Books For Keeps
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Articles
  • Past Issues
  • Latest Issue
  • Authors and Artists
  • Latest News
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
January 10, 2018/in Two Children Tell /by Richard Hill
This article is featured in BfK 228 January 2018
This article is in the Two Children Tell Category

Two Children Tell: The Reality of Words

Author: Virginia Lowe

Virginia Lowe continues her series examining children’s relationship with language, drawing on recorded observations of her own children’s developing use and understanding of words.

The relationship between external reality and the language used to describe it is often said to be part of the child’s concrete operational stage after about age seven. Any child who has heard a large proportion of their language applied only to stories rather than actual physical things, will understand words’ arbitrary nature, much earlier.

Rebecca rarely asked about words she didn’t know in stories, but would use the words in her play until she was quite sure of their meaning, then ask, out of context:

Rebecca: What does ‘fortnight’ mean? (for instance, from Peter Rabbit, Potter, she 2y5m or two years, five months).

Her non-figurative drawing might be pronounced to be ‘an abstract’ but more often ‘a gong gong’ or some other neologism. ‘I “swapped” me. That means when you bump your head’ (2y7m) or ‘I’m chambering – that means turning over the pages sideways’ (2y10m). These were offered quite earnestly, as words to fill gaps she perceived in the English language. On another accession I told her to stop scratching at her rash. She answered hopefully “I’m not scratching, I’m honing. Is that all right?” (2y7m), this time with a grin, knowing that a renaming would hardly be accepted by her mother as legitimising the action.

She was inspired by our readings of items from Black’s Children’s Encyclopaedia when it was new. She reproduced the register on and off for a whole evening: ‘It was in 1978 that the name “pea” was invented. Before that they just ate peas without a name’ (4y4m). By 4y9m names as words were quite clear in her mind. Her reply to my joke that I was bottling Nick (on my lap) for ‘next winter’ she replied

Rebecca: You can’t. Nick’s a little boy. You can’t eat boys! (pauses, thinking)

Rebecca: Nick’s a boy’s name. You can’t bottle names!

There was even an awareness of style. At 4y11m, she was composing a story and dictating to me. When I read back to her ‘Owls sleep in the day, and hoot up their hooting in the night’, she laughed and said ‘That sounds like something in Dr Seuss’.

Nick had been coached by Rebecca since at least 0y9m, when she explained to him (without his having asked of course) ‘It’s just nonsense, Little Man!’ of a nursery rhyme. Before long, he seemed to understand that the non-pictured part of a book held the words. At 1y1m ‘bird’ was one of the few words he could say. I was reading a chapter book to Rebecca and the word ‘bird’ occurred. He at once came over and looked at the book, presumably to see the picture. However there was none on that opening so he pointed to the written text firmly and said ‘bir’, not as a question but as a statement. He was telling us that ‘bir’ was there in the writing, even if not in a picture. At 2y5m, from across the room he heard John’s loud rendition of a word in the novel he was reading to Rebecca and exclaimed to me ‘Daddy read “crash”!’

By 2y6m he was able to use the concept of a ‘word’ to define what is real, what not. In an authorial-intrusive question, Dr Seuss asks ‘Fish in a tree? How can that be?’ Nick was hearing Hop on Pop for the first time in about a year. He gave the question serious consideration, rather than just laughing or saying it was impossible. He replied ‘It’s just a word!’ His terminology shows that this was not a learned phrase. If asked, his parents’ (and sibling’s) response would have been that it was ‘nonsense’ and he knew the way the nonsense world is created. ‘It’s just a word’. On finding there is no cat and fiddle represented in Oxenbury’s Cakes and Custard (from the library) Nick exclaimed ‘But the words say it!’

These examples of the children’s language awareness demonstrate their understanding that the relationship between words and the things they stand for is tenuous.

Dr Virginia Lowe lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is the proprietor of Create a Kids’ Book, a manuscript assessment agency, which also runs regular workshops, interactive writing e-courses, mentorships and produces a regular free e-bulletin on writing for children and children’s literature generally. Her book, Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two Children Tell (2007) is published by Routledge (978-0-4153-9724-7, £29.99 pbk).

Books mentioned:

Black’s Children’s Encyclopaedia

Hop on Pop Dr Seuss, HarperCollins Children’s Books

Blueberries for Sal Robert McCloskey, Puffin

Cakes and Custard, Helen Oxenbury

, Beatrix Potter, Frederick Warne

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/The-Tale-of-Peter-Rabbit.jpg 800 604 Richard Hill http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bfklogo.png Richard Hill2018-01-10 12:35:332021-11-22 18:10:53Two Children Tell: The Reality of Words
BfK 254 May 2022 Download BfK Issue BfK 254 May 2022
Skip to an Issue:

Related Articles

Two Children Tell: Rebecca and Nicholas recognise an illustrator’s style
BfK 235 March 2019
Two Children Tell: ‘Book, book!’ – Nicholas talks about books
BfK 234 January 2019
Two Children Tell: Invertebrate Encounters
BfK 232 September 2018
Two Children Tell: ‘I Weigh Infinity Metres’
BfK 231 July 2018
Two Children Tell: Filling in the Gaps
BfK 230 May 2018
Two Children Tell: Adventures as Sparrowhawk
BfK 229 March 2018
Two Children Tell: Meeting Monsters
BfK 227 November 2017
Two Children Tell: Nicholas and Grendel
BfK 224 May 2017

About Us

Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.

Read More

Follow Us

Latest News

Peter Bently and Steven Lenton named winners of The Children’s Book Award 2022

June 27, 2022

Shortlist for the 2022 SLA Information Book Award

June 23, 2022

2022 Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Winners Announced

June 16, 2022

Contact Us

Books for Keeps,
30 Winton Avenue,
London,
N11 2AT

Telephone: 0780 789 3369

ISSN: 0143-909X (this is our International Standard Serial Number).

© Copyright 2022 - Books For Keeps | Proudly Built by Lemongrass Media - Web Design Buckinghamshire
Eleanor Farjeon’s ‘books for keeps’ Windows into Illustration: Holly Sterling
Scroll to top