Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Rhetorical Criticism

School Psychology International, 2017

The introductory article to this special edition of School Psychology International, “Using Children’s Literature to Strengthen Social and Emotional Learning,” describes the need for a broader base of support for children’s mental health needs. Both nationally and internationally, the limited number of mental health professionals demands alternative options for the delivery of mental health services. Schools are recommended as one proposed venue for providing these services to children and youth. As such, teachers need easy-to-use basic information about mental health resources that are viable, yet rely on minimal professional support and supervision. One option is bibliotherapy, using books and stories to support social emotional needs. From the mental health perspective of both prevention and intervention, bibliotherapy is proposed not just as a professional’s therapeutic tool, but also as a layman’s resource to address students’ basic social emotional needs. We offer resources fr...

Cognitive Development, 2000

Ninety children's books (half for 3 ± 4-year-olds and half for 5 ± 6-year-olds) were analyzed for references to mental state in three ways: (a) via words and expressions in the text, (b) via the pictures, and (c) via ironic situations. Books for older children were significantly longer than the books for younger children, and overall, they included both a higher frequency of mental state references and a wider variety of such references. However, the rate of textual references to mental state was high for both groups, with a mental state token occurring on average every three sentences in books for both age groups. Moreover, the rate at which new types of mental state references appeared was also high; about every second token represented a new type of mental state reference. Pictures typically failed to represent independently the mental state concepts expressed in the text, but pictures and text together conveyed situational irony in over one-third of the books. Thus, mental state information was largely conveyed via words and irony. These findings suggest that storybook reading may provide even young children with a rich context for developing an understanding of mind.

2014

The purpose of this research is to expose and complicate those discourses of childhood imagination as demonstrated in the diagnostic criteria for early onset schizophrenia by using an antipsychiatry perspective. This will be done by evaluating those discourses alongside those found in popular children’s literature, specifically, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, Bridge to Terabithia, and A Wrinkle in Time. Once uncovered, the underlying power discourses were then exposed. This research will then employ a minor reading as provided by Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) approach to minor literature to demonstrate the ways in which the child can subvert those dominant discourses. The potential of literature is evaluated for its ability to provide alternative modes of experience and lines of flight for the child subjected to the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia.

Academic Psychiatry, 2018

2010

without whose support, great association and knowledge of technology, this thesis would not have been completed. Moreover, I want to express my appreciation to all my other friends whose love and continual encouragement has inspired me on this long journey.

Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism

Tourism is often regarded as an opportunity to “get away” and “escape;” a time for rest and relaxation and “getting away from it all.” Traveling to new places is also thought to be an important “classroom” for children. Traveling to new places was a theme in books by the famous children's author and illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel (who published under the name “Dr. Seuss”). Whilst Dr. Seuss had numerous hardships in his life including a prolonged illness, no children, and his first wife's suicide, he wrote books that were considered uplifting and fun to read. In the Dr. Seuss book “Oh, the places you'll go!” he wrote “you're off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so….get on your way!” The idea that children should feel free to visit great places, experience life to its fullest, and feel safe seems on the surface to be axiomatic. Sadly, this is not the experience for all children. Taking a whole tourism systems approach, this paper outlines...

Study and Scrutiny: Research on Young Adult Literature

Young adult literature has never shied away from taboo topics, particularly if the topics effect or concern adolescents. Recent studies have indicated that one fifth of the American population, about 50 million people including children and adults, live with some form of mental illness (Horwitz, 2002, 83). Mental illness is clearly an issue that impacts young people, yet there are very few examples of authentic representations of characters with profound mental illness in young adult (YA) literature. There have been several YA literature texts that feature protagonists with psychological or behavioral conditions that are relatively common in adolescence, including depression and eating disorders. Because these conditions are understood and recognized in popular culture, they are generally portrayed with relative accuracy, awareness of individualized experiences, and sensitivity to potential readers who may have personal experience with them. These books successfully tackle once-taboo topics and allow the readership to connect, relate, sympathize, and gain awareness. The lesson for these readers is: you are not alone and you can get through it. However, when the mental illness happens to be less understood, particularly in the case of schizophrenia, a troubling trend occurs. Ross (2008) explains that schizophrenia "is a disease that is very much misunderstood and therefore often feared and/or belittled, trivialized, and even demonized" (p. 1022). While his discussion is specifically referring to schizophrenia as perceived by the general population, it also applies to how it is treated in

"Connecting through stories can do much to help young people and adults counter the feelings of fear and anxiety that shadow childhood. In a 2007 article, I suggested that ‘crossover’ books—or stories that readers of all ages have adopted as their own (Beckett, 2009; Falconer, 2009; Harju, 2010) hold great potential for encouraging meaningful conversation between children and adults about difficult themes. In this paper, I discuss how a small, intergenerational reading group made meaning of death and grief experiences by sharing their responses to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (2002) and The Graveyard Book (2008). I highlight the book talk that took place between myself, a mother, and her eleven year-old daughter examining our “lived through experiences” of story engagement (Rosenblatt, 1938/1995). I demonstrate the kind of ‘grand conversation’ (Peterson & Eeds, 1990), or, open, honest and reciprocal talk that was prompted by our responses to death, fear and anxiety in these and other crossover books. Additionally, I reflect on the ways we worked through such difficult subjects by sharing these stories and telling some of our own (Eeds & Wells, 1989; Sumara, 2002). This discussion of ‘the promise of unhappiness’ in childhood speaks to the greater significance of story sharing by illustrating the importance of talking through experiences with death, grief, mortality and other troubling truths with children. Sell (2002) proposes that we seek out stories because, above all, “literature gives its readers the experience—not just an illusion—of being not alone in the world” (p. 12). Knowing that we had company in the dark certainly helped our reading group face the things that continue to terrify us."

Doctoral Thesis, 2019

Toula's doctoral thesis on how Young Adult mythic heroic fantasy fiction can be used to reframe and illuminate positive health messages to young readers. The thesis provides the theoretical foundation of Toula's Universal transpersonal teaching and counselling method: Story Image Therapy (SIT)®. Her doctoral artefact is now published as Shadows of Sylvaheim - available on Amazon and Feather Knight Books.

2008

This article provides a rationale and related practical suggestions for using literature as a support system for social-emotional development as children cope with the stresses, anxieties, and feelings of loss that can occur in family life.