I. Reading Comprehension (30%). Read each of the following passage and choose the one best answer for each question. Questions 1-3 Sometimes, says Robert Coles in his foreword to Ellen Handler Spitz s Inside Picture Books, the most obvious and important aspects of our lives go unnoticed. Readers devoted to the study of children s literature will be surprised to learn that the unnoticed things he means here are books for children, that we have paid relatively little attention to what our sons and daughters read (or hear read), and to what moral and psychological consequence. The saddest and most infuriating aspect of Inside Picture Books is that its author seems to share Cole s mind-boggling ignorance of our discipline. 1. Which of the following would be the most possible place this passage appear? (1) Letter to the Editor (2) Feature Column (3) Book Review (4) Personal Interview 2. The author s attitude toward Spitz s book is (1) explicitly critical. (2) implicitly suspicious. (3) generally supportive. (4) explicitly friendly. 3. According to the author, Coles s prefatory comments for Inside Picture Books (1) acknowledge Spitz s effort to examining the aspects children s literature discipline ignored. (2) undermine Spitz s insights toward children s literature. (3) address readers not paying attention to books for children. (4) contribute to Spitz s unawareness of children s literature. Questions 4-6 Global publication of children s literature speaks to a limited dimension of internationalism, as used throughout the professional literature of children s books and library services to young people. The term describes broader commercial activities related to worldwide publishing, marketing, and exchange of literary works written for children. Dankert gives additional definitions appropriate to my purpose. Internationalism refers to the exchange of knowledge and research results among children s literature professionals. It also refers to international understanding promoted through children s books; it reflects the desire (and resulting activities) to promote this understanding using the medium of children s books.
Advocates of children s literature internationalism, as a catalyst for world understanding, have long spoken out. Proponents have sustained this objective as a means to advancing mutual respect among all peoples of the world. Writing in the shadow of World War I, Lofting, for example, in 1924 proposed promoting world friendship through children s books. He urged professionals to reject literature whose keynote is racial animosity or that presents militarism favorably. 4. What is this passage mainly about? (1) Describing Lofting s advanced view on children s literature internationalism. (2) Raising the importance of children s literature internationalism. (3) Broadening the views on international children s literature. (4) Presenting the reasons for and against international children s literature. 5. Which of the following is NOT a statement made by the author about children s literature internationalism? (1) It is initially brought up after WWI by writers like Lofting. (2) It would diminish ethnic hostility. (3) It evolves along the time. (4) It applies to both academics and practitioners. 6. How does the author feel about the definition she attributes to Dankert? (1) She is totally sympathetic to Dankert s. (2) She is basically objective to Dankert s. (3) She approves of Dankert s partially. (4) The passage does not say. Questions 7-10 The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) is to Italy what Alice s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is to Britain: the pivotal nineteenth-century masterpiece of the nation s children s literature, the classic that set an indelible stamp upon the culture of adults as well as children. Both works were enormously successful in their own day, have remained in print ever since, have been translated around the world, have inspired innumerable other versions, on stage, in film, through television, and have generated multifarious by-products. Both the central characters have acquired a mythic status as iconic images of individualism in childhood. The two narratives can be termed pivotal since they embodied, first, an abrupt detachment from a long-established tradition in writing for children, now perceived as belonging to a former culture, and, second, a dramatic departure in a radical new direction leading to the twentieth century and to modernism. The authors, Lewis Carroll and Carlo Collodi (both pseudonyms), usually inhabited the world of adult intellectual activity, but are most noted by posterity for their children s classic. There are, indeed, many parallels between the two writers and the two books; however, while Collodi may have been generally influenced by the new mood of humorous writing for children which, in Italy, was described as English, his is as powerfully individual a voice as Carroll s, and it is that of the conscious reformer. Both writers have motivated academic industries in their own countries, but while the analysis of Alice is familiar territory in Britain, Pinocchio is less often scrutinized.
