Children’s literature is an area of study that was not explored until a few decades ago.

The interest has

been concentrated upon the appropriateness of a particular text to be included in the genre. However,
not much has been explored as far as the response of children and the reception of some of the canons
of the genre are concerned. In the case of Children’s Literature, the most popular books for children are
collections like Aesop’s Fables and Panchatantra. These collections have stood the test of time and
hence, can be considered classics for children in the true sense. Children’s literature is very vast genre
that has existed since thousands of years and yet it still persists to exist and is quite popular. The stories
for children not only teach the hard realities of life but also highlight the various customs that are
followed in the different parts of the world, those parts which are the birth place of that particular
literary text. The customs and traditions that are followed in the East are quite contrastive to those that
are being followed in the West. The literature that is being created for children needs to keep in mind
the mental ability of children to grasp things that are part of those texts. The children have a different
way of interpreting things as compared to adults. Thus, the writer has to understand and then create
literature specifically suiting the children. The children respond to children’s literature in different ways
depending upon their geographical location and the difference in their time periods of existence which
makes the study of Children’s Literature a contrastive approach based on not only the literature being
created but also the way in which it is responded to by the child. ii The first chapter deals with the
evolution of the genre beginning from the oral tradition and lasting till the very recent creation of visual
literature which appeals children of the modern world. The second chapter talks about all the theories
of Psychological and Cognitive development and the tools that reader response theories provide in
order to analyze the texts chosen for the purpose of this thesis. The third chapter discusses the
Panchatantra as a classic of the East. It talks about the reason why the collection has been able to stand
the test of time and also explores the change in the reception and response of the young readers
through the generations. The fourth chapter deals with the Aesop’s Fables likewise and discusses the
reasons why after the passage of thousands of years this collection is still popular and is considered a
classic from the West. The fifth chapter deals with The Jungle Books and explores the various responses
that it gets in the East and West respectively on the basis of the basic themes that exist within the
collection. The sixth chapter talks about a relatively recent collection of Ruskin Bond, Children’s
Omnibus. With the help of the various child protagonists the chapter discusses the response of the
modern day child to the things in the text both in the East as well as the West. iii The seventh and final
chapter is the conclusion and tries to navigate through the years and across continents to analyze the
popularity of the texts and also understand the reason for varied responses of the children.

Children’s fiction : introduction

It is hard to envision a world where there are no books for children. There have

been children’s stories and folk-tales from the time when man first learned to speak. The

earliest form of children’s literature which the world is familiar with today was first

meant for adults. In order to talk about children’s literature it is first important to
understand what it actually is. “It is impossible to say where literature starts and where it

ends….Literature wants to be everything – but beside itself. As a result, the question

today is no longer… ‘What is literature?’ but rather, ‘What is not?’” (Hollier 25) This

considerably widens the span of what may be included in the genre. However, in the

present context one needs to simply understand children’s literature and not literature in

the broader sense. This can be understood to a great extent by simply tracing its history.

defining children’s literature is very subjective and in fact, not an easy task. This is so because the
definition of the term varies based on the different perceptions of the people around the world and
what they deem appropriate for children. In other words, the boundary between what is considered to
be children’s literature and what is not, is very often quite blurred. Since always, literature has been
around for the young and adults alike. It has been observed that the adults take the help of stories and
tales in order to keep the 2 children occupied and also to instil good manners in them. In other words,
literature has been playing the role of a mentor and disciplining the children by posting examples in
front of them to observe and learn from. Stories that are handed down from one generation to the next
connect us to our past, to the roots of our specific cultures, national heritage and general human
condition. Stories are the repositories of culture. Knowing the tales, characters, expressions and adages
that are part of our cultural heritage is part of being culturally literate. In addition, stories based on
actual events in the past help young people to gain a greater appreciation for what history is and for the
people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who made history. According to Aspects and Issues in the
History of Children's Literature from the International Research Society for Children's Literature,
anywhere in the world, the development of children’s literature undergoes the same course of
development. Irrespective of its current stage, all children’s literature begins with oral stories, poems
and songs. In the initial stage, the stories that were adapted for children were direct remodeling of
stories which were meant for adults. Later, however, they started to be created keeping children in
mind as the primary audience. This was done to educate, instruct and entertain them. Therefore, the
existence of children’s literature can be traced back to stories and songs that were part of a wider oral
tradition of storytelling that adults, quite magnanimously, shared with children before the existence of
publishing. It is difficult to trace the history and development of children’s literature before the
invention of printing. However, even after the spread of printing, many classic children’s tales were
adapted for a younger audience even though they were initially intended for adults. This cleanup or
relabeling and repackaging of stories began since most of these stories were full of descriptions of
things that we would not today consider fit for children to read, such as gory violence, sex and crime. In
this context a critic named Sarah Collazo points out the chief characteristics of children’s literature.
According to her a good children’s book, first of all should have illustrious illustrations. She further
points out that stories intended for children should have a poetic quality, not necessarily rhyming but
use of “colours as rich as the sea” (Collazo 86) to weave a tale. The presence of happy humour is also
imperative. She strongly argues that no one wants to read a depressing children’s story. The presence of
charismatic characters adds to the happy humour in the stories. Finally, the stories should also have a
parental appeal. Unless the parents approve of a book, chances are that the children may never get to
read it. The late 19th and early 20th centuries came to be known as the “Golden Age of Children’s
Literature” as this period included the publication of many books acknowledged today as classics.
However, it was only in the second half of the 18th century that children’s literature materialized as a
discrete and independent form of literature. Before that it had only been in an embryonic stage.

