Early Childhood Literacy & Purple Prose

*Shaggy Dog Story Alert*

A Confession

I must confess that I have a fondness for purple prose–although not, of course, in contemporary writing. Perish the thought! Writing of the florid persuasion must stay strictly a nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century affair.

A Little Backstory

When my mother was writing a family history of her matrilineal line, several years ago now, she made a point of telling me how important education had been to her mother’s parents. They had worked very hard to ensure that both of their children–my grandmother Velma and her brother Fred–had the opportunity for a university education. Unlike some at the time, my great-grandparents wanted Velma and Fred to escape the family farm in Economy Point, Nova Scotia.

Given how important education was to Velma, I thought I’d supplement my mother’s family history by checking into some online archives to see what specifics I could find about her  studies.

I learned that Velma earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction from Dalhousie University in 1918, with a major in biology and a minor in English.  After earning a teaching certificate and teaching for a year in rural Colchester County, Velma set off for Toronto in 1919 to train as a librarian.

Where Early Childhood Literacy Comes In

Imagine my surprise when I found not only the entire curriculum for Velma’s librarianship training, but whom she had studied under–including none other than Clara Whitehill Hunt, whose work as the children’s librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library was influential in promoting the importance of public libraries to ensure that children have access to the best available books.

Whitehill’s accomplishments also included overseeing the design of the world’s first library built solely for children and chairing the American Library Association committee that established the John Newbery Medal for children’s literature in 1921.  Was I ever impressed!

Where Purple Prose Comes In

Just out of curiosity, I searched Internet Archive to see if Clara Whitehill Hunt had written any books. Sure enough, she had. I found a full-text version of What Shall We Read to the Children, published in 1915, which includes this gem of a paragraph:

The baby’s first taste of poetry should be given not later than a month after he alights, trailing his clouds of glory and with the music of his heavenly home attuning his ears to a delight in rhyme and rhythm long before mother’s songs convey word meanings to his mind. There never was a normal baby born into this world who did not bring with him a love for poetry; and the fact that so few adults retain a trace of this most pure delight points to the need of conscious effort on the parent’s part to foster the child’s natural gift.

Where the Point of This Post Comes In

What is most striking to me about Hunt’s book is how closely her ideas for supporting the intellectual development of babies and young children align with those of early childhood educator Jennie Fitzkee in her blog A Teacher’s Reflections.

In fact, the first chapter of What Shall We Read to the Children (which starts with a young mother’s falling victim to a door-to-door salesperson) fits Jennie’s descriptions of “emergent curriculum” to a T:

This close alignment has led me to ask where reading aloud as emergent curriculum falls on the historical continuum for early childhood education.

And now that I think about it, are young children drawn to purple prose? Does it help or hinder their ability to make word pictures in their minds? I’d think it would be a hindrance, but I could be wrong!

A Bonus: Spoken Word Poetry Isn’t Just for Babies Anymore

Have a listen to slam poet Jack McCarthy’s performance of his poem “Careful What You Ask For” to see what I mean. I had the pleasure of listening to him perform several of his poems at an in-person poetry slam. He went on to win the competition. (Sadly, he passed away in 2013. Here is a link to his commemorative website, if you’d like to know more about his work: https://standupoet.net/)

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Sources

Province of Nova Scotia, “Pass List, 1918: University Graduates’ Testing Examinations,” in “Being the Semi-Annual Supplement to the Report of the Superintendent of Education for Nova Scotia,” supplement, Journal of Education, 3rd ser., IX, nos. 1918-19 (April 1918): 85, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112106949099;view=1up;seq=239.

Clara Whitehill Hunt, “The Poetry Habit,” in What Shall We Read to the Children (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 14-15.

“Treasures of Childhood: Books from the Hunt Collection of Children’s Literature, Curated by Leonard S. Marcus,” Brooklyn Public Library, accessed March 17, 2019, https://www.bklynlibrary.org/events/exhibitions/treasures-childhood-books.

“The Department of Education Training School for Librarianship, 1920,” Ontario Library Review and Book Selection Guide V, no. 3 (February 1921): 2.