This report requires a critical analysis of the use of language and presentational features, within two texts, written for children. A further report will follow to show how one of these texts could be used in the classroom. Chosen Text The two texts chosen for analysis are The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister and Hairy Maclary’s Rumpus at the Vet by Lynley Dodd. Marcus Pfister, a Swiss author, published ‘The Rainbow Fish’ in 1992, which is his best-known book to date. His work is famous for the graphics that he uses.
Lynley Dodd, a New Zealand Author published ‘Rumpus at the Vet in 1989, which is part of a series of the ‘Hairy Maclary’ books.
I chose these two books after reading them to a year two class with amazing response from the children. Although the class reacted well to both books, their response was different to each book. During the reading of The Rainbow Fish, the children made noises of pleasure as they looked at the pictures.
They also showed signs of sadness and delight as the story progressed from The Rainbow Fish not having any friends, to making many new friends. When reading ‘Rumpus at the Vet’, the children found the story, which is told in verse, very amusing. Both books are aimed at younger children, but I imagine very young children and older ones would love these stories too.
Style of the books The colourful illustrations and shiny paper caught the children’s eye in ‘The Rainbow Fish’. The story tells of a beautiful fish that loved to be admired.
The beautiful fish meets a smaller fish who wants one of his shiny scales, and the Rainbow Fish will not give him one. As a result, the other fish will not play with him. The Rainbow Fish then becomes lonely and decides to give the small fish one of his scales.
Then other fish ask him for a shiny scale and as he liked the feeling of making the first fish happy: he gives all his scales away except one that he keeps for himself. After this, all the fish want to play with him and he is very happy. The author is trying to portray to the reader that is better to give, than receive. The moral of the story is not to be selfish and people will give respect in return. There is a theme of friendship running through the book with an underlying message that sharing can give feelings of delight. Also, the theme of ‘pride before a fall’ runs through the story.
‘Rumpus at the Vet’ is well illustrated, with amusing pictures that help to tell the story. Dodd relies on humour and the use of ‘funny names’ to capture her audience, such as; Custard the Labrador, and Noodle the poodle. The names help the children to relate to the pets. For example, custard describes the colour of the dog and Noodle rhymes with poodle. Rumpus at the Vet, tells an amusing story through rhyme, about a vets waiting room. The pets in the waiting room get up to all sorts of antics that the children find very funny.
Techniques used Rumpus at the Vet has many rhyming couplets that help to create a snappy rhythm, for example: Down from the vets, There were all kinds of pets, with troubles and woes from their ears to their toes. Using short words gives the story a fast pace which helps convey a sense of fun. To get the humour across, the text needs to be read quickly with lots of expression. This would be difficult for an inexperienced reader so I imagine that it was intended to be read by an adult. ‘The Rainbow fish’ could also be appreciated by all ages. The Rainbow Fish is not told in rhyme but the author conveys images and themes through the use of descriptive language to help with the story setting, to create vivid images. For example;
A long way out in the deep blue sea there lived a fish. Not just an ordinary fish, but also the most beautiful fish in the entire ocean. His scales were every shade of blue and green and purple, with sparkling silver scales among them. Pfister describes the ocean and the fish fully using quality adjectives such as, deep blue sea, beautiful fish and blue and green and purple, accompanied by pictures for visual effect. Rumpus at the Vet also has many adjectives to describe the pets and the use of alliteration adds to the humour e.g. cantankerous cats, rickety rats, Barnacle Beasley and Cassie the cockatoo.
Neither book has many metaphors or similes to enhance the text. The authors may think that similes and metaphors are too complex for young children and use other techniques to enhance the text so that young children can appreciate them. The Rainbow Fish has a simile at the end: “happy as a splash” to describe how the rainbow fish feels. Although appropriate to the story, I do not feel that this is a very good example. Rumpus at the Vet has one metaphor; “Grizzly MacDuff with bottlebrush tail” I feel this is a good example as it describes his tail very well and has a picture to help the children, as they are probably not familiar with the term bottlebrush. Onomatopoeia is used in ‘Rumpus at the Vet’ “so she gave it a TWEAK” by using this technique, the word is emphasised by sounding like ‘a tweak’ and is written in capitals for further emphasis. Onomatopoeia is often used in children’s books to help associate sound words with nouns or verb actions.
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