Introduction
It is believed that love towards the reading is considering as a stepping stone for the children to make them enthusiastic learner, confident reader, speaker, and listener as well as writer. Books are the good and great source of knowledge and when the children are reading them, it helps them in their development (10 reasons why books are still important for child development. 2016). In the present time, the internet and computers are considering the main source of knowledge and entertainment for the people. Along with this, the children who are between the age of 7 to 10 are also knowing how to use the internet, operate the phones and other gadgets, etc. From these sources, they have neglected to open the books for the reading of learning (The Importance of Books in Child Development. 2015). So, it is parents responsibilities that they have explained the importance of books to their child so that they can understand that books are one of the good educational sources of learning and development. If the children's ability to understand the essentialness of books than it will improve their imagination and they can better realize the world where they are living. Along with this, with the help of various story, adventure, etc themes based books, the social skills can be well developed in the children and they will learn about relationship and emotions (The Importance of Literacy and Books in Children's Development. 2016). The present study is relating to child readers who may take overt and covert messages from the books. For this, a 7-13 years old age group is taking into consideration and the two children books based on the adventure themes are also considered. The objective that will highlight in the essay is issued in the stories related to gender roles, race, power, social class, violence and cruelty, environment, etc.
Task
The brief description of the stories
Story One: What Katy Did
The author of What Katy Did book is Susan Coolidge. It is a series of The Katy Books and comes under the children literature segments. This book was published in 1872 by Roberts Brother's publisher. The theme of the book is based on an adventure. As per the plot of the story, a 12 years old Katy lives in Burnet, a small midwestern town with her widowed father, three sisters and two brothers (Wall and Crevecoeur, 2016). Her mother is dying four years earlier. Her father is a very busy doctor who is always working for long hours. Due to this, all the children's are caring by her father sister Aunt Lzzie. She is very particular for the things and something of an unpleasant person when the things are not working according to her. Most of the time, Katy is facing the anger of the aunty because of not obeying the instructions. She also dreams that she will do something good and grand in her life such as painting pictures of the famous people, saving the life of drowning people, etc (Mathiesen, 2013). When her mother died, she promised her mother that she will be a little mother to her siblings. But as like the other big sisters, she is sometimes impatient and anger on the younger brother and sisters.
One day, her cousin Helen comes to visit Katy home, she starts to enchanted her cousin beauty and kindness (Wardi,; 2014). After the departure of Helen, she resolves to model herself on her cousin ever afterward. In the next day, Katy quarrels with her aunt in the morning on some of the issue and pushes her little sister so hard that she falls down half a dozen steps. After all this incident, she takes decisions to try out new swing in the woodshed. For this, her aunt forbidden because according to her, the swing is unsafe because one of the supporting staples is cracking. It is very well known by all the parent's children should obey their instruction without making any questions (Saracho and Spodek,; 2010). But in Katy, she refuses to follow the commands of aunt and swings as high as she can and try to touch the roof. The result of this activity is staple gives way and she falls hard on the ground. Now she is bedridden and suffering from high pain. On this situation, Katy cousin suggests her either to learn from this condition or taking the risk of losing her family love from rude behaviour. From this, she takes the decisions to make the room tidy and nice to visit as well as change the behaviour of talk (Davila and Patrick, 2010). After all this incident, she learns the lesson of how the situation has needed to be handled even if you are in pain.
Story Second: The Story of the Treasure Seekers;
The author of The Story of treasure seekers is E. Nesbit and it was published in 1899. The theme of the story is based on adventure and published by T. Fisher Unwin publisher in the UK (Barter and Berridge, 2011). It is a story of the six children Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius who are living with their widowed father. They are helping their father to find out the old and parental fortune to overcome the poorness of the family. The story is narrating by considering the children point of view so that it can be easy to develop their imagination power (Zwiers and Morrissette, 2013). Along with this, it will able the child reader to know that strong willpower of a person never stop him to complete the work which he wants to do it in his life. From the different characters of the story, the children will understand how the decisions can be take in life when the situations are not in favor. The different chapters of the book and the writing style motivate the child reader to complete the book by reading and understand the various situations (Gates, 2011).;
From the above stated both the stories, it has found that it helps the child readers to consider the positive things of the characters and adopt them in life. Along with this, these have improved the imagination power of the children's. Along with this, it has proven that child readers take both positive and negative learning from the books which are sometimes overt and covert for them, in addition to this, the storybooks have also helps in the social and personal development of the children (Maynard, 2010).
Thematic analysis of the key motifs, characters, and events
In the past time, there have many books written by the authors for the children and which have based on various themes. Generally, the major key motifs selected by the writers has an adventure, fantasy, animal stories, princess, magic, etc (McCabe, Fairchild, Grauerholz, Pescosolido and Tope, 2011). For the present two child stories, the themes of both have similar and they are based on adventure motifs. The reason behind preparing the stories on this theme is in the past time, there were no use of internet and other electronic gadgets. The children were only one source to gain knowledge which was books. By these, they learned the things and try to implement in practical life (Dyke, 2010). With the help of this, the child readers were getting good knowledge about the various situations and that make the improvements in the different learning, speaking, writing and presenting skills. So, the themes of both stories have explained the importance to the children readers about the adventure in life. Along with this, they can learn various thing such as decision making, imagination power, reading skills, etc. Therefore, it can be said that adventure based stories have reveled both overt and covert messages to the child readers (Mitchell, 2015).