In his work titled Thoughts Concerning Education which was published in the year 1693, John Locke
provided the philosophy that children are blank slates and are waiting to be filled. The unique
philosophy propounded by Locke was that all children have equal potential to learn and hence can learn
almost similarly. He strongly countered the belief that heredity had anything to do with the potential to
learn. He further propounded that all children were born with and equal capability to learn and it is the
responsibility of the adults to provide a proper environment for this learning to take place. Things that
Locke included as part of necessary education were moral coaching, good breeding and manners,
wisdom and a dedication to serve the country. He did not consider fairytales and folktales as being part
of useful knowledge. He cautioned against the frightening nature of fairy tales and encouraged stories
belonging to everyday life. In the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher became an
influential person in the field of children’s literature. He emphasized the moral development of a child
and wrote about it in his book titled Emile which was published in 1762. The philosophy which he
propagated in his book encouraged other writers of children’s literature to adopt a more didactic
approach in their works. They did that with the help of simple stories with moral lessons. Due to this
focus on moral lessons a revival of old folktales was brought about. The themes and language of such
literature is intentionally kept simple so that they can be easily understood by children. The choice of
words is simple and the words are purposely shortened and simplified. Such intentional simplification of
language, especially when addressing children, is known as motherese. Two researchers named Bryant
and Barrett suggest that motherese is a linguistic entity that universally exists across all cultures in the
world and is also a species-specific adaptation. In other words, in all species the mothers deliberately
simplify their own language in order to communicate effectively with their children and this practice
gradually fades away with the growth of the child. Motherese or baby talk, as it is commonly referred to,
is basically of two types, infant-directed speech (IDS) and child-directed speech (CDS). They are non-
standard forms of speech used by adults in talking to infants and adolescents. The usage of this kind of
language helps the adults in bonding with the children. The children feel the adults to be a part of their
world as they more or less speak in the same language. Also, children pick up words more easily and
often put those to correct use themselves by listening to the adults. Since the language is simple so the
ideas that are put forth by the story teller in the story are easily understood by the children and hence,
the children are able to imbibe whatever these stories have to offer which is actually the main intention
behind creating these stories. From the time of oral storytelling children’s fiction has been a medium
through which the elders have been ensuring society building. In other words children’s literature has
not just been a medium of instruction; it has always performed a bigger function of shaping the type of
society that the elders are going to raise through the current generation of the young. Since literature is
used to frame society so it is nothing else but a reflection of the society itself. The literature that is
available to the children today is more concerned with ‘edutainment’ which is what the rapidly changing
and evolving mindscape of the child demands.
Understanding the Theories of Developmental Psychology and Reader Response Criticism through
Cultural Criticism In order to conduct any kind of research on Children’s Literature, it is first important to
understand that who is the real child today? Children above the age of twelve are not considered
children any more. They have a better understanding of things and the intricate concepts explored in
their literature today. That is why a new term coined for them is ‘Young Adult’. Hence, the child and the
children’s literature that today’s world is most concerned with are for children who are either twelve
years or below. The reason is that there is a gap in understanding and innocence between the ones who
are below the age of twelve as opposed to those who are called ‘Young Adults in today’s world. Since
the assumption is that the children who are below the age of twelve are comparatively more innocent,
the narrative strategies used to create literature for them are also comparatively simpler. “In the
nineteenth century, the work of Charles Darwin had a deep impress on the narratives of childhood. His
theory raised certain questions 32 Children’s Literature is a broad construct that exists all over the world
and has been in existence since a very long time. There are somewhat similar stories and concepts
explored in it irrespective of time and place. However, since the culture and environment in each era
and place is different, the children do not respond to the same thing in the same manner all the time.
The difference in the reception and response of the children to children’s literature in different time
periods and in different continents makes this study a contrastive approach where the contrast is not
only between the literatures but also between the reception and response of this literature among the
children. “But part of the challenge for the children’s literary critic is to recognize that texts are mutable
– that meanings change, that different groups of readers may see different things, and that what grown-
ups find as ordinary items of experience may transform, in the child’s imagination, into monstrous
brilliance.” (Lerer 3) This clearly demonstrates that children and adults perceive things differently and
hence, in order to make successful literature created specifically for children, a writer needs to
understand the likes and preferences of the children. Moreover, children are also different owing to the
differences in their culture and their era. Therefore, in order to understand how each child responds
differently to similar concepts and stories simply because he or she belongs to a different time period or
a different place, one needs to try and understand the working of these minds. For this purpose a little
background of child psychology is essential. “Child psychology is one of the many branches of
psychology and one of the most frequently studied specialty areas. This particular branch focuses on the
mind and behaviour of children from prenatal development through adolescence. Child psychology
deals not only with how children grow physically, but with their mental, emotional and 33 social
development as well. Historically, children were often viewed simply as smaller versions of adults. This is
why it was evidently very difficult to draw a clear line between children’s literature, young adult
literature and adult literature.” (Wikipedia.org) “It is also called child development. The study of the
psychological processes of children and, specifically, how these processes differ from those of adults,
how they develop from birth to the end of adolescence, and how and why they differ from one child to
the next. The topic is sometimes grouped with infancy, adulthood, and aging under the category of
developmental psychology. As a scientific discipline with a firm empirical basis, child study is of
comparatively recent origin. It was initiated in 1840, when Charles Darwin began a record of the growth
and development of one of his own children, collecting the data much as if he had been studying an
unknown species. A similar, more elaborate study published by German psycho-physiologist William
Preyer put forth the methods for a series of others. In 1891 American educational psychologist G.
Stanley Hall established the Pedagogical Seminary, a periodical devoted to child psychology and
pedagogy. During the early 20th century, the development of intelligence tests and the establishment of
child guidance clinics further defined the field of child psychology.” (Lerer 259) “This development in
children is also termed as cognitive development which is primarily concerned with the ways that
infants and children acquire, develop, and use internal mental capabilities such as: problem solving,
memory, and language. Major topics in cognitive development are the study of language acquisition and
the development of perceptual and motor skills. Piaget was one of the influential early psychologists to
study the development of cognitive abilities. His theory suggests that 34 development proceeds through
a set of stages from infancy to adulthood and that there is an end point or goal.” (Wikipedia.org)
“Modern cognitive development has integrated the considerations of cognitive psychology and the
psychology of individual differences into the interpretation and modeling of development. Specifically,
the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development showed that the successive levels or stages of
cognitive development are associated with increasing processing efficiency and working memory
capacity. These increases explain differences between stages, progression to higher stages, and
individual differences of children who are the same-age and of the same grade-level. However, other
theories have moved away from Piagetian stage theories, and are influenced by accounts of domain-
specific information processing, which posit that development is guided by innate evolutionarily-
specified and content-specific information processing mechanisms.” (Lancia 89) Moreover, the
psychology of the child plays a very important role in the reception of a book so the writers have tried to
cater to this, consciously and unconsciously while structuring their stories so as to be able to attract the
innocent reader. A children’s book, at times, reflects the ideologies of the culture in which it was written
and embodies that period’s assumptions about children and appropriate behaviour. Consequently,
children’s literature more often embodies adult concerns and concepts of childhood rather than topics
children might choose for themselves. However, this ideology is also changing with the change in the
perception of the children themselves. The twin purposes of instruction and delight have long been
accepted as the primary goals of children’s literature. 35 In order to understand the intricateness of why
the children respond so differently to similar concepts that are explored in their literature it is important
to understand the workings of their minds. There are several psychologists who have come up with
several theories and attempted to understand the workings of the delicate minds with in depth analysis
and scrutiny. Since each mind is different therefore, none of these theories are expected to produce
absolute immaculate results. Nonetheless, they are a step in the direction of trying to understand the
responses of children across centuries and continents. The first among them is a German born American
developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. “Erikson’s greatest innovation was to
