CSET Practice Test On Reading, Language, and Literature

Genres in Children's Literature Based on the work of
Rebecca J. Lukens


Realism Animal Realism Historical Fiction Sports Stories
Formula Fiction - Mysteries

Fantasy Fantastic Stories High Fantasy Science Fiction

Traditional Literature Fables Folktales Myths Legends Folk
Epics     

Poetry

Classics

Realism

Realism means that a story is possible, although not
necessarily probable. Realistic stories have in common
several characteristics: they are fictional narratives
with characters who are involved in some kind of action
that holds our interest, set in some place and time.

Subgenres of Realism

Animal realism deals accurately with animals, telling the
details of their appearances, their habitats, and their
life cycles. Example: The Incredible Journey by Shiela
Burnford. The three pets that determinedly battle with
nature to return to their masters through the wilds of
Canada. Another example: Farley Mowat's Owls in the
Family. Billy, a human character, telling a story about
owls.

Historical fiction is when the protagonist has universal
human traits, but is a product of the time and place.
History presents facts. To turn facts into fiction, the
writer must combine imagination with fact, bringing about
an itegrated story with a fictional protagonist in a
suspenseful plot. Sometimes little is known of the period,
and at other times much is known; it is possible to write
historical fiction about the Vikings, like Hakon of
Rogen's Saga by Erik Haugaard as well as about the
American colonies, like The Witch of Blackbird Pond by
Elizabeth Speare.

Sports stories are with well-developed characters
struggling with personal issues and discovering the forces
and choices they must confront. Because children take gym
classes, watch televised sports, and are involved in
organized sports after school, sport is part of their
lives. A sport story of excellent quality is Bruce
Brooks's The Moves Make the Man.

Formula fiction stories follow distinct patterns. A
popular type of formula fiction are Mysteries and
Thrillers. Mystery stories are set in any time, historical
or futuristic, as well as the present. They rely for
suspense upon unexplained events and actions that are
sometimes, by story's end, resolved or explained by
reasonable and carefully detected discoveries.

Fantasy

Fantasy, in the phrase of Coleridge, requires "the willing
suspension of disbelief." The writer of fantasy creates
another world for characters and readers, asking the
readers believe this other world could and does exist
within the framework of the book. 

Subgenres of Fantasy

Fantastic stories are stories that are realistic in most
details but still requiring us to willingly suspend our
disbelief. Examples of such fantasy are Borrowers books of
Mary Norton, showing the daily lives of tiny people who
face everyday problems like our own and make discoveries
about fear of the unknown and about the disruption of
family life through greed. Another example is Virginia
Hamilton's Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, in which
everything seems realistic except the appearance of
ghostlike Brother Rush. Tree is convinced he is the ghost
of her uncle, and that he takes her into the past to
reveal details about her father and mother.  Other
fantastic stories are about characters that are not people
but are represented as people because they talk or live in
houses like ours, have feelings like our own, or lead
lives like those of human beings such as Hans Christian
Andersen's The Ugly Duckling and E.B. White's Charlotte's
Web, or Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Their
themes are about human life: Growing up is fraught with
trauma; no one appreciates the humble; a community
supports its members, no matter how foolish. 

High fantasy is primarily characterized by its focus on
the conflict between good and evil. If it is successful,
it captures our belief in two major ways: first, by the
internal consistency of the new world, like the categories
or classes of small, nonhuman beings in The Lord of the
Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein; and second, by the protagonist's
belief in his or her experience.

Science fiction is a type of fantasy, and it is often
difficult to decide whether a particular work is pure
fantasy or science fiction. Science fiction usually
stresses scientific laws and technological inventions-like
gravity and the speed of light and the contrivances with
which to deal with these forces and limitations. In Susan
Beth Pfeffer's Future Foward, Scott and Kelly, by
traveling back in time, save their neighbor Pop from being
injured in a robbery of his store.

