Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:
Books which are designed for children, whether fiction or textbooks, are written with the children's development and learning in mind. In this assignment you will read either a children's chapter book or a school textbook to apply what you are learning about child development and analyze the author's theoretical perspective.
Read a chapter book that portrays a developing child who is middle childhood through early teens. Think 2nd grade through 8th grade).
Make sure the main character is clearly in an age group that you can easily discuss ALL developmental stages.
It should have at least 130 pages.
Make sure that you choose a book that depicts, with enough detail, the physical, cognitive, and socio/emotional development of the main character.
Also, do not select a book that is part of an extended series of books (e.g. Goosebumps, The Babysitters' Club).
Check with me if you are unsure whether the book is appropriate for this assignment.
Use the attached template for this assignment.
Be sure to include a cover page formatted per APA guidelines.
Analysis of a Children's Book Template
Literature analysis – Make sure you clarify in your paper how you included all of the information below. Using subheadings helps organize your paper and allows me to identify your responses quickly and efficiently.
• Title
• Author
• Illustrator
• Number of pages
• Publication date
• Brief plot description
• Appropriate for what ages
• Book genre
• Character's development: Describe the main character's development and compare to what we've studied about children's development of that age group. Use examples from the story to analyze the character's physical, cognitive and social/emotional development. Compare to the descriptions of normative development explained in the text – what are the usual developmental indicators of children that age?
o Include relevant theorists in your discussion, e.g. in which stage of Piaget's cognitive development theory is the character, and what are some examples from the story that portray this?
o Make sure that you include a section describing each developmental domain.
• Define major themes of the story and their relevance to the child-reader: why would the reader be interested in these themes
• Examples of diversity portrayed in the book: cultural, linguistic, economic, learning differences
• Accessibility of the story content to children from diverse backgrounds
• Reasons that a child-reader may enjoy/not enjoy this book
• Reasons that you enjoyed/didn't enjoy this book
