Yesterday in the introduction to American literature and culture class (with about 90 first year English majors and 15 upperclassmen who've failed the class in the past), I had a fun, nostalgic, a little bit out of control blast of childhood.
(I'm standing on the right in the photo above, and so intently are my friends and I "playing" with our GI Joes that we never noticed and I never remembered my big sister taking the picture!) I began by showing them my 51-year-old Teddy from Christmas in England long ago, demonstrating how his legs and arms MOVE, and showing where I'd torn off his poor ear so my Mom had sewn it back on, and so on. The kids thought he was cute! That was to demonstrate how American boys and girls typically play with stuffed animals when they're little. Then I showed them Barbie (protesting that she wasn't mine--though she was--and that I never played with her or one of her earlier sisters, though maybe I did once), demonstrating how she can't bend her knees or elbows or wrists or ankles, etc. Then GI Joe, not one of my old ones, who probably don't exist anymore, but one I bought at Toys R Us by Fukuoka Tower fifteen years or so ago for Christmas for myself, but anyway demonstrating how mobile his body is, putting him in some action poses (one wielding a giant bazooka, one reclining with his arms behind his head and his knees bent and crossed). So all that was fun! I do remember playing with my stuffed animals and GI Joes, fondly and vividly (and I still dream sometimes of being in a big store and finding countless GI Joes and their costumes and accessories etc. all on sale, more and more the more I look...) Then I covered the variety in American children's literature, from picture books for kids (like Goodnight Moon, which I explained a bit and asked them the gender of the bunny in question), then novels for elementary schoolers (like Stuart Little, which I explained a bit), then novels for teenagers (like The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, which I explained a bit)... the point being that there is every kind of genre for every kind of reader from 0 to teenager in America. I also explained synergy (though I didn't, I regret now, point out how syn means together and ergy means work), using Star Wars (movie, book, figures, game, costumes, Disneyland attraction) as examples. the points I wanted to communicate especially were that children are the most important part of a culture (because they are the future), that American children's games, toys, books, and movies, etc. are a big business with different media affecting each other (and kids!), that reading books is a similar kind of imaginative exercise to playing with GI Joe and Barbie or RPGs, and that American children's culture and literature is a great, rich, interesting field to study. I hope they'll remember! Then I introduced Maurice Sendak (unfortunately forgetting to describe how he was discovered while working for a toy shop in NYC), and Where the Wild Things Are, which I then read out loud with the 100 or so kids, trying to get them to ROAR when the Wild Things Roar and to show their terrible claws when the Wild Things show their terrible claws and to stand up and jump up and down and howl like wolves for the Wild Rumpus... They were embarrassed and reluctant most of them at first, except for funny, shy, loner Kana near the front, but finally I think I got many of them to do it with me (I'd been inspired by watching the Obamas read the book to kids at the White House on youtube...). And then it was the end of the class! Oh,.... and I started everything off with a pleasurable experience for them: a fifteen minute quiz about Where the Wild Things Are. Next class I'll use their quiz answers and my lecture handout to analyze and understand and appreciate Sendak's wonderful book more fully and deeply and enjoyably. The one worm in my apple of joy over the class was that ten of the students didn't have books with them, and one girl had bought (or borrowed) some hard cover edition... I'd been telling them since September week after week that they had to buy the book from our University book store by this date, and to have ten of them lamely say they forgot the book at home was rather depressing. Also unbelievable. I bet that in most of those ten students' cases, they never bought the book and are going to try to borrow copies from their classmates or senpai. And I explained why I wanted them to buy it; and that their grades would go down if they didn't buy it; sighhhhhhhhh.,,. Ma, ANWYAY, really it was a fun class and I feel still happy the day after from it (Also one of the better more interesting students posted a really nice long comment on our class blog about his childhood companion a stuffed penguin and about enjoying playing Wild Things while reading the picture book together :-)
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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