Traditional Literature

The term "traditional" implies that the form comes to us
from the ordinary person, an anonymous storyteller, and
exists orally rather than in writing-at least until some
collector finds records, and publishes the stories or
rhymes, thus setting them into temporary form.

Subgenre's of Traditional Literature

The fable is a very brief story, usually with animal
characters, that points clearly to a moral or lesson. The
moral, an explicit and didactic or preachy theme, is
usually included at the end of the story and is the reason
for the existence of the fable. The fable makes visible
and objective some lesson like that we see in The Tortoise
and the Hare: slow but sure wins the race. Everything in
the fable exists to make an abstract point, to make a
lesson clear, as clear as the moral in The Milkmaid who
dreamily drops her basket of eggs on the way to the market:
don't count your chickens before they hatch.

Folktales rely on flat characters, bad ones and good ones,
easily recognized. Since folktales were heard by the
teller and then retold in the teller's own words, there
was hardly time for subtle character development. Stock
characters, like the fairy godmother and the wicked
stepmother in Cinderella frequently appear. Conflicts are
often between people or personified animals in person-
versus-person conflict, like Jack and the ogre in Jack and
the Beanstalk. In Eurpoean tales, incidents can occur
singly, in threes as they do in The Billy Goats Gruff.
Point of view is rarely first person, since the tales are
told about flat characters in fantastic situations. Tone
varies; it may be sentimental as in Beauty and the Beast,
objective as in The Little Red Hen, or humorous as in The
Squire's Bride.

Myths are stories that originate in the beliefs of nations
and races and present episodes in which supernatural
forces operate. Because they, too, are handed down by word
of mouth, they have no right or wrong form. Myths, like
that of the god Thor and his hammer of thunder, are
stories that interpret natural phenomena.

Legends are similar to myths because both are traditional
narratives of a people; sometimes the two subgenres are
interwoven. Legends, however, often have more historical
truth and less reliance upon the supernatural. Although
there was a King Arthur, most stories about him are not
historical truth but legend. The grandeur of the legend is
maintained in The Legend of King Arthur as it is retold by
Robin Lister, beginning with Arthur's pulling the sword
from the stone and setting up the Round Table, to his love
and loss of Guinevere and his final departure for the
magic isle of Avalon. 

The folk epic is a long narrative poem of unknown
authorship about an outstanding or royal character in a
series of adventures related to that heroic central
figure. This character or hero is, like Beowulf, larger
than life, grand in all proportions, and superhuman in
physical and moral qualities. Few retellers are so
masterful as Rosemary Sutcliff, who tells of Finn MacCool
and of the Hound of Ulster.

Poetry

Poetry, a kind of imaginative and artistic writing, can
also be called a genre of literature. A lyric, or
"personal poem" may have balladlike qualities-a refrain,
for example-and a narrative may have lyric or songlike
passages. Compactness is essential to poetry to make words
say much more than literal or denotative meaning. 

Classics

Classics are books that have worn well, attracting readers
from one generation to the next. They cross all genre
lines; they are historical fiction and high fantasy. The
Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnet, after a
generation of being little read have returned to become
regarded as classics. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
remains an incomparable work of nonsense; readers have
never outgrown Carroll's wit, and his playful
inventiveness remains unsurpassed. Another classic is E.B.
White's finest novel, Charlotte's Web. White's thorough
portrayal of character and his choice of life-and-death
conflict, his affectionately humorous tone, and his
universal themes about friendship, satisfaction, and death
are elements that identify classics.

