Let the little children listen

Amanda at Wittingshire has a great post on Sayers on Children, in which she observes a point with which I identify strongly. Amanda states that in her house, “we [adults] talk over our children’s heads all the time, and eventually they begin chiming in. We read poems and passages of prose that are over their heads, and they like the sound even if they don’t catch the meaning – and already I’m seeing the rhythms of good prose coming out in their own young attempts at essays.” While my children are yet too young to write essays I do observe the enjoyment children obtain from good literature.

As a mother of two who is also involved in full time study I realise that I am often exposing my children to literature that is beyond their means of comprehension. My children will regularly ask, "What are you reading, mama? What does it say?" and will then listen keenly as I read a portion of a text from my university text list. The language is inevitably over their heads and the plot is often complex. Yet, as Amanda has observed, the children enjoy the prose or poetry and take from it what they can. Whether it be an appreciation of the melody created by the words, a sense of rhythm, an image which livens the imagination, or the basics of the plot, children appreciate good literature.

My youngest was exposed to Paradise Lost, when he was four. He would sit listening wide-eyed as I recited heavenly battles to him and while it was impossible for him to understand the language, he absorbed the drama and asked a multitude of questions. He then discussed the Cyclops of the Odyssey -- we skipped the very gruesome parts -- and Ulysses with me when he was five and kindly lent me his Cyclops character toy for a university tutorial. He is now keenly interested in The Hobbit and enjoys the elements of high fantasy which spark his imagination and enliven his play.

My eldest son is fascinated with transport. As is our custom in the school holidays the boys choose a book, a classic, for us to read together. This little man, spying maps and boats within the pages, was drawn to Gulliver’s Travels by the promise of experiencing Gulliver’s many adventures by sea. He insisted upon me reading the Oxford version to him while he looked at the pictures in the children’s version, saying he wanted to “hear the whole story in the real words.” While I read Swift’s novel and laugh at the satirical portrait’s of society, Master 7 appreciates the funny people, the transport, and the adventures.

My boys also enjoy theatre and opera. In fact, it is my youngest who adamantly insists that I play “the song that the statue sings to the naughty man,” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, over and over again. It is a powerful aria, full of passion and drama. My little man does not speak or understand Italian. He does not understand the words sung. But he enjoys the dramatic tension, the passion, and the music and he is sure to reprimand me if I play a different aria – he can tell the difference.

What I truly see evidenced in my children’s enjoyment of these texts is encapsulated in a quote from Dorothy Sayers which Amanda cites at the end of her post. “Children”, Sayers states, are “the only audience perhaps in the country whose minds are still open and sensitive to the spell of poetic speech…the thing they react to and remember is not logical argument, but mystery and the queer drama of melodious words.”

This so true!

I would love to hear about the books, plays, or poems your children enjoy or even those you do. Which books, poems or plays sing to you or your children with the “mystery and…queer drama of melodious words?” I’d love to know.

But for now, if you will now excuse me, I must go and read to my children.