Why Children’s Literature is still important in education?

Reliving your childhood favorite book with your children or friends and experience the adventure again.

Children are cosplaying their favorite characters from books. (copyright from google)

Adults re-examined the importance of Children’s Literature in education on the World Book Day.

This is the 21st year of the World Book Day has ever been. It is a celebration not only for authors, books and anything related to reading. Actually, kids may be the most important protagonists of the festival as it offers a chance for children to dress up as their favorite book characters on that day.

“Anything that helps to share the love and pleasure of reading and books, and all the benefits that can flow from reading for pleasure,” a spokesman for the World Book Day said.

One of the main purposes of World Book Day in the UK is to encourage kids to look for pleasures of reading and cultivate their reading interest by creating an opportunity to have their own books.

Until today, children’s literature is still playing an important role in the growing education.

A father is reading stories for his son patiently. (copy right from google)

When you look back to your childhood, what impressed the most? It would be the time for parents or grandparents to tell you a fairy tale while sitting at your bedside.

SF Said, a British children’s writer once written that, “when I think back on the things that have made the deepest impact on me, in my own life – It’s the stories that I encountered when I was young. The books I read when I was a child shaped me more profoundly than anything.”

The stories we’ve heard in our childhood shaped our first view of the world. It brings kids travel outside the real life they live every day, so it helps to develop children’s imagination. The fascinating world and interesting characters that the author created in the fairy tale will represent a fantasy world to children.

The left one is Dorothy and the right one is Alice from two books.

Thanks to the wonderful adventure story and positive personalities created by authors that resonate with kids, books like The Wizard of OZ or Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland are still not out of date after circulated over 100 years.

“Once my daughter surprised me was that, she can tell her own stories after I read. Even though she doesn’t understand every word in the book. She points at the pictures in the book and tell a new story which sometimes is different from the original one that the author wrote,” said Layla, a mum of a 4-year-old girl.

Children respond to the characters in the books and contains their own feelings could help them understand and express their own feelings. Also,parents can notice that something has changed since their children read fictions with their own understanding.

Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of OZ or Alice in Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, their brave and optimistic images become role models for children’s growth. Reading this kind of fictions is a good way to make children into nicer people and build positive values.    

Beginning to ask questions is a landmark within children’s growth, particularly when parents tell stories to children.

The little prince is watching sunset with his only rose on B612 planet


“Why there is only one rose on the B612 planet? Why does the little prince think the roses on earth are not beautiful?” said a 6-year-old boy’s father, Tom, “My son is quite into The Little Prince. He always asks me a lot of strange or unique questions that sometimes even I cannot answer.”

Normally, children could come up with more ideas with a curious and opening heart to everything, which is important for adults as well.

Little books sometimes contain constructive and thought-provoking ideas. That’s why those classic children’s story books are still popular nowadays.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important,” written in The Little Prince. This simple sentence tells a not simple truth — love needs responsibility. We would not understand it in this way when we were children. But when we understand it we are not children any more.

A infographic about the history and categories of Children’s Literature.

A professor teaching children’s literature asked her students on the first day of class, “You are all adults in college, so the question comes up, why on Earth are you all taking a class on children’s literature?”

Reliving the timeless fairy tales that we were interested in our childhood is valuable and worthy. This not only to remind you of the love and admiration of the book when you were young.

What’s more, you will find that many things you did not understand are now understandable. It will bring you back to the most simple and happy time in your life.

Those classic children’s literature will never be out of date in your whole life. Read your favorite fairy tale which you’ve read as a child and you may find something unexpectedly.