Towards The Reformation of The Child: A Study of Zoe and Janet Graham’s My Grandma Is a Witch (Published)
Children are precious gifts from God and so they are seen as the root of love binding families together. In many parts of Africa, any family without children is assumed not complete yet. This is why men and women who are married do anything to have children. In many parts of Africa, women who have no children for their husbands are derided. In most cases, their husbands are under pressure to marry another wife just to have children. Those who have children are happy. However, it is better for a family not to have a child than to have children not trained; untrained children are threats to parents and to the society at large. The researchers are of the view that literature is an indispensable means of educating the child. The researchers see the structural approach as the appropriate theory for analyzing the paper. They have explored Graham’s My Grandma is a Witch and have observed that the authors have used apt method of characterization as a means of educating the child.
Keywords: Characterization, Didactic, Graham, children, children’s literature
Of Deception and Dogma: The Delusive History behind Nursery Rhymes. (Published)
This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life.” (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.)Children’s literature is essentially a literature of deception. Just as Aesop’s Fables preach moral truths in the guise of fables, many nursery rhymes born of contemporary socio economic turbulence, bespeaks of trauma, murders, gore, sexuality or death through the apparent lucidity of nursery rhymes. Just as Rossetti’s Ferry Me across the River may be read as a deep philosophical poem on Death and the Final Passage over the river Lethe, her Goblin Market (often read as a children’s rhyme) bespeaks of homosexuality and hides a feminist subtext. From Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, often included in the domain of children’s fiction to Philip Pullman’s Dark Matter Trilogy for children permeates with its re-readings of Anti- Christian ideology, it is hardly surprising that most nursery rhymes have meanings deeper than the reach of their intended audience. So the question arises-
“How and why do people tell a lie? One useful approach to addressing this question is to elucidate the neural substrates for deception. Recent conceptual and technical advances in functional neuroimaging have enabled exploration of the psychology of deception more precisely in terms of the specific neuroanatomical mechanisms involved. A growing body of evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex plays a key role in deception, and some researches have recently emphasised the importance of other brain regions, such as those responsible for emotion and reward. However, it is still unclear how these regions play a role in making effective decisions to tell a lie” (Nobuhito, Abe).
How the Brain Shapes Deception. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US) But deception arises with a need for concealment, here, in the case of nursery rhymes, often to hide the more obnoxious dimensions of the truth. An obvious choice is to tell an outright lie, but it is also possible to deceive others by avoiding the truth, obfuscating the truth, exaggerating the truth, or casting doubt on the truth. Just as these processes are useful in deceiving others, they can also be useful in deceiving the self. Why would people deceive themselves? What is the mental architecture that enables the same person to be both deceiver and deceived? How does self-deception manifest itself psychologically? And how far do its roots travel into nursery rhymes are some questions that intend to be addressed in this paper.
Keywords: Black Death, London Fire, Medieval prostitution, Nursery Rhymes, Paedophilia, Slave Trade, children’s literature
Iranian Lifestyle Reflection in Six adolescent’s Novels (Published)
In most novels for teens in Iran, one or more major or minor characters of the story are adolescents who each have their own speech and behavior. It seems that the authors pay attention to Iranian life style in the novels primarily to draw attention of adolescents to the text and secondary to reflect Iranian life style in their text. In this paper, lifestyle of teenage characters in the text of teenage novels during 2010– 2012 based on the pattern of Iranian lifestyles is analyzed with regard to the four indexes (traditional, leisure, cultural and managerial-care). The findings of the content analysis show that all indexes of Iranian life style are noted in young adult novels, and the most attraction was directed to the traditional index. In addition, the use of indices between girls and boys is different in the novels.
Keywords: Adolescent, Gender, Iran, Lifestyle, children’s literature, novel