postulate not five stages of development, as Sigmund Freud had done with his psychosexual stages, but
eight, known as ‘The Eight Stages of Man’. He then later added a ninth stage in his book The Life Cycle
Completed. Erik Erikson believed that every human being goes through a certain number of stages to
reach his or her full development, theorizing eight stages that a human being goes through from birth to
death. Erikson elaborated Freud’s genital stage into adolescence, and added three stages of adulthood.
His widow Joan Serson Erikson elaborated on his model before her death, adding a ninth stage which
she called ‘old age’, taking into consideration the increasing life expectancy in Western cultures. Erikson
is also credited with being one of the originators of Ego psychology, which stressed the role of the ego as
being more than a servant of the Id. According to Erikson, the environment in which a child lived was
crucial to providing growth, adjustment, a source of self-awareness and identity to the child.”
(Wikipedia.org) 36 “Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development build upon the successful completion
of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as
problems in the future. However, mastery of a stage is not required to advance to the next stage.
Erikson’s stage theory characterizes an individual advancing through the eight life stages as a function of
negotiating his or her biological forces and socio-cultural forces. Each stage is characterized by a
psychosocial crisis of these two conflicting forces. If an individual does indeed successfully reconcile
these forces, he or she emerges from the stage with the corresponding virtue. For example, if an infant
enters into the toddler stage with more trust than mistrust, he or she carries the virtue of hope into the
remaining life stages.” (Reynolds 88) These stages are as follows: Approximate Age Virtues Psychosocial
Crisis Significant Relationship Existential Question Examples 0-2 years Hopes Basic trust v/s mistrust
Mother Can I trust the world? Feeding, abandonment 2-4 years Will Autonomy v/s shame and doubt
Parents Is it okay to be me? Toilet training, clothing themselves 4-5 years Purpose Initiative v/s guilt
Family Is it okay for me to do, move and act? Exploring, using tools or making art 37 5-12 years
Competence Industry v/s inferiority Neighbours, School Can I make it in the world of people and things?
School, sports 13-19 years Fidelity Identity v/s role confusion Peers, Role model Who am I? What can I
be? Social relationships 20-24 years Love Intimacy v/s isolation Friends, Partners Can I love? Romantic
relationships 25-64 years Care Generativity v/s stagnation Household, Workmates Can I make my life
count? Work, parenthood 65-death Wisdom Ego integrity v/s despair Mankind, My kind Is it okay to
have been me? Reflection on life It is clear by the above table that we are concerned with only the first
four stages of Erikson’s theory. The first stage of Erik Erikson’s theory centers around the infant’s basic
needs being met by the parents and this interaction leading to trust or mistrust. Trust 38 as defined by
Erikson is “an essential truthfulness of others as well as a fundamental sense of one’s own
trustworthiness.” (Erikson 22) The infant depends on the parents, especially the mother, for sustenance
and comfort. The child’s relative understanding of the world and the society comes from the parents
and their interaction with the child. If the parents expose the child to warmth, regularity, and
dependable affection, the infant’s view of the world will be one of trust. However, if the parents fail to
provide a secure environment and to meet the child’s basic needs a sense of mistrust will result.
Development of mistrust can lead to feelings of frustration, suspicion, withdrawal, and a lack of
confidence. “According to Erik Erikson, the major developmental task in infancy is to learn whether or
not other people, especially primary caregivers, regularly satisfy basic needs. If caregivers are consistent
sources of food, comfort, and affection, an infant learns trust and grows up with the feeling that others
are dependable and reliable. If they are neglectful, or perhaps even abusive, the infant instead learns
mistrust or that the world is an undependable, unpredictable, and possibly a dangerous place. While
negative, having some experience with mistrust allows the infant to gain an understanding of what
constitutes dangerous situations later in life.” (Erikson 251) If we take the example of Cinderella here
then we see that since she suffered from lack of love since the very beginning so she was unable to trust
anyone that easily. Her step-mother and step-sisters were men and cruel to her because of which her
primary friends were little birds and animals. Further in the story when the Fairy Godmother presents
herself to her then she is unable to trust her as well since no one has ever shown 39 any kindness to her
before. However, she does believe her once she witnesses her magic. This marvellous and magical
makes her believe that anything is possible. As the child gains control over eliminative functions and
motor abilities, they begin to explore their surroundings. The parents still provide a strong base of
security from which the child can venture out to assert their will. The parents’ patience and
encouragement helps foster autonomy in the child. Children at this age like to explore the world around
them and they are constantly learning about their environment. Erikson says that caution must be taken
at this age while children may explore things that are dangerous to their health and safety. In Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory the family that little Charlie belongs to is very poor but they all love each
other and make do somehow. When he wins the Golden Ticket to visit Mr. Willie Wanka’s Factory his
family is very supportive. His grandfather even offers to go with him. Due to this love and support
Charlie is not afraid to explore and venture into the unknown. “At this age children develop their first
interests. For example, a child who enjoys music may like to play with the radio. Children who enjoy the
outdoors may be interested in animals and plants. Highly restrictive parents, however, are more likely to
instil in the child a sense of doubt, and reluctance to attempt new challenges. As they gain increased
muscular coordination and mobility, toddlers become capable of satisfying some of their own needs.
They begin to feed themselves, wash and dress themselves, and use the bathroom.” (Lancia 89) “If
caregivers encourage self-sufficient behaviour, toddlers develop a sense of autonomy—a sense of being
able to handle many problems on their own. But if 40 caregivers demand too much too soon, refuse to
let children perform tasks of which they are capable, or ridicule early attempts at self-sufficiency;
children may instead develop shame and doubt about their ability to handle problems.” (Buckley 458)
“Initiative adds to autonomy the quality of undertaking, planning and attacking a task for the sake of just
being active and on the move. The child is learning to master the world around them, learning basic
skills and principles of physics. Things fall down, not up. Round things roll. They learn how to zip and tie,
count and speak with ease. At this stage, the child wants to begin and complete their own actions for a
purpose. Guilt is a confusing new emotion. They may feel guilty over things that logically should not
cause guilt. They may feel guilt when this initiative does not produce desired results.” (Wikipedia.org)
“The development of courage and independence are what set preschoolers, ages three to six years of
age, apart from other age groups. Young children in this category face the challenge of initiative versus
guilt. As described in The Developing Child by Bee and Boyd, the child during this stage faces the
complexities of planning and developing a sense of judgment. During this stage, the child learns to take
initiative and prepare for leadership and goal achievement roles. Activities sought out by a child in this
stage may include risk-taking behaviours, such as crossing a street alone or riding a bike without a
helmet; both these examples involve self-limits.” (homeofbob.com) “Within instances requiring
initiative, the child may also develop negative behaviours. These behaviours are a result of the child
developing a sense of frustration for not being able to achieve a goal as planned and may engage in
behaviours that seem aggressive, ruthless, and overly assertive to parents. Aggressive behaviours, such
as 41 throwing objects, hitting, or yelling, are examples of observable behaviours during this stage.”
(Watson 52) “Preschoolers are increasingly able to accomplish tasks on their own, and can start new
things. With this growing independence comes a bunch of several choices about activities to be pursued.
Sometimes children take on projects they can readily accomplish, but at other times they undertake
projects that are beyond their capabilities or that interfere with other people’s plans and activities. If
parents and preschool teachers encourage and support children’s efforts, while also helping them make
realistic and appropriate choices, children develop initiative- independence in planning and undertaking
activities. But if, instead, adults discourage the pursuit of independent activities or dismiss them as silly
and bothersome, children develop guilt about their needs and desires.” (Wikipedia.org) In the Harry
Potter series, once Harry reaches Hogwarts he gets more love and attention than he has received
before. Not only does he get adequate food and sleep but also the company of loving friends around
him. The Harry that lived in little Whinging in Surrey was quiet and self conscious. However, at Hogwarts
he becomes self assured and confident. Erikson says that love and affection make a child capable of
handling several problems on his own. Harry and his friends also tackle many big and small issues on
their own and gradually grow and evolve into better and more confident individuals. The aim to bring a
productive situation to completion gradually supersedes the whims and wishes of play. The
fundamentals of technology are developed. To lose the hope of such ‘industrious’ association may pull
the child back to the more isolated, less conscious familial rivalry of the Oedipal time. 42 “Children at
this age are becoming more aware of themselves as individuals.” They work hard at “being responsible,
being good and doing it right.” They are now more reasonable to share and cooperate. (Allen and
Marotz 203) Psychologists also list some perceptual cognitive developmental traits specific for this age
group. Children grasp the concepts of space and time in more logical, practical ways. They gain a better
understanding of cause and effect, and of calendar time. At this stage, children are eager to learn and
accomplish more complex skills: reading, writing, telling time. They also get to form moral values,
recognize cultural and individual differences and are able to manage most of their personal needs and
