident that a rabbit suddenly appears and joins
in with the condemnation of the wolf, or has he been a continuous presence in
the story as he is in Charlie’s life?
Will the giant be convinced now that it is
the wolf that is responsible for making him angry? Is the giant likely to
believe John, Zui and the Rabbit because after all a wolf is not to be trusted?
Charlie as narrator is not a neutral observer of these events, he is a partisan
commentator who makes value judgements about who we should empathise with and
who we should condemn.
This is the end of the story and the final
resolution – whether or not little Red, Gold and Silver and Pink and Green Riding
Hood achieves her goal of visiting her grand mother is left to the reader to
work out for themselves.
In his first written story Charlie has a
clear understanding of audience, purpose and form. He has clearly taken
ownership of narrative, he understands narrative structure and is able to tell
a story in his own words and people it with characters from his imagination and
his life. He has introduced characters, setting, plot and rift. Whether or not
the rift was resolved in his own mind we can’t know, perhaps he just ran out of
steam, authoring is a demanding business after all!
Teachers faced with implementing the new
English National Curriculum in England will notice that I have not made use of
the government’s glossary of essential terms to analyse Charlie’s story. When I
was at school I failed miserably at the requirement to carry out ‘box analysis’
on pieces of writing that expected me to be able to identify such things as
clauses, relative clauses, subordinate clauses, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs,
noun phrases, preposition phrases and so on – all terms from the glossary. The
whole thing fills me with horror, but I know that at four Charlie already knows
how to do all of the things expected by the end of Year 2 when he dictates a
story. I do not believe that the structural approach to teaching grammar and
grammatical terms required by the new curriculum will not improve the quality
of children’s writing. By listing the features of writing a child is meant to
achieve teachers will be looking to tick the features off a list to provide
evidence that requirements have been met rather than engage with the meaning a
child has generated. We need to provide a socio-cultural context in school that
enables children to generate meaning through story. Charlie’s engagement in
story writing for the first time comes from four years of rich experiences of
story, it is not surprising that he wants to appropriate the role of author for
himself. As teachers are forced to focus on the features of writing I think
children’s natural story-telling capacity may be compromised and will not help
them write stories.
