Personal Value of Literature for Children

• Literature for children leads to personal fulfillment and academic gains.

Separating the values into personal and academic is an intellectual distinction.

Personal Value of Literature for Children

• Enjoyment

• Imagination and Inspiration

• Knowledge and Insights

• Understanding and Emphathy

• Heritage and Cultural Identity

• Moral Reasoning

• Literary and Artistic Preferences

Enjoyment

The most important personal gain that good books offer to children is the most obivious one - ENJOYMENT.

Imagination and Inspiration

Through the vicarious experience of entering a world different from the present one, children develop their imaginations and stories about people, both real and imaginary, can inspire children to overcome obstacles, accept different perspectives and formulate personal goals.

Knowledge and Insights

Good books offer both information and wisdom. Informational books provide factual knowledge (realistic

fiction, fantacy and poetry) offer insights into life.

Historical fiction and biography offers both information and wisdom.

Understanding and Emphathy

Literature helps young people gain an appreciation of the universality of human needs across history.

Walking in someone else's shoes often helps children develop a sense of social justice and a greater capacity to empathize with others.

Heritage and Cultural Identity

Stories are the repositories of culture.

Knowing the tales, characters, expressions, and adages that are part of our cultural heritage is part of being culturally literate.

Appreciation for what history is and for the people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who made history.

Moral Reasoning

Moral reasoning is an integral part of character education, a strans in the social studies curricula of many elementary schools today,

Literary and Artistic Preferences

Children who read regularly from a wide variety of of children's books soon develop their own personal preferences for type of books and select favorite authors and illustrations.

This serves as "power reading motivators"

The more children know about their world the more they discover about themselves - who they are, what they value, and what they stand for.

Academic Value of Literature for Children

Academic Value of Literature for Children

Reading

Writing

Content-Area Subjects

Art Appreciation

Regular involvement with excellent and appropriate literature can foster language development in young children and can help them learn to read and value reading.

National Reading Panel (1997)

Components of instruction considered to be essential to the teaching of reading:

• Phonemic Awareness

• Phonics

• Reading Comprehension» Fluency» Vocabulary Instruction