grooming with minimal assistance. At this stage, children might express their independence by talking
back and being disobedient and rebellious. “Erikson viewed the elementary school years as critical for
the development of self-confidence. Ideally, elementary school provides many opportunities for children
to achieve the recognition of teachers, parents and peers by producing things like drawing pictures,
solving addition problems, writing sentences, and so on. If children are encouraged to make and do
things and are then praised for their accomplishments, they begin to demonstrate industry by being
diligent, persevering at tasks until they are completed and putting work before pleasure. If children are
instead ridiculed or punished for their efforts or if they find they are incapable of meeting their teachers’
and parents’ expectations, they develop feelings of inferiority about their capabilities.” (Erikson 23) “At
this age, children start recognizing their special talents and continue to discover interests as their
education improves. They may begin to choose to do more activities to pursue that interest, such as
joining a sport if they know they have athletic 43 ability, or joining the band if they are good at music.” If
not allowed to discover own talents in their own time, they will develop a sense of lack of motivation,
low self-esteem, and lethargy. They may become ‘couch potatoes’ if they are not allowed to develop
interests. In the movie Frozen the elder of the two sisters, Alsa is born with the power to make snow.
However, she is asked by her parents to thwart her power and “Conceal it, don’t feel it.” But, by
accident her powers are revealed in front of everyone which gives her the freedom to explore the
strength of her powers. It is then that she realizes that she do great things with her talent. Before she
was withdrawn and lived in a shell but now she can be herself and hence, becomes more confident.
Children also grow into better individuals if they are given the freedom to pursue their talents and skills
of choice with freedom. “One value of this theory is that it illuminates why individuals who have been
thwarted in the healthy resolution of early phases such as in learning healthy levels of trust and
autonomy in toddlerhood had such difficulty with the crises that came in adulthood. More importantly,
it did so in a way that provided answers for practical application. It raised new potential for therapists
and their patients to identify key issues and skills which required addressing. But at the same time, it
yielded a guide or yardstick that could be used to assess teaching and child rearing practices in terms of
their ability to nurture and facilitate healthy emotional and cognitive development.” (Wikipedia.org)
“Every adult, whether he is a follower or a leader, a member of a mass or of an elite group, was once a
child. He was once small. A sense of smallness forms a substratum in his mind, ineradicably. His
triumphs will be measured against this 44 smallness, his defeats will substantiate it. The questions as to
who is bigger and who can do or not do this or that, and to whom—these questions fill the adult’s inner
life far beyond the necessities and the desirabilities which he understands and for which he plans.”
(Wikipedia.org.) “The next theory is of Burrhus Frederic Skinner, better known as B.F. Skinner. He was an
American psychologist, behaviourist, author, inventor and social philosopher. Skinner called his
particular brand of behaviourism ‘Radical behaviourism’. Radical behaviourism is the philosophy of the
science of behaviour. It seeks to understand behaviour as a function of environmental histories of
reinforcing consequences. Such a functional analysis makes it capable of producing technologies of
behaviour. This applied behaviourism lies on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum as the field of
cognitive science. Unlike less austere behaviourism, it does not accept private events such as thinking,
perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism’s behaviour.”
(Wikipedia.org) “This can be illustrated by understanding that what is felt or introspectively observed is
not some nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life but the observer’s own body. This
does not mean that introspection is a kind of psychological research, nor does it mean that what are felt
or introspectively observed are the causes of the behaviour. An organism behaves as it does because of
its current structure, but most of this is out of reach of introspection. At the moment one must content
with a person’s genetic and environment histories. Certain collateral products of those histories are
introspectively observed.” (Wikipedia.org) 45 “In this way one repairs the major damage wrought by
mentalism. When what a person does is attributed to what is going on inside him, investigation is
brought to an end. Why explain the explanation? For twenty five hundred years people have been
preoccupied with feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more
precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role led in the first place to mental
fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise.”
(Wikipedia.org) “Skinner stood at the opposite position from humanistic psychology for his whole
career, and denied humans possessing freedom and dignity as well as evidenced in his novel Beyond
Freedom and Dignity. Most of his theories were supposed to be based on self-observation, which caused
him to become a supporter for behaviourism. Much of this self-observed theory stemmed from
Thorndike’s Puzzle Box, a direct antecedent to Skinner’s Box. The psychologist further expanded on
Thorndike’s earlier work by introducing the concept of Reinforcement to Thorndike’s Law of Effect.
Skinner was an advocate of behavioural engineering and he thought that people should be controlled
through the systematic allocation of external rewards. Skinner believed that behaviour is maintained
from one condition to another through similar or same consequences across these situations. In short,
behaviours are causal factors that are influenced by the consequences. His contribution to the
understanding of behaviour influenced many other scientists to explain social behaviour and
contingencies.” (Wikipedia.org) “Reinforcement is a central concept in behaviourism, and was seen as a
central mechanism in the shaping and control of behaviour. A common misconception is that negative
reinforcement is synonymous with punishment. This misconception is rather 46 pervasive, and is
commonly found in even scholarly accounts of Skinner and his contributions. To be clear, while positive
reinforcement is the strengthening of behaviour by the application of some event, for example, praise
after some behaviour is performed, negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behaviour by the
removal or avoidance of some aversive event, for example, opening and raising an umbrella over your
head on a rainy day is reinforced by the cessation of rain falling on you. In other words, by raising an
umbrella since rain stops to fall on you so the fact that when it rains one should raise an umbrella is
reinforced in a person.” (Watson 241) “Both types of reinforcement strengthen behaviour, or increase
the probability of a behaviour reoccurring. The difference is in whether the reinforcing event is
something applied, that is positive reinforcement or something removed or avoided, that is negative
reinforcement. Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behaviour, or decreasing the
future probability of a behaviour’s occurrence, by the application of an aversive stimulus or event which
means positive punishment or punishment by contingent stimulation, removal of a desirable stimulus or
negative punishment or punishment by contingent withdrawal, or the absence of a rewarding stimulus,
which causes the behaviour to stop and is also known as extinction.” (Wikipedia.org) “Skinner also
sought to understand the application of his theory in the broadest behavioural context as it applies to
living organisms, namely natural selection. Part of Skinner’s analysis of behaviour involved not only the
power of a single instance of reinforcement, but the effects of particular schedules of reinforcement
over time. The most notable schedules of reinforcement presented by Skinner were interval and ratio. In
both instances they were either fixed or variable.” (Wikipedia.org) 47 “Continuous reinforcement is
constant delivery of reinforcement for an action; every time a specific action was performed the subject
instantly and always received reinforcement. This method is impractical to use, and the reinforced
behavior is prone to extinction. Interval Schedules are based on the time intervals between
reinforcements. In Fixed Interval Schedule (FI) an operant conditioning principle is provided in which
reinforcements are presented at fixed time periods, provided that the appropriate response is made. In
Variable Interval Schedule (VI) an operant conditioning principle is present in which behaviour is
reinforced based on an average time that has expired since the last reinforcement. Both FI and VI tend
to produce slow, methodical responding because the reinforcements follow a time scale that is
independent of how many responses occur.” (Wikipedia.org) “The next thing is Ratio Schedules which
are based on the ratio of responses to reinforcements. Fixed Ratio Schedule (FR) occurs when an
operant conditioning principle takes place in which reinforcement is delivered after a specific number of
responses have been made. Variable Ratio Schedule (VR) on the other hand is when an operant
conditioning principle takes place in which the delivery of reinforcement is based on a particular average
number of responses, for example, slot machines. VR produce slightly higher rates of responding than
FR because organism doesn’t know when next reinforcement is. The higher the ratio, the higher the
response rate tends to be.” (Wikipedia.org) This can be better understood with the help of an example.
An old man makes a wooden doll but due to some magic it comes to life. The old man suffered from
loneliness and his wooden doll Pinocchio was the answer to his prayers. However, every 48 time
Pinocchio lies his nose elongates. This acts as ‘negative reinforcement’ since it deters him and the
children who read his story from telling lies. This it consequently results in the control of behaviour of
the children which is what Skinner talks about in his theory. John Broadus Watson is another
psychologist who curiously tried to understand the workings of a child’s mind and came up with the
psychological school of behaviourism. His approach was primarily focused on animal behavior but he did
attempt to understand the behavior of children as well by conducting several experiments. “In 1913,
Watson published the article Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, sometimes called The Behaviorist
Manifesto. In this article, Watson outlined the major features of his new philosophy of psychology,
called ‘behaviorism’. The first paragraph of the article concisely described Watson’s behaviorist position
