Stories Children Create: A Review of Selected Research and Some Directions for Study. (Part II)

In part I of this essay (see ChLQ Winter 1981, pp. 39-41), I argued a case for the serious study of children's story making by members of the children's literature community. This is not to suggest a complete shift of focus away from the understanding of literature and criticism, which is a primary concern for the audience for whom this journal is intended. Nevertheless, we can all gain from insight into the various interrelations between children's literature and other expressive texts that children produce in their efforts to communicate in a variety of contexts. For example, we need to know a great deal more about the ways in which we communicate and share story meanings with children and in turn how they themselves negotiate the forms of narrative and fiction to which the culture introduces them. Such knowledge is of particular significance for those who are actively involved in shaping children's encounters with story of various kinds. Part II of this essay will briefly summarize some recent findings pertaining to the development of the child's early sense of story, and then review two recent studies of children's own stories. The review will suggest the pertinence of this work to the concerns of those committed to the study of children's literature and will indicate additional areas for study.

Research suggests that from very early in the child's life, his or her attempts to shape the world take many of the forms that are basic to symbolic interactive systems such as drama and narrative. Even from the crib, the child's responses to the simple plots of lullabies and nursery rhymes or to parent-child games such as "peek-a-boo" begin to implant patterns and impose associations on the child's mind. These and other routines initiated by adults or older siblings serve to develop both language and a sense of story [See Bruner, J.S., "The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts", Journal of Child Lanaguage (2) 1975; Bruner, J.S. & Sherwood, V. "The Case of 'Peekaboo'", in Life Sentences ed. Harre, (New York: Wiley) pp. 55-62; Ratner, N. & Bruner, J.S. "Games, Social Exchange and the Acquisition of Language", Jnl of Child Lng. (5) 1978]. These efforts are further reinforced by the child's experience with the forms of story composition via the books and audio visual materials which we introduce to them. [See Ninio, A. and Bruner, J.S., "The Achievements and Antecedents of Labelling", Jnl of Child Lang. (5) 1978.] It is from such early beginnings that the child enters the various institutions of society where knowledge and use of story are important.

The context for much of the child's first acquaintance with story activity is play. It is in play that the child often develops his first real understanding of the conventions of story In dramatic play, he is both author and actor of his imaginary stories. [See Scarlett, W.G., 1979, "When It's Only Make-Believe: The Construction of a Boundary Between Fantasy and Reality in Storytelling", in New Directions for Child Development, 6,]. As I argued in Part I of this essay, the child's play is not only closely related to fiction but part of the receptive background that children bring to the reading of literature.

Given such early beginnings, we might next ask what the child has to learn in order to story and to enter the institution of literature, and how in fact such story competence develops. These are some of the questions illuminated by the work of Sutton-Smith and Scollon and Scollon. It is with such questions in mind that I shall now review two selected pieces of their work.

Sutton-Smith's recent book, The Folkstories of Children [1981, University of Pennsylvania Press], is a collection of stories elicited from children aged 2-10. Sutton-Smith and his collaborators seek to establish that the very earliest of children's stories have a distinctive kind of cognitive structure parallel to other modes of early expression by children. The book is divided...