Responses to Literature

Literature Notebook Genre Directory

Children seek pleasure from a story, but are limited by their physical, cognitive, and affective development. A person's response to a piece of literature is the only way to know what they understand and feel about individual pieces and collections of literature.

Responses may be immediate or deferred and internal or external. A deferred response may not happen until another influence sparks it, thus making it hard sometimes to distinguish literature as an influence in a person's life.

The most important kinds of responses come with personal involvement, without it people stop interacting, and voluntary involvement. The choice to be involved and maintain it, usually lead to a positive emotional response of positive feelings toward literature and people involved with it.

Kinds of Responses

Emotional responses

• "I can feel the frustration!"
• "That character reminds me of when I..."
• "I would like to live in that place."
• "I would not like to have lived during that time."
• "I would like to know that character."
• "This reminds me of ..."
• A child smiles and giggles after reciting a poem and repeats a few rhythmic lines over and over.

People who are involved emotionally comprehend and evaluate their reading / viewing / listening better than those who aren't. Therfore, knowing the reader / listener / viewer can help you anticipate his or her emotional reaction and interact to facilitate his or her growth.

Interpretive responses: All involved readers / viewers / listeners are continually interpreting. They interpret stylistic devices such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, metaphor, allusion, irony, and/or symbolism. They make inferences about the nature of characters, the setting, and the author's motives. They react to plot, mood, point of view, tone, and define the genre of the work.

• That character is really evil.
• This story isn't true, is it?
• I liked it when the author said that the wheat fields looked like his brother after a buzz cut.
• I don't think Camazots is on Earth. In fact it's not in the solar system and maybe not even in our galaxy.

Evaluative responses: is when the reader / listener / viewer explains what they think the author did or should have done based on a standard. If a child says that the book is one of the best s/he have ever read and tells why compared to another piece of literature or other standard, they are giving an evaluative response. If a child says that a character should do something. You wouldn't know if it was an evaluative response unless it's explained in relation to a standard.

• "This book is boring because there is not enough action."
• I liked the way the author describes everything that makes you feel like you are there. She makes it seem so real. Like when she said Jess's muscles were popping like bacon on a griddle and by what she had Jess say to himself when he was trying to run away when heard about Leslie...
• A person asks if there are more books like the one s/he just read and describes what they mean by just like.
• A person's reaction to a song, video, advertisement, movie explaining what they liked and why.

As mentioned earlier, personal involvement is required to create a meaningful response, which can be internal or external. However, for the student to communicate a response, it must be external. This can be done through body expressions, oral remarks, drawings, diagrams, webs, written words, creative movement, dramatics, play activities, puppet manipulation, sculptures, and/or model making.

Responses can be evaluated by listening to student's or looking at the artifacts they create. Information collected from different activities will fit into the following categories:

1. knowledge of literary elements and genre..
2. abillity to interpret different pieces of literature
3. ability to evaluate different pieces of literature
4. ability to create literature that is video, music, oral, dramatic, graphic, or written
5. desire to participate in literary experiences
6. desire to respond to literature
7. desire to create literature
8. value literature and the creative process

In the elementary school these emotional and interpretive responses are critical as they allow readers to enter into a story and make it their own. Resulting in better evaluative responses through increased comprehension (literal, inference, and evaluation), and appreciation.

While reading and comprehension skills are attained with experience with literature, experience with literature alone is insufficient to move students to literacy. Personal development of children and adolescents moves students toward a more comprenhensive understanding of literature. To better understand this development literature can be related to various developmental theories.