which clearly stated that psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch
of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no
essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with
which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to
get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The
behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist’s total
scheme of investigation.” (Wikipedia.org) “In 1913, Watson viewed Ivan Pavlov’s conditioned reflex as
primarily a physiological mechanism controlling glandular secretions. He had already rejected 49 Edward
L. Thorndike’s ‘Law of Effect’ due to what Watson believed were unnecessary subjective elements. It
was not until 1916 that Watson recognized the more general significance of Pavlov’s formulation and
made it the subject of his presidential address to the American Psychological Association. The article is
also notable for its strong defense of the objective scientific status of applied psychology, which at the
time was considered to be much inferior to the established structuralist experimental psychology. With
his ‘behaviorism’, Watson put the emphasis on external behavior of people and their reactions on given
situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people. In his opinion, the analysis of
behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to get insight in the human actions. This outlook,
combined with the complementary ideas of determinism, evolutionary continuism and empiricism
contributed to what is now known as radical behaviorism.” (Watson 412) “It was this new outlook that
Watson claimed would lead psychology into a new era. He claimed that before Wundt there was no
psychology, and that after Wundt there was only confusion and anarchy. It was Watson’s new
behaviorism that would pave the way for further advancements in psychology. Watson’s behaviorism
rejected the studying of consciousness. He was convinced that it could not be studied, and that past
attempts to do so have only been hindering the advancement of psychological theories. He felt that
introspection was faulty at best and awarded researchers nothing but more issues. He pushed for
psychology to no longer be considered the science of the mind. Instead, he stated that psychology
should focus on the behaviour of the individual, not their consciousness.” (Wikipedia.org) 50 The 20th
century marked the formation of qualitative distinctions between children and adults. Watson wrote the
book Psychological Care of Infant and Child in 1928. In this book Watson explained that behaviourists
were starting to believe psychological care and analysis was required for infants and children. All of
Watson’s exclamations were due to his belief that children should be treated as young adults. In his
book, he warned against the inevitable dangers of a mother providing too much love and affection.
Watson explained that love, along with everything else as the behaviourist saw the world, is
conditioned. Watson supported his warnings by mentioning invalidism, saying that society does not
overly comfort children as they become young adults in the real world, so parents should not set up
these unrealistic expectations. Watson disapproved of thumb sucking, masturbation, homosexuality,
and encouraged parents to be honest with their children about sex. Watson’s reasoning for this was
that, “all of the weaknesses, reserves, fears, cautions, and inferiorities of our parents are stamped into
us with sledge hammer blows”. (Buckley 88) He inferred that emotional disabilities were a result of
personal treatment and were not inherited. “He argued for the nurture side of the nature-nurture
debate, claiming that the world would benefit from extinguishing pregnancies for twenty years while
enough data was gathered to ensure an efficient child-rearing process. Further emphasizing nurture,
Watson said that nothing is instinctual; rather everything is built into a child through the interaction
with their environment. Parents therefore, hold complete responsibility since they choose what
environment to allow their child to develop in.” (Reynolds 88) “Although he wrote extensively on child-
rearing in many popular magazines and in a book, Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928), Watson
later regretted having 51 written in the area, saying that “he did not know enough” to do a good job.
Watson’s advice to treat children with respect, but with relative emotional detachment, has been
strongly criticized. J.M. O’Donnell wrote The Origins of Behaviourism, where he deemed Watson’s views
as radical calculations. O’Donnell’s discontent stemmed partly from Watsons’ description of a ‘happy
child’, including that the child only cries when in physical pain, can occupy himself through his problem-
solving abilities, and that the child strays from asking questions. Behaviour analysis of child development
as a field is largely thought to have begun with the writings of Watson.” (Wikipedia.org) “Watson
researched many topics in his career, but child-rearing became his most prized interest. His emphasis on
child development was becoming a new phenomenon and influenced some of his successors, but there
were psychologists before him that delved into the field as well. Whether Watson’s views were
controversially radical or not, they garnered a lot of attention and were accepted as valuable in his time.
While behaviourism is not as dominant today as it was during the middle of the 20th-century, it still
remains an influential force in psychology. Outside of psychology, animal trainers, parents, teachers, and
many others make use of basic behavioural principles to help teach new behaviours and discourage
unwanted ones among their pupils.” (Wikipedia.org) “This concept of Watson’s theory can be explored
through the story of Peter and his siblings in the Narnia series. The entire family of Peter is caught in the
middle of the horrors of war. However, rather than escaping the gory war Peter offers to join the army
and fight for his country. His younger brother Edmund who is still too young to participate in the war
also offers his services. This demonstrates that these boys are aware 52 of the harsh realities of life and
rather than running away from them they try to embrace it and find a solution for it once and for all.”
(Wikipedia.org) Among these extraordinary psychologists, another name is that of Jean Piaget who was
a Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with
children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called ‘genetic
epistemology’. Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. “Piaget first developed as a
psychologist in the 1920s. He investigated the hidden side of children’s minds. Piaget proposed that
children moved from a position of egocentrism to socio-centrism. For this explanation he combined the
use of psychological and clinical methods to create what he called a semi-clinical interview. He began
the interview by asking children standardized questions and depending on how they answered, he
would ask them a series of nonstandard questions. Piaget was looking for what he called ‘spontaneous
conviction’ so he often asked questions the children neither expected nor anticipated. In his studies, he
noticed there was a gradual progression from intuitive to scientific and socially acceptable responses
among the children. Piaget theorized children did this because of the social interaction and the
challenge to younger children’s ideas by the ideas of those children who were more advanced.”
(Wikipedia.org) “He considered cognitive structures development as a differentiation of biological
regulations. When Jean Piaget’s entire theory first became known - the theory in itself being based on a
structuralist and a cognitivitist approach - came as an outstanding and exciting development in regards
to the psychological community at that time. This 53 structuralist-oriented theory took over the
behaviourist and functionalist psychological approach which became popular at the time before Piaget’s
theories were announced. There are a total of four phases in Piaget’s research program that included
books on certain topics of developmental psychology. In one of his last books, Equilibration of Cognitive
Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development, he intends to explain knowledge
development as a process of equilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and
accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones.”
(Wikipedia.org) Piaget believed answers for the epistemological questions at his time could be
answered, or better proposed, if one looked to the genetic aspect of it, hence he conducted his
experimentations with children and adolescents. As he says in the introduction of his book Genetic
Epistemology: “What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different
varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the
scientific knowledge.” (Wikipedia.org) The four development stages are described in Piaget’s theory as:
1. “Sensorimotor stage which lasts from birth to age two. The children experience the world through
movement and their five senses. During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric,
meaning they cannot perceive the world from others’ viewpoints. The sensorimotor stage is divided into
six sub stages: 1.1. Simple reflexes lasting from birth to one month old. At this time infants use reflexes
such as rooting and sucking. 1.2. First habits and primary circular reactions lasting from one month to
four months old. During this time infants learn to coordinate sensation and two types of 54 schema, that
is, habit and circular reactions. A primary circular reaction is when the infant tries to reproduce an event
that happened by accident, for example, sucking its thumb. 1.3. Secondary circular reactions lasting
from four to eight months old. At this time they become aware of things beyond their own body; they
are more objectoriented. At this time they might accidentally shake a rattle and continue to do it for the
sake of satisfaction. 1.4. Coordination of secondary circular reactions lasting from eight months to
twelve months old. During this stage they can do things intentionally. They can now combine and
recombine schemata and try to reach a goal, for example, using a stick to reach something. They also
understand object permanence during this stage. That is, they understand that objects continue to exist
even when they can’t see them. 1.5. Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity lasting from
twelve months old to eighteen months old. During this stage infants explore new possibilities of objects;
they try different things to get different results. 1.6. Internalization of schemata. Some followers of
Piaget’s studies of infancy argue that his contribution was as an observer of countless phenomena not
previously described, but that he didn’t offer explanation of the processes in real time that cause those
developments, beyond analogizing them to broad concepts about biological adaptation generally. Piaget
assumed that the mind developed endogenously in infants until the capacity for symbolic reasoning
allowed them to learn a language.