On the other hand, when a story is prepared or develop, some of the characters have taken birth because, without them, a story is never complete. Without them, the reader cannot be analyzed or determine, what is going in the tale. So, it can be said that characters are the most important part of every narrator (Fisch and Truglio, 2014). When a reader read the story, that time he finds some imaginary beings where a tale is revolving around him. During this, he analyzed and judge the various roles of characters. On the basis of this, he takes the decision whether the narrator is good or bad and deliver any kind of fruitful message or not. In the case of What Katy Did story, the major characters are Katy, his aunt Lzzie and cousin Helen (Elia, van den HeuvelPanhuizen. and Georgiou, 2010). Katy is a girl who is seeing the dreams with the open eyes and thinks that one day she will do something big. But when she faces the pain after falls from the swing, she realizes that she has to change the behaviour otherwise she will lose her family love and affection for always. On the other side, Aunt Lzzie, she is very particular for then things and scolds the children a lot because she does not understand the activities and mode swings of theirs. Beside this, cousin Helen, she is the one who told the Katy to show kindness in the behaviour and be always cheerful because, without it, she will not able to fight with her pain (Smeets and Bus, 2013). So, she helps Katy to adjust to her illness and maintain patience. So, from the analysis, it can be said that the Cousin Helen has made the positive impact on the reader because from her life, the child readers can take the inspiration to adopt kindness, cheerfulness and many other things in the life. Along with this, they also take the lesson about helping others when someone is in the problem or facing any kind of issue.
But in the case of The story of treasure seekers, the role of five children assist the child readers to learn that how to face the situations effectively and make the efforts to achieve the goals of the work. The characters of five children also inspire them to work hard at any stage of life. The narrators of the tale have made a positive impression on the readers and develop an interest to keep the reading the habit over life (Tare, Chiong, Ganea and DeLoache, 2010).
In the case of an event that happens in both the stories have both positive and negative impression on the child reader mind. The event occurs in What Katy Did story, the character Katy behaviour before the accident and after has inspired the readers to always carrying the behaviour of kindness and cheerfulness to handle any type of situation in the life (Gray,; 2010). Along with this, the character of Helen and its lesson to Katy also helps the children to learn to help others. On the other hand, the event happens in The story of treasure seekers that is related to how the bastable children search the fortune and deal with the various difficult situations. Form this, child readers can gain knowledge about how to solve problems effectively (Wolf,; 2014).
From the overall, it can be said that all the stories have some overt and covert message that help the child readers to take from a book. It assists them to learn different things such as helping others in various situation, analyze the problems, take the right decisions, etc. These all overt and covert message from the tales and it has positively affected the development of the children's in both social and personal aspects (Larson,; 2010).
Issues in both the stories
In both the stories, the major issues which have commonly find out that death, bereavement and loss, violence and cruelty. These all have explored from the reading of both the stories. In the first story, it can be seen that the aunt of Katy has scolded the children's when they were not following the instructions of her (Bratton, 2015). It is a kind of violence and cruelty with the children and it affects the mental and physical development of them. It makes them more rude and tough towards other people. On the other hand, the death of a mother in both the stories have shown that not getting the love of the mother make the children rude and they have always looking and expecting the love and affections from the relatives and other elder people. Because of this, it has bring the changes in the behaviour of the child and due to this, they have taken the wrong decisions in their life. On the other hand, from both the stories, it has also determined that the narrators have faced bereavement because of loss of the lovable people in life (Cline and Fay, 2014). The sorrowfulness in the life has affected the mental development of the children because it has bring the negative thoughts in the mind by which they have always thought the same things and does not make concentration on the work. They have always lived in the fear that everyone will leave them someday and they will spend their life alone.
Conclusion
From the above essay, it can be concluded that by which children's gained more knowledge and learn the things. With the help of this, they have the ability to bring improvements in different skills such as writing, reading, imagination, learning, presentation, etc. The stories have the best way to develop the habit of reading in the children. Because it assists them to analyze the things and make the reactions according to them. There have different types of key motifs of the stories such as adventure, fantasy, animal-based, etc. All the tales have some moral by which the child readers can learn them and apply in life. Besides this, the characters of the story have also made impacts on the reader mind that may be negative or positive. The perception of judging the narrators have varied with person to person. Along with this, the mentioned events in the tale has also affected the behavior of the children. Besides this, some times, the stories have also based on the various issues such as gender roles, race, social class, power, attitudes to money, wealth and poverty, homelessness, death, bereavement and loss, romantic and sexual relations, violence and cruelty, the environ