The Animals of Farthing Wood - review

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Amelia Cairns        Page         09/05/2007

The Animals of Farthing Wood

This book has been written as a source of enjoyment, for children to read. The pragmatics behind the book and how it is written is that it aids children to learn to read and understand how to handle reading a slightly more advanced reading book (for ages 5 to 7). It also helps the child how to learn to follow what is written down on a page, reading the words from left to write, to the end of the line, and then to the beginning of a new line – it helps develop familiarity with story structures and conventions. It also builds vocabulary and literary discourse at an appropriate level for the age group. These are essential skills for children to have when reading in the future, so must be taught to them at an early age.

By naturally engaging the child in an interactive activity – reading the book with a parent or carer, this can give them social skills – interaction and understanding of events with people around them or familiar to them, and even new people. This can then be taken on into older stages in their life, where they develop more advanced social skills, and because they are socially developed, they can get on in the world. According to Kay E Vandergrift, a Children’s Literacy researcher, ‘An acquaintance with and an understanding of literary characters is one of the first ways a young child has of making sense of what it is to be human.’ She also believes that ‘Today's children are bombarded by a constant stream of visual images from their earliest consciousness. In this environment, picture books are often a child's first introduction to fine art as well as to popular culture.’ In the case of ‘The Animals of Farthing Wood’ the book is a step further than a picture book. The book still contains pictures, but is more advanced, encompassing more writing along with the pictures and containing a main plot and several different characters and events.

In the story, the main semantic field is that of animals; ‘Fox’, ‘Badger’, ‘Tawny Owl’ etc. This is educational for the child, teaching them the different animal names, which they can then relate the names to the physical drawings and illustrations of the animal. The story has many negative connotations attached to certain words; ‘the animals’ homes were being destroyed’, ‘The pond was filled in and the animals had no water to drink’. The picture related to this text shows the child the animals running away from this danger and destruction – fitting in with the text content. This helps involve the child in the story, and make their own mind up about the situation and how they feel about it. I think most children are likely to react with sympathy for the animals and then, really want to find out if they escape or not – immediately keeping the child’s interest in the developing plot.

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The animals in this story are treated as though they are all human and have human qualities. They can all speak; ‘”What can we do?” Cried Badger’, this gives them a voice straight away which means they have to have a personality, which is slowly developed for the child, to show how the different animals all have different personalities and ways of thinking. This can illustrate to the child, the diversity of peoples personalities in real life and maybe help them deal with different people differently. They each have a unique identity, which the child may come to be aware ...

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