2. Preoperational stage which was from ages two to seven years in which magical thinking predominates
and motor skills are acquired. Egocentrism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve
or use logical thinking. 3. Concrete operational stage lasting from age seven to eleven years where
children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking. Children can now conserve and
think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric. 4. Formal operational stage
lasting from age eleven to sixteen years and onwards in which the development of abstract reasoning
takes place. Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.”
(Wikipedia.org) Piaget provided no concise description of the development process as a whole. Broadly
speaking it consisted of a cycle: • “The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes
objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects. • Through repeated
actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of objects, the child is able
to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of ‘reflecting abstraction’. • At
the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of action
affect them. This is the process of ‘empirical abstraction’. • By repeating this process across a wide
range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the
process of forming a 56 new ‘cognitive stage’. This dual process allows the child to construct new ways
of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.” (Wikipedia.org) However, once
the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more
complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions. As a result, the child starts to recognize still
more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will
only be completed when all the child’s activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher
level. “This process may not be wholly gradual, but new evidence shows that the passage into new
stages is more gradual than once thought. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight
proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas if they exist. As a result, transitions
between stages can seem to be rapid and radical, but oftentimes the child has grasped one aspect of the
new stage of cognitive functioning but not addressed others. The bulk of the time spent in a new stage
consists of refining this new cognitive level however it is not always happening quickly. For example, a
child may learn that two different colours of play dough have been fused together to make one ball,
based on the colour. However, if sugar is mixed into water or iced tea, then the sugar ‘disappeared’ and
therefore does not exist. These levels of one concept of cognitive development are not realized all at
once, giving us a gradual realization of the world around us.” (Wikipedia.org) “It is because this process
takes this dialectical form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation,
integration, and synthesis of new structures 57 out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are
logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the
child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more
sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.” (Wikipedia.org)
Because it covers both how we gain knowledge about objects and our reflections on our own actions,
Piaget’s model of development explains a number of features of human knowledge that had never
previously been accounted for. “For example, by showing how children progressively enrich their
understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they
are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. Thus, once a young child can
consistently and accurately recognize different kinds of animals, he or she then acquires the ability to
organize the different kinds into higher groupings such as birds, fish, and so on. This is significant
because they are now able to know things about a new animal simply on the basis of the fact that it is a
bird – for example, that it will lay eggs.” (Wikipedia.org) “At the same time, by reflecting on their own
actions, the child develops an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the rules that govern in various
ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child's growing awareness of notions such
as ‘right’, ‘valid’, ‘necessary’, ‘proper’, and so on. In other words, it is through the process of
objectification, reflection and abstraction that the child constructs the principles on which action is not
only effective or correct but also justified.” (Wikipedia.org) 58 “One of Piaget’s most famous studies
focused purely on the discriminative abilities of children. By the end of this study, several results were
found. First, younger children have a discriminative ability that shows the logical capacity for cognitive
operations exists earlier than acknowledged. This study also reveals that young children can be
equipped with certain qualities for cognitive operations, depending on how logical the structure of the
task is. Research also shows that children develop explicit understanding at age the age of five. Finally
the study found that overall quantity conservation is not a basic characteristic of humans’ native
inheritance.” (Wikipedia.org) This discriminative ability is very aptly represented in The Little Red Riding
Hood. Towards the end of the story when she reaches her grandmother’s house she immediately
realizes that instead of her grandmother the Big Bad Wolf has taken her place. She is able to
discriminate between her grandmother’s kind eyes and the wolf’s big, bulging eyes. She also notices his
big ears and pointed teeth. Once she is fully able to comprehend the situation, she runs for her life.
Children develop this discriminative ability gradually which makes them intuitively aware of the
difference between the good and the bad. After having discussed the theories of several psychologists
who essentially provide us with tools in order to analyze the reception of children’s literature through
the centuries as well as across continents, it is important to discuss the reader response theory as well
since it gives us an understanding as to what makes a particular reader respond to a specific text in a
certain manner. “A reader’s responses are different lenses that allow the reader to see different
versions of the same thing. It is believed quite logically that writing is a creative act. 59 While creating
any literary text a writer uses his creative imagination in order to give a life to his thoughts. Similarly,
reader response critics believe that reading is also a creative act which involves the imagination and
creative intelligence of the reader. Unless a reader is able to creatively interpret what the writer has
tried to convey through his work, the text does not hold much importance. This interpretation is known
as the reaction of the reader.” (Wikipedia.org) At its most basic level, reader response criticism
considers readers’ reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. However,
reader-response criticism can take a number of different approaches. “A critic deploying reader-
response theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or even a structuralist lens. What these
different lenses have in common when using a reader response approach is they maintain...that what a
text is cannot be separated from what it does.” (Tyson 154) “As a reader each person brings with him or
herself new experiences, specific backgrounds and unique personal beliefs that influence their
perception of what they have just read. In other words, Reader-response criticism is a school of literary
theory that focuses on the reader or audience and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to
other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the
work. Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts ‘real existence’ to
the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that
literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly
unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New
60 Criticism, in which the reader’s role in re-creating literary works is ignored. New Criticism had
emphasized that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the
authority, no intention of the author or to the psychology of the reader was allowed in the discussions
of orthodox New Critics.” (Wikipedia.org) Broadly speaking, there exists a rhetorical triangle between
the reader, the writer and the text. It is only when all these three components interact and behave in a
cohesive manner that the complete meaning of a text is understood. The interaction between the writer
and the reader is not always as distinct as the interaction between the reader and the text. That is why
the text acts as an intermediary between the reader and the writer. Whatever the writer wants to
convey through his text is of no consequence unless the reader interacts with it and tries to unearth its
meaning. This relationship is represented as follows – Text Author Reader “One can sort reader-
response theorists into three groups, firstly, those who focus upon the individual reader’s experience
known as the ‘individualists’; secondly, those Rhetorical Triangle 61 who conduct psychological
experiments on a defined set of readers known as the ‘experimenters’; and thirdly, those who assume a
fairly uniform response by all readers known as the ‘uniformists’. One can therefore draw a distinction
between reader-response theorists who see the individual reader driving the whole experience and
others who think of literary experience as largely text-driven and uniform with individual variations that
can be ignored. The former theorists, who think the reader controls, derive what is common in a literary
experience from shared techniques for reading and interpreting which are, however, individually applied
by different readers. The latter that put the text in control, derive commonalities of response, obviously,
from the literary work itself. The most fundamental difference among reader-response critics therefore,
probably lies in the difference between those who regard individual differences among readers’
responses as important and those who try to get around them.” (Wikipedia.org) Children respond to
literature in their own unique ways. This response to literature shows some of the many different ways
in which they might express their preferences, thoughts, and feelings. Although each of these responses
is personal and unique, each also reflects the child’s age and experience. The best thing about children
reading the stories and understanding them is the fact that whatever they learn from these stories, they
try and apply that knowledge to the world outside. In this way they learn to take initiatives and
eventually grow and evolve. Children seek pleasure from a story, but are limited by their physical,
cognitive, and affective development. This development is connected to their life experiences and
emotional feelings that they bring to a story. These usually interact with other variables as children read,
view, or listen to literature; creating a unique transaction between them 62 and the story in a literary
work. Their personal developmental level limits or extends their depth of understanding of their
transaction with literature. “Response may be immediate or deferred; internal or external; emotional,
interpretive, or evaluative; and literal, inferential or evaluative as well as at different levels of
involvement and understanding.” (www.homeofbob.com) To better understand and predict children’s
responses to literature and facilitate understanding, interpretation, and evaluation of literature it is
helpful to study the development of different literary ideas across the ages of children and compare
them to different developmental theories. This enables one to understand the trigger point for children
as far as some children’s stories are concerned. Every child’s reaction and response in not exactly the
same but may be similar if they belong to a similar temperament. This understanding is subject to
analysis and requires full length experimentation. Social and environmental influences also affect
children’s book choices and reading interests. Many teachers and librarians feel that cultural and ethnic
factors are related to reading interests. One of the arguments for providing culturally authentic picture
books and novels is that readers from a particular culture will find material drawn from their own
culture more interesting. “One study of African American and Hispanic American fifth graders found that
African American children preferred to read culturally conscious literature. Hispanic American children
were less enthusiastic about multicultural titles.” (www.mhhe.com) The relationship between interests
and culture 63 does not seem to be simple, and unfortunately there is not yet much research to clarify
this point. “Although interests do not seem to vary greatly according to geographical location, the
impact of the immediate environment—particularly the availability and accessibility of reading materials
in the home, classroom, and public and school libraries—can be very strong. Children in classrooms
where books are regularly discussed, enjoyed, and given high value tend to show livelier interest in a
wider range of literature than do children from situations where books are given less attention. It is hard
to tell how much of this effect is due to contact with the books and how much is social. Teachers’
favorite books are often mentioned by children as their own favorites, perhaps because these are the
stories closest at hand or perhaps because of positive associations with the teacher. In both cases, it is
very difficult to determine the ‘real’ response of the child since he or she is still too young to know what
they really want and hence, develop an affinity with whatever they find close at hand. However, it is also
not completely possible to dissociate children from all kinds of literature and wait for them to decide
what they prefer as this might lead to an indifference and abstinence from literature all together.”
(Reynolds 354) “In addition to the environment, another important influence on children is their prior
experiences with literature. Some children have heard many stories read aloud at home or have been
introduced by their teachers to many different authors and genres. These children are likely to have
tastes and preferences that seem advanced compared with those of children their age who have had
less exposure to books. Children’s personal experiences influence their interests in ways that teachers
and librarians might never be 64 able to discover. And sometimes apparent interests are only the
product of which books are available and which are not. Children also frequently influence each other in
their choice of books.” (Wikipedia.org) Apart from all these psychological theories, the theories of
reader response criticism are also important. “Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory
that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and
theories that focus their attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. Reader-
response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts ‘real existence’ to the work and
completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should
be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related
performance.” (Wikipedia.org) “Reader-response critics hold that in order to understand a text, one
must look to the processes readers use to create meaning and experience. Traditional text-oriented
schools, such as formalism, often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing
readers to interpret a text any way they want. Textoriented critics claim that one can understand a text
while remaining immune to one’s own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence understand it
‘objectively.’ To reader-response based theorists, however, reading is always essentially, both subjective
as well as objective. Some reader-response critics, uniformists in particular, assume a bi-active model of
reading which states that the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls the
other part of it. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls
the whole 65 transaction and they are individualists. In such a reader-active model, readers and
audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading which are shared by many others, as well
as their personal issues and values.” (Wikipedia.org) There are different lenses through which a reader-
response critic might view a text. What these different lenses have in common when using a reader
response approach is that they maintain “...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does.
...reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) That the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our
understanding of literature and 2) That readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to
them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature.” (Tyson
154) After having discussed what reader response theory is, it is imperative to discuss some theorists.
The first among them is Louise Michelle Rosenblatt who was born on 23rd August, 1904 in Atlantic City,
New Jersey. She is given the credit for first academically formulating reader response theory in 1938
through her book titled Literature as Exploration, but was self-styled as Transactional theory.
“Rosenblatt’s understanding of the reading of a work of literature as convergence of reader and text
