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 Curious George as we ignite off to sleep to the sound of our p bents voices echoing in our dreams. As we start to grow older and the poetry of Shel Silversteins, Where the Sidewalk Ends no longer holds our imagination as much as it did at eightsome years old, we begin to read stories that are a reflection of the surround 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 straight offs society. Not all of American childrens literature is without social content, further the literature many of us grew up with was about adventure and mystery. On the other hand, Caribbean childrens literature tends to base its work on survival. The stories of Jamaican folklore for example, tell the tales of the original inhabitants of the Caribbean Isla nd and how they survived colonialism, slavery, poverty, and racism. From generation to generation these stories have been passed big bucks 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 individual who was sat down on his grand reboots 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 turn 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 presentment the story of his or her ancest... ...ren are forced to deal with throughout life. BibliographyBerry, James, everyplace Faces Everywhere, Simon and Schuster Publishing, New York, 1996Bolden, Tonya, Rites of Passage Stories About Growing Up by sable Writers fr om Around the World, Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 1994Dance, Daryl, Folklore from Contemporary Jamaicans, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1985Dawes, Kwame, Wheel and Come Again An Anthology of Reggae Poetry, twat 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