7. The author implies which of the following conclusion? I. Both of the books represent a new trend in terms of writing style. II. Collodi was generally inspired by Carroll s witty English writing style. III. Both of the authors are more recognized by their contemporaries with adult books. (1) I and II only (2) I and III only (3) II and III only (4) I, II, and III 8. Which of the following is closest in meaning to pivotal? (1) essentially original (2) highly experimental (3) vitally important (4) imminently acute 9. According to the development of passage, which would be the LEAST possible direction for the paragraphs that follow? (1) Elaborating with examples on the similarities and differences between the two protagonists. (2) Citing the findings of scholarly research on the two authors. (3) Arguing with the focus upon Carroll and his Alice. (4) Arguing with the focus upon Collodi and his Pinocchio. 10. What does the conscious reformer refer to in the second paragraph? (1) Collodi s voice (2) Carroll s voice (3) Englishmen s and Italians voice (4) Carroll s and Collodi s voice Questions 11-15 The battle against the marginalization of children s literature within the academic mainstream is an old one, and the current wealth of books with titles joining children s books and literary theory attest to attempts to bridge the seriousness gap. However, there is another blindness at the heart of the literary enterprise that must be addressed if the significance of both the texts and readers of children s literature are to be recognized. As theorists explore the implications of the multiplicity of readership and the influence of sociocultural constructions on response to fiction, so the site of interaction between readers and texts requires a perspective that includes a continuum of experience that begins in childhood. While critics of children s literature use theory to argue the case for children s literature, theoreticians in general seem slow to use children s literature, despite its relevance. Children s literature still remains beyond the range of most literary studies, and I argue here that the distance that now exists will persist, given both the absence of a consideration of those particular texts and multiple, socially constructed readers. The transformation of critical theory over the last few decades has meant that theory needs children s literature. As theorists move from a textual emphasis toward the interplay between reader and text and the social and political forces that mediate those interactions, so the part played by texts written primarily for children and the ways of reading available to children, within a web of discourses that both encourage and control interactions with fictional texts, need to be included and examined. Thus, we, as specialists, must contribute to a broader picture of the social constructedness of readers and the implications of the discourses surrounding fiction in the development of response.
11. This passage is mainly about (1) how multiple readership and texts of children s literature can pour insight into literary theory. (2) how children s response can transform into literary theory. (3) how literary theoreticians begin to address children s literature (4) how specialists can help shift the academic mainstream from literary theory to children s literature. 12. The author s attitude toward children s literature critics is (1) explicitly stimulating (2) implicitly scornful (3) implicitly informative (4) explicitly discouraging 13. The phrase attest to in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to which of the following? (1) demonstrate (2) manifest (3) refuse (4) testify 14. According to the author, the gap between children s literature and literary theory is caused primarily by (1) the marginalization of children s literature. (2) the despise of childhood experience. (3) the ignorance of interplay among texts, readership, and the sociocultural influence. (4) literary theoreticians use children s literature slowly. 15. The author says that the blindness at the center of the literary theory lies in (1) the failure to transforming critical theory. (2) the failure to examining the site of interaction between readers and texts. (3) the absence of textual emphasis. (4) the absence of texts and multiple, socially constructed readers. II. Summarizing (20%). Write a short Chinese summary of the following passage. You should find the main ideas of the text and express them in your own words; do not simply translate portions of the English text. Your summary should be no longer than 100 words. In most picture storybooks, the stories are told twice, once through text and once through illustration. The reader can comprehend such stories either through the words or through the pictures. Vandergrift called these books twice-told tales. Since both the texts and the illustrations of twice-told tales tell the same stories simultaneously, they employ parallel storytelling. Conversely, there exists a subset of picture storybooks for which the reader must consider both forms of media concurrently in order to comprehend the books stories. Books belonging to this category employ interdependent storytelling. A classic example of the twice-told tale is Robert McCloskey s Blue Berries for Sal. Each event of the story is depicted both in words and art. For example, the text of one two-page spread reads: Her mother went back to her picking, but Little Sal, because her feet were tired of standing and walking, sat down in the middle of a large clump of bushes and ate blueberries. The corresponding illustration shows Sal in the foreground sitting amid some blueberry bushes picking a berry. In the background, Sal s mother leans over a patch of blueberries, her right hand reaching toward a blueberry.
The difference between twice-told tales and interdependent tales lies in the interplay between text and illustration that occurs in any picture storybook. Sipe called this interplay synergy. Synergy reveals a more meaningful story than the mere summation of the story that the text tells plus the story that the illustrations tell. In interdependent tales, synergy plays the primary storytelling role, and without considering the synergy between words and pictures, a reader cannot discern the book s story. Interdependent story telling has become increasingly common over the last forty years. This late development corresponds with a heightening of illustration complexity and with a trend toward an increasing role of illustration in picture storybooks. As Schwarcz and Schwarcz explained: In the second half of this century, new forms of composition, arrangement, assemblage, and integration have been invented and applied. In the course of this development, the role of the illustrator has become continually more variegated and more important. III. Translations (30%). Translate the following passage into Chinese. 1. Children s literature is beyond growth. Stories go beyond race, beyond religion even when they are about race and religion. The book speaks to individuals in an individual voice. But then it is taken into the reader s life and re-created, re-invigorated, re-visioned. That is what literature is about. (15%) 2. Perhaps one of the reasons we all find stories so satisfying is that stories, both invented and true ones, are like a thin layer torn from part of the globe rounded, incomplete circles evolving into spirals and always open-ended. (15%) IV. English Composition (20%). Write an English composition (approximately 100-150 words) giving your reaction to the following statement: I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. -C. S. Lewis You can accept or reject the statement, or consider arguments both for and against it, or offer an alternative perspective on the issue. Be sure that you clearly explain and briefly defend your view.