was so antithetical to the New Criticism of the day that it remained largely ignored by literary and
curriculum theorists until its reprinting in 1968” (Samara 27). Rosenblatt, whose theory emerged from
her observations of readers in her university literature classes, declared, “the text is merely an object of
paper and ink until some reader responds to the marks on the page as verbal symbols” (Rosenblatt 23).
66 “Rosenblatt pointed out that a written work does not have the same meaning for all readers, and
that each individual brings background knowledge, beliefs, values, cultural expectations, and reading
context to the act of reading. For Rosenblatt, each unique reading event involves a ‘transaction’
between reader and text wherein both reader and text continuously act and are acted upon each other
in a spiralling, to and fro, non-linear process. She clearly differentiates transaction, an active layering
process, from interaction, which suggests two discrete elements acting on each other. For Rosenblatt
the reading event is a synergistic relationship between reader and text.” (Wikipedia.org) An essential
component of Rosenblatt’s transaction theory is the stance of the reader, which is determined by the
reader’s purpose. For Rosenblatt, each reading event falls somewhere on a continuum depending upon
the adoption of the reader of a “predominantly aesthetic” stance or a “predominantly efferent” stance.
The aesthetic stance refers to the reader’s attention to “what is being lived through during the reading
event”, whereas the efferent stance refers to what is to be “retained after the reading event”
(Rosenblatt 5). Rosenblatt does not assume that any interpretation is acceptable, but suggests that
common criteria of validity of interpretation, developed in a shared cultural milieu, will establish
interpretations that are acceptable because they fulfill underlying assumptions that are agreed upon
more fully than probably some other interpretations. “The transaction that Rosenblatt talks about is
when the reader while reading the story of Beauty and the Beast transacts with the text and tries to
understand the reason behind the anger and hostility of Beast. Different readers who belong to different
cultural constructs interpret the text in their own ways. For example, a child who belongs to a 67 family
with a strong patriarch will find the anger and boisterousness of Beast usual. However, a child who is not
used to such behavior may feel scared and uncomfortable while reading about him. This difference in
interpretation is due to the difference in their respective ideologies.” (Wikipedia.org) The next critic is
Hans Robert Jauss. He was born on 21st December, 1921 in Germany. “He defined literature as a
dialectic process of production and reception which was the term common in Germany for ‘response’.
According to the theory of Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations from
which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes
these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question. The themes of past
and the present, time and remembrance were a major part of his research.” (Tyson 58) “With Jauss, it’s
not all about close reading a text. It’s not about the historical, cultural and biographical context in which
a text is written. It’s not even about what the author may or may not mean. It’s about how a reader
experiences a text. A book is written at a certain place and at a certain time. Then a reader, who
probably exists in a completely different place and time, reads it. The horizon or outlook changes for
every reader precisely because history changes how each era experience books. Every new book that a
reader reads adds to his or her general understanding of books and genres. So, an epic ends in a grand
manner, a tragedy concludes on a sad note and a comedy on a happy note. These are expectations and
reflect a reader’s past experiences with similar texts and helps to modify future impressions. Different
readers bring different expectations based on how many books they have read.” (Wikipedia.org) 68
“Simply put, with new data, we are forced to rethink our assumptions. That’s what Jauss calls the
‘horizon of change.’ It’s like a gauge of how much the reader will change by reading a certain book in a
certain context. By the way, when a certain group of readers read something that does not challenge
them to reconsider their expectations, they have a very small horizon of change—and perhaps no
horizon of change at all. There is another way of discussing the importance of the reader in relation to
any text. Marxists go on and on about the importance of history in the creation of art, and Formalists
talk about art like it appeared out of nowhere. Jauss argues that the reader experiences his or her own
aesthetics when reading a work. He makes every effort to make sure that the reader does not forget
about that fine body of people called the readers, who make meaning by actively participating with the
book.” (Wikipedia.org) “When a child reads a story about a ghost, he expects to be spooked by it.
However, if the ghost turns out to be as friendly as Casper then he is forced to change his belief. In this
case the text does not meet the ‘horizon of expectation’ of the reader. But, it is not necessary that the
reader is disappointed. If the child likes horror stories then he may be disappointed. In any case the
difference in usual horror stories and this story adds to the historical knowledge of the reader about
horror stories which may alter future perceptions of that reader about horror stories.” (Wikipedia.org)
“The next reader-response critic is Norman Holland who is an American literary critic and scholar. His
scholarship is largely focused on psychoanalytic criticism and cognitive poetics. Each reader introjects a
fantasy ‘in’ the text, and then modifies it by defence mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973,
however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this
model 69 in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations. Holland then
developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has a core identity
theme in the brain. Their behaviours then become understandable as a theme and variations as in
music. This core gives that individual a certain style of being—and reading. Each reader uses the physical
literary work plus invariable codes such as the shapes of letters plus variable canons plus an individual
style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers’ responses.” (Wikipedia.org) With
a background in psychoanalysis, Norman Holland builds his Reader response theory on ego-psychology,
according to which a child is imprinted with a primary identity from the mother. Although there are
variations, the adult retains a stable, core personality. Holland maintains that readers’ responses to a
text are emotional, and are influenced by each individual’s psychological needs. He claims that readers
“draw upon the treasury a literary work provides to recreate [their] own characteristic psychological
process[es]” (Holland 247). Holland’s “transactive reading” theorizes how literary reading is a process of
identity creation by the reader, involving sensing, knowing, and remembering as a series of feedback
loops. Holland contends that each reader has a unique “identity theme” and hence, searches for
remnants of self in literary texts. The reader recreates this identity through a process termed DEFT
(Defense-Expectation-Fantasy-Transformation). He asserts that each reader brings unique expectations,
fears, and wishes to the text, finds in a literary text “the kind of thing we characteristically wish or fear
the most”, and respond to “recreate from the literary work our characteristic strategies for dealing with
those fears and wishes”. Having done this, the reader is then able to derive fantasies in the text that 70
yield pleasure, and be transformed by a “total experience of aesthetic, moral, intellectual or social
coherence and significance” he further adds that, “the fantasy content we conventionally locate in the
literary work is really created by the reader from the literary work to express his own drives” (Holland
817). “What Holland fails to address here is the possibility of multiple subjectivities, and therefore
multiple identities. His theory relies on the notion of a stable, core self, a concept that has been under
question during post-modernity. Given his commitment to psychology, the reading process in Holland’s
model is a purely subjective experience, and no attention is paid to text structures, tropes, or styles.”
(Wikipedia.org) When a child reads a story it is quite natural that they use their creative imagination and
picture whatever the narrative says in their mind. This picturization becomes more vivid as the child
reads more and more books. The most common way through which a child picturizes is when he himself
becomes a part of the story. This he does when he strongly identifies with a particular character or
wants to become like one. For example when a young boy reads about Charlie from Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, he aspires to become so humble and loving and a young girl wants to emulate
Hermoine from Harry Potter because of her knowledge and loyalty. In both cases the reader brings
himself in the text by using his creative ability. These are reflection of a person’s aspirations. Another
critic of reader-response criticism is Wolfgang Iser. “He was a German literary scholar. Together with
Hans Robert Jauss, he is considered to be the founder of the Constance School of reception aesthetics.
Reader-response theory shares many goals and insights with hermeneutics. Both aim to describe the
reader’s contact with text and 71 the author. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent
development of the text into a ‘whole’, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.
He exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a
literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is
controlled by the text. For the ‘real’ reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given
literary work requires. Within various polarities created by the text, this ‘implied’ reader makes
expectations, meanings, and the unstated details of characters and settings through a ‘wandering
viewpoint’. The reader’s activities are confined within limits set by the literary work.” (Wikipedia.org) He
stated that any literary work has two poles, which one might call the artistic and the aesthetic. He
further added that the artistic refers to the text created by the author and the aesthetic to the
realization accomplished by the reader. He stated that if the reader is given the whole story and there is
nothing left for him to do then his imagination would never enter the field and the result would be
boredom with the text. Therefore, a literary text must be conceived in such a way so that it engages the
imagination of the reader and the text becomes interesting since the reader now has the pleasure of
working things out for himself. In this way the reader is actively and creatively able to participate in the
creation of the text. He pays eternal compliments to Lawrence Sterne “to keep his imagination as busy
as my own.” (Lodge and Wood 208) “Literature, according to Iser, isn’t a thing; it is a process, always in
motion and on the go, changing according to who is doing the reading. However, not everyone
embraced his idea that literary texts can have an important impact on the reader—and likewise that the
reader’s reception of the text is a valuable source of insight. His idea of 72 aesthetics is a little different.
Iser’s reader-oriented approach means that books are constantly evolving. They aren’t objects whose
meaning is just sitting there waiting to be stumbled upon or filtered out. He viewed books as good
conversationalists. He was of the view that they talk, but then they allow the reader to have his or her
say. How do they enact this conversation? They provide what he called ‘gaps’ or ‘blanks’ that allow the
reader to fill in meaning. He further stated that each reader has a different aesthetic response to a text
since each reader shares a direct and personal relationship with the book.” (Wikipedia.org) Stories like
Rapunzel begin from the middle when things that had to go wrong have already gone wrong. Due to this
there are several gaps in the story which are left for the reader to fill. When the story begins, Rapunzel is
already captured and confined in a tower. She has really long hair and she is not allowed contact with
the outside world. Who is she really? How did she get into this predicament? Why doesn’t she run
away? What will happen to her? Who will save her? All these unanswered questions are another form of
the gaps that are left by the writer. It is only towards the very end that all these questions are answered
and the reader is able to actually fill in the blanks. However, all stories do not necessarily fill in the
blanks but at times leave things to the imagination of the reader. “The last reader-response critic is
Stanley Eugene Fish, better known as Stanley Fish. In 1967, Stanley Fish published his work Surprised by
Sin which was the first study of a large literary work, Paradise Lost that focused on its readers’
experience. In an appendix, Literature in the Reader, Fish used the reader to examine responses to
complex sentences sequentially, word-by-word. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real 73
differences among real readers. He explored the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by
the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of ‘interpretive communities’
that share particular modes of reading.” (Wikipedia.org) “Interpretive communities are a theoretical
concept which states that a text does not have meaning outside of a set of cultural assumptions
regarding both what the characters mean and how they should be interpreted. This cultural context
often includes authorial intent, though it is not limited to it. Fish claims that one interprets texts because
one is a part of an interpretive community that gives us a particular way of reading a text. Furthermore,
he claims, one cannot know whether someone is a part of their interpretive community or not, because
any act of communication that one could engage in to tell whether one is a part of the same interpretive
community would have to be interpreted. That is, because one cannot escape one’s interpretive
community, one can never really know its limits.” (Wikipedia.org) “Fish was the main proponent of
socio-cultural reader-response theory who initially concerned himself with what is happening in the
mind of the reader during the reading act. This early perspective, termed ‘affective stylistics’,
concentrates on the temporal processes of reading at the level of each sentence, whether literary or
not. As the sentences succeed one another, the reader responds by making meaning that is nevertheless
controlled by the text. However, Fish posits an ‘informed’ reader who possesses linguistic and literary
competence, not just any reader. He also conflates the experience of the reading and the understanding
of that experience. Meaning is an event that happens to the reader. In this regard Fish echoes
Rosenblatt’s reading process as a 74 transaction between reader and text, although Fish does not
explicitly phrase reading as performative.” (Wikipedia.org) In a later work, Is There a Text in this class?
(1980), Fish introduces the concept of ‘interpretive communities’ within which a reader is situated and
constrained. Since these communities adopt a set of assumptions about the stylistic characteristics of
the texts and how they can be understood, a reader will start with initial assumptions, which determine
what is perceived. With shared interpretive strategies within that social context, a text will have a range
of stable meanings. Yet, as Fish is careful to point out, as interpretive communities change, so do the
strategies and meanings. The text’s new meanings will become the new stability. “Whatever seems to
you to be obvious and inescapable is only so within some institution or conventional structure” (Fish
370). Fish does not appear to entertain the possibilities that interpretive communities can overlap,
include one another, and be subject to internal rifts. The story of Alladin is very popular and every child
enjoys it. But, a child who has lived in the Arab world and is familiar with the workings of the society and
culture of the place will be able to understand the story better. Also, the children grow up reading about
magic carpets and magic lamps with genies since theirs is the land of The Arabian Nights to which this
story belongs, so they have a better interpretive strategy for being able to understand these specific
things. They are familiar with certain things in these stories so they belong to a specific interpretive
community. This enables them to understand these things with greater ease than those children who
don’t. “The interaction of the individual with his or her environment, especially the social and cultural
aspects of that environment, has become increasingly important to 75 researchers. This experience
affects the age at which development appears. Studies in children’s cognitive and language growth, as
well as in other areas of human development, can be very helpful in the choice of appropriate books and
the understanding of children’s responses.” (Wikipedia.org)

