The artifact that I found and chose to use was a collection of schoolchildren’s letters addressed to Sidney Baldwin who was the author of Ben of Old Monhegan. The children all read Baldwin’s story and wrote individual letters stating why they enjoyed the book and some even drew pictures for Baldwin. I chose this artifact because it not only was really enjoyable to read all of the letters, but because I also realized that literary criticism starts to occur as early as elementary school.
Literary criticism doesn’t have to start at the college level embedded within a course specifically designed for it. As exemplified in the letters written to Sidney Baldwin, these schoolchildren were already performing (albeit at a very low level) critical reading skills and expressing what they found the most interesting within Ben of Old Monhegan. It’s important to teach critical reading and methods of writing about pieces of literature at an early age; if a student isn’t taught how to read and then talk about what they’ve read and what it meant to them, reading at a secondary education level will prove to be immensely challenging. These letters show the various stages that these children were at when it came to talking about their experience of reading Baldwin’s story, which is important to look at when one is discussing how critical reading develops at an early age.
The letters written to Sidney Baldwin give insight to how children process their experience when reading a specific story, which was Ben of Old Monhegan, in this case. Even though at first glance these letters seem to be for enjoyment, reading how these children interacted with a story can allow for historians and literary critics to get a closer look at how critical reading skills are formed and used within an elementary educational setting. In a different set of letters from a different school setting, perhaps the children wrote about entirely different aspects of Baldwin’s book, or maybe some children expressed dislike for the book; it all depends on the contextual setting that these letters were composed in. Looking at these letters can explain so much more than simply figuring out who was paying attention when the teacher was reading the story. Analyzing early stages of critical reading skills can lead to improvements in teaching literature and can even bring to light a new wave of literary criticism that could be hidden somewhere in the minds of the children who wrote these letters.
And now for some pictures!