Learning to Read, Reading to Learn: Reading: The
Cornerstone of Learning

For every child, reading is truly the gateway to
knowledge. In fact, teaching children to read is probably
the single most important task of our elementary schools.
Recent research supported by the U.S. Department of
Education sheds light on the skills and understandings
about literacy which children must acquire in order to
learn to read. These findings can help young children
avoid the struggle, frustrations and serious education
problems that inevitably occur from reading difficulties.
For children with learning disabilities, these reading
skills and understandings about literacy are essential to
their learning. If children do not master these skills in
their first three years of school, they are certain to
encounter difficulties throughout their schooling. And
when they leave school, they enter the working world
lacking the skills they need to find a job, develop
financial independence, and take their places as citizens,
parents and workers. Because the stakes are so high, it is
impossible to overstate the importance of appropriate
reading instruction, which combines phonics instruction
with rich literature environments and opportunities to
write. Those who learn to read with ease in the early
grades have a foundation on which to build new knowledge.
Those who do not are doomed to repeated cycles of
frustration and failure. Funded by the U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Special Education Programs, the
National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (NCITE),
with three leading researchers, has identified and
reviewed hundreds of studies on how children learn to
read. The results reveal that children need to: Develop
appreciation of the written word Develop awareness of
printed language Learn the alphabet Understand the
relationship between letters and words Understand that
language is made of words, syllables, and phonemes Learn
letter sounds Sound out new words Identify words in print
accurately and easily Know spelling patterns Learn to read
reflectively Develop Appreciation of the Written Word Long
before children are able to engage in reading themselves,
they must feel that reading is something they would like
to do. They must develop an appreciation of the pleasures
of written language and of the many ways language is
useful. Develop Awareness of Printed Language Children
need to develop a basic sense of what print looks like and
how it works. They must learn how to handle a book, which
way to turn the pages, and that the printed words - not
the pictures - tells the story when you read. Children
should be taught that words are all around them - in
newspapers, mail, billboards, signs, and labels - and have
many different and valuable purposes. Learn the Alphabet
Comfortable and early familiarity with letters is critical
for learning to read. Children should learn the names of
letters and to recognize and form their corresponding
shapes. Understand the Relation of Letters and Words
Children need to learn that printed words are made up of
ordered strings of letters, read left to right. They
should be helped to understand that when the combination
or order of letters is changed, the word that is spelled
also changes. Understand That Language is Made of Words,
Syllables, and Phonemes The ability to think about words
as a sequence of phonemes is essential to learning how to
read an alphabetic language. Children should become aware
of the building blocks of spoken language. They need to
understand that sentences are made up of strings of
separate words. They should become comfortable in hearing
and creating rhymes. They should be led to play with the
sounds of language until they can pull words apart into
syllables, and pull syllables into individual phonemes.
Learn Letter Sounds Given a comfortable familiarity with
letters and an awareness of the sounds of phonemes,
children are ready to learn about letter-sound
correspondence. The most important goal at this first
stage is to help children understand that the logic of the
alphabetic writing system is built on these
correspondences. Sound Out New Words As children learn
specific letter-sound correspondences, they should be
challenged to use this knowledge to sound out new words in
reading and writing. Making a habit of sounding out
unfamiliar words contributes strongly to reading growth,
not just for beginners, but for all readers. Children need
to understand that sounding out new words can actually be
a strategy for helping them unlock pronunciations of words
they have never seen before, and can make what they are
reading understandable. Identify Words in Print Accurately
and Easily The ability to read with fluency and
comprehension depends on recognizing most words almost
instantly and effortlessly. Once the framework for a new
word or spelling has been laid, through sounding and
blending, the key to recognizing it quickly and easily is
practice. The most useful practice is reading and
rereading of meaningful text made up of words the child
has been taught to sound out. For beginners, such reading
helps most if it is relatively easy. As a rule of thumb,
no more than one in 20 words should cause trouble. Know
Spelling Patterns As children become reasonably capable of
sounding out words in reading and spelling, it is
important that they notice the similarities in their
spellings. Awareness of spelling patterns that recur
across words hastens progress in reading and writing, and
weak knowledge of spelling is an impediment to mature
readers. Learn to Read Reflectively Although the ability
to sound out words is essential for learning to read, it
is not enough. Written language is not just speech written
down. Instead, text brings new vocabulary, new language
patterns, new thoughts, and new modes of thinking. To
enjoy and profit from reading, children must also learn to
take the time to reflect on these aspects of text.