The book that I introduced to the children is called The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat. Children were impressed by the illustrations and responded with positive adjectives that emphasized how they loved the artwork. Namely, they said, “the story is really interesting, and the pictures were cool,” and “I also loved the pictures.” In the discussion of the story, children expressed their love for the main character by saying, “I loved how cool is Beekle. He traveled alone and went on the big adventure to find friends.”
In order to prompt curiosity and engagement among children, I asked them to pay close attention to illustrated actions and asked guiding questions. In the beginning, the story introduces the setting of the imaginary world and the main character Beekle. Therefore, I decided to energize children by asking if they had an imaginary friend of their own. Although my strategy raised children’s excitement about the book and reading, I think it would have been beneficial to add more open-ended questions.
I learned that kids are excessively impressionable and curious about the stories that are being read to them. Their understanding of the story sequence, characters, places, and time is inevitably interconnected with their personal realms. They were convinced to a certain point that the story had taken place somewhere in this day and age with kids of approximately their age, which can be understood from their desire to befriend the main characters. For the second reading of the story, I would like to add additional questions about the illustrations that I did not cover previously. I want to discuss the shapes of imaginary friends and the mechanics behind the inner world of the story, such as summoning imaginary friends and trying to play an associative game.
Interestingly, some words were new to the children, but they were able to distinguish their meaning by themselves. This falls under the same expertise made by Houston-Price et al. that children 4-6 years of age could give accurate definitions for the novel words within the stories (Horst & Houston-Price, 2015). Consequently, it is possible to understand that unconsciously children approach books as a material for deepening their knowledge and applying their already formed understanding of the world to expand it.
Children were still enthusiastic about the story being read to them. They started to look forward to hearing it for the second time and said, “I really want to hear how Beekle made friends” or “I want to hear the Beekle’s adventure again.” In this iteration, I dedicated more time to expanding on the discussions of the illustrations and the setting of the book in order to prompt their curiosity with the new discussion and introduce new words with it to enrich their vocabulary. One child decided to approach the discussion of the setting with creativity, and the other started to express skepticism that the story was a simple fantasy.
At the same time, the activity involving the writing of a short story about how children would have liked to meet their imaginary friends was introduced to prompt creative skills and literary mastery over their available vocabulary. I feel that the props worked well with the goal of expanding their mastery over the language. Children were able to elicit the main concept of the story about the meaningfulness of friendship and socialization.
It can be said that children were eager to label each character that was seen in the book and describe their personality traits or personal thoughts of what they were. This demonstrates that high-quality illustrations stimulate the labeling narrative by the child and aligns with the research of Potter and Haynes that expository narratives allow more points for interaction, discussion, and labeling for the children (Strouse et al., 2018). For the next session, I would like to develop additional ideas about the story and try to expand upon the social values of friendship.
The duo interpreted the story with more emphasis on friendship and shared their opinion by saying that “I want a friend like Beekle that will do anything for me.” In this session, I tried to have a different approach to the story and add a little more to the abstract understanding of what is friendship to the children. Namely, I tried to nourish the importance of apologies into the reading by asking questions such as what if Beekle and their friend were to get in a fight. Although, I think it is fairly difficult to add impersonal values of friendships, and I would have liked to give a more comprehensive scenario for the proper introduction of the question.
The story is inspiring and instigates the adventurous spirit of children. Therefore, I think it is necessary to discuss which parts of the story could be real and which were not to avoid dangerous situations. According to the recent research, “4- to 8-year-olds were more likely to state that an improbable event is impossible than to accept an impossible event as possible” (Shtulman and Carey in Strouse, 2018). In relation to Ohio Standards, the documentation demonstrates that children are able to associate the illustration with the ongoing actions of the story and describe it. This falls under the reading comprehension quality of Ohio early learning language and literacy standards and aligns with the mastery described within the guidelines (Ohio, n.d.). The props suggested by the assignment were interesting and easy to implement, but more expansion on possible suggestions for the discussion might have allowed a smoother learning experience. In my opinion, the practice of repeated reading was beneficial for the children and helped their development in multiple dimensions.
References
Horst, J. S., & Houston-Price, C. (2015). An open book: What and how young children learn from picture and story books. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1719.
Ohio Department of Education. (n.d.). Ohio’s early learning & development standards: Birth to kindergarten entry.
Santat, D. (2014). The adventures of Beekle: the unimaginary friend. First edition. New York; Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Strouse, G. A., Nyhout, A., & Ganea, P. A. (2018). The role of book features in young children’s transfer of information from picture books to real-world contexts. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 50.