Always a firm believer in the inclusion of a “fun class” to create a well-rounded schedule, I took my first linguistics course, “Children’s Fiction Books,” this past semester. Each week, from 1:15-4:00 PM on Wednesdays, I speed-walked up the hill from the dining hall to the Underhill Library seminar room. There, I was greeted by my wonderful classmates, Swarthmore and Haverford students alike, and our professor, Donna Jo Napoli. 

Each class began with a writing prompt. “Let somebody lose something important.” “Have a person convince themself that a lie is true.” “Why was the door locked?” Something of that nature. From there, we created a three-page story to present the following week. 

I wrote stories about dancing with the moon. About birthday parties. Seasons and loss. Making friends. Daylight savings. Butterflies and bagels. Immortality. Kindness. Each week, my stories would morph and shift in tandem with my imagination. On Tuesday evenings, two of my close friends/classmates and I would meet up in the Science Center or near Crumb Cafe to write together: bouncing ideas off each other and watching stories morph beneath our fingertips. These stories shifted in simplicity from week to week, but were always overflowing with imagination and constantly improving in terms of clarity. 

A section of “Home,” my poem series from week 3 of class

After the prompts were given, we would read a story. Each week, a new person would present a children’s book of their choosing. From the reader’s perspective, the task involved making the text inclusive and exciting. We worked on describing pages concisely but vividly. From the opposite end, it was always quite fun to be able to have a book read to you now and again. My personal reading was of Neil Sharpson’s Don’t Trust Fish. 🙂

Every week, a new pair also presented a presentation on some element of children’s books. Topics included things like “tactile books/braille books,” “concrete poetry,” “bilingual books,” et cetera. Each presentation lasted about an hour and included some sort of full-class activity. I presented on “ the role of words vs. illustrations” with a friend of mine. We were able to do a bunch of fun research about words and illustrations in picture books, early readers, and chapter books, and the importance of accessibility and representation in illustrations. For our activity, we took pages from Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and gave out copies with just words or just illustrations to different groups. Interestingly, the people who had the words created more literal drawings, whereas the people who had the images created more abstract, rhyme-scheme-based written descriptions (yay research!).

Slides from our in-class presentation

From 2:50-3:00, we would always have a quick break, so my friends and I would walk to the Science Center Cafe and grab a snack–fruit, dumplings, cereal bars, fortune cookies–before returning to class for the writing circle. 

Writing circles typically involved the class splitting into two 6 person groups (with an occasional full-class reading). Within the groups, each person would be allotted eight minutes. Within that time, they would read their story, then the rest of the group would give feedback. The feedback segment was always interesting, as it was meant to be directed as though the author was not in the room. Everyone was very kind, but was very direct and honest with their advice. (ex. “I think the author could have used a better rhyme here.” “I liked this story, but I struggled to follow it because I could not figure out what type of creature the main character was.” “The word choice felt a bit too mature for the intended audience here.”) Notably, in the case of my story, Butterflies and Bagels, the feedback was more like, “What type of person orders bacon, egg, and cheese on a chocolate chip bagel? (I do. Shoutout to the Swarthmore Coop and their bagels). Nonetheless, I digress. I feel that, through this method, everyone was able to gain incredibly valuable insight into how to improve their writing and how to become a more helpful critic. A win-win situation. 

This course was also significant in terms of professional advancement. My wonderful professor actually sent one of my books, “Tick Tock,” for review at a publishing office that she was connected with, and told me that she would send in another one that I had worked on, “The Moral Dilemma,” once it was completed. I had never thought about publishing children’s literature before taking this course, but the writing that we worked on for this course may have convinced me otherwise…

Unique to other courses I have taken at Swarthmore, we also had three major out-of-class events that we were required to attend.

1. A talk given by Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. I was able to talk to her afterwards during her book signing, and her talk was genuinely awe-inspiring. 

Haben Girma talk information

2. A talk given by Gene Mirus and Joshua Beckman about visual storytelling for children, particularly with regard to stories in sign languages. After the talk, we walked to Broad Table Tavern in the Ville and got dinner with the speakers and Melanie, the ASL professor at Swarthmore, covered by the linguistics department.

Free Shirley Temples, Calamari, and Bacon Cheeseburger >>>

Really good food and my lovely friends in the class 🙂

3. Our end-of-class party was on Sunday, November 25th. Donna Jo made an Italian pound cake and a chocolate cake, and we all read our final stories to one another. 

Children’s Fiction Books was certainly one the the most unorthodox classes I have ever taken. However, I am certain that, when I look back on the courses that shaped my life, this one will have a seat at the forefront. Through it, I was able to engage with such an incredible group of people, and I would not trade my experiences in this class for the world.