Based on the essay, compare the dreams of the author and her mother. Support your answer
with relevant and specific details from the essay.
Question 5 is an open-response question.
• Read the question carefully.
• Explain your answer.
• Add supporting details.
• Double-check your work.
Answers
Explanation:
The book George and Martha (as well as all of the other books in the series), by James Marshall, is in most ways a typical case prototype. The reading level that is assigned to the book is for ages four through eight. Each book is divided into five stories, and the stories are about two hippopotamuses that are best friends and act like humans. Each of the stories starts with a title page that has bold yellow bubble letters. As the pages are turned the left hand page has the print for the story and the right hand page has the illustration for that portion of the story. This is very much typical case prototype—very consistent, very simple in both a visual and a reading sense. And each story is short in length endorsing the idea that children get bored easily.
All of the illustrations are simple—basically white backgrounds with bold black outlines and three or four colors used to emphasize certain parts of the images (namely grey, green, yellow, and red). The pictures tell the story of everything that is going on, which makes it more or less unnecessary for a child to be able to read in order to understand what is going on in the story. In fact, the pictures include almost no object in that is not directly involved in the story, meaning there is nothing used in the background of the pictures to fill the space.
The story is as simple as the illustrations using little or no complex language or difficult vocabulary. The story, however, is not told using rhyming endings or any kind of rhythm in the sentence structure, which is less typical case prototype, even though plenty of children’s literature does not utilize rhythm or rhyme. The story also includes only two characters (save the image of the dentist in the last story). There are no other characters introduced which also keeps the story simplified.
George and Martha supports many of the assumptions posed with typical case prototypes; in some cases the story even supports two opposing assumptions about children. The assumption that children like books about fantasy is supported in that the main characters are animals that have the characteristics of humans—they are hippopotamuses walking around on two feet, wearing clothes, and talking to each other. At the same time, the assumption is made that kids are so egocentric they only like literature to which they can personally relate. While the main characters are animals, everything else about the book is based very much in a reality they can understand. George and Martha live in a world like ours, where everyone lives in houses, cooks meals, takes baths and goes to the dentist. The issues brought up in the book are even those to which children could relate, such as: not liking split pea soup but having to eat it, losing something that is dear to you, irritating habits that friends have, or invasion of privacy. These are all concepts that a child can understand, and therefore it fits this typical case prototype as well.
The book is extremely didactic. Each story ends with the moral that is presented in it, and the morals are very plainly stated in no uncertain terms. There is no real room for coming up with one’s own ideas or opinions on how the presented situation should be dealt with, because the answer is given—the writer’s view of the issue at hand is almost shoved in the face of the reader. In some ways, a child who thinks beyond simply what the book is telling him/her, might look at what takes place and determine how he/she might have dealt with that situation, but so many people treat reading as such a passive activity that they simply would not occur to them to look any farther than what is directly presented.
Though the book seems so simple at first glance, it might also be argued that the book brings up more adult issues in the sense of right and wrong, such as in the story in which George is peeking through Martha’s window when she is in the bathtub. Now, on the surface this is an issue presented and treated in that it is wrong to invade one’s privacy, but looking at it more deeply might be suggesting peeping-toms and a much more sexual elements of invading privacy than is obvious at first, and that is certainly not a typical case prototype. Nor is the response that Martha has when she realizes that George is peeking in her window, which is to dump the bathtub on his head and yell at him; that could be construed as a violent reaction. The story of the mirror brings up the issue of vanity or even pride. George deals with Martha’s pride in her own appearance by pasting a funny picture on her mirror to trick her into not looking at it anymore. That is a scenario that may be funny to children, but it may also be looking at the more “adult world” of the seven deadly sins for instance—pointing out the negative tendencies of the human being.
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