Delineating The Jungle Book as Representing Modern Child Sensibility in the West Any discussion about
writers of children’s literature is incomplete without the mention of Joseph Rudyard Kipling, better
known as Rudyard Kipling. “He was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and
poems of British soldiers in India and stories primarily for children. He was born in Bombay, in the
Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.
Later in his adult life he returned to India and spent a considerable amount of time trying to gather a
sense of what India is all about and at the same time trying to incorporate that sense into his literary
works which were primarily meant for children.” (Wikipedia.org) Kipling’s works of fiction include The
Jungle Book (1894) which is a collection of stories, the Just So Stories (1902), Kim (1901), and many short
stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). His poems include Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din
(1890), The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919), The White Man’s Burden (1899), and If— (1910). He
is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and his children’s books are enduring
classics of children’s literature. T.S. Eliot has described his work as exhibiting “a versatile and luminous
narrative gift”. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in England, in both prose and verse, in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Henry James said: “Kipling strikes me personally as the
most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that 144 I have ever known.” In the year
1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This made him the first English-language writer to
receive the prestigious prize, and al 145 The structure and content of the stories is such that they may
appear intriguing to the children since they are about things that are new and different to them. “There
is evidence that it was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 when she was only six years
old, after a rare first edition of the book with a heartrending handwritten note by the author to his
young daughter was discovered at the National Trust’s Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire in 2010. This
further establishes The Jungle Books as representing the sensibility of a Western child. There is a lot of
enigma attached to the stories and this appears appealing to the children. Kipling clearly demonstrates
the sense with which he grew up and consequently he passes it on to his daughter and inadvertently to
an entire generation of children who have grown up reading and appreciating his work.” (Wikipedia.org)
“The Jungle Book is one of the most popular and successful collection of stories by Kipling. The stories
were first published in magazines in 1893–94. The original publications contain illustrations. Some of
these illustrations were by Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent
the first six years of his childhood here. After about ten years in England, he came back to India and
worked here for a little more than six years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont
and are deeply rooted in India as far as their setting is concerned but the point of view of a Westerner is
quite apparent in them.” (Wikipedia.org) “The Second Jungle Book contains five further stories about
Mowgli and was published in 1895. All these stories are fables which use animals in an anthropomorphic
manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the
safety of individuals, families and communities. 146 Kipling put in them nearly everything he “knew or
heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle.” (Sharma 96) Several other scholars have interpreted the
stories of The Jungle Books as allegories of the politics and society of the time. The best-known of them
are the stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned ‘man cub’ Mowgli who is raised by
wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the story
of a heroic mongoose, and Toomai of the Elephants, the tale of a young elephant-handler. Each of the
stories is preceded by a piece of verse like much of Kipling’s other works and is succeeded by another
verse in the end. The Jungle Book, because of its moral tone, came to be used as a motivational book by
the teachers in order to instill the qualities of courage, bravery and kinship among the children.”
(Wikipedia.org) Apart from all the discussion about The Jungle Book as being the part of world class
literature, it is also important to discuss the various things that make it a delightful read for the children
and discuss the reasons why the adults so generously approve of this book as being appropriate for
children as well, so much so that it is considered a canon of children’s literature and there have been,
and continue to be, several adaptations of The Jungle Book in several forms like animated series, films
and others. Kipling makes it very apparent at the beginning of The Jungle Books that the stories that he
is writing are intended for children. He chose the character of Mowgli and other animal characters with
care so that he could tell tales that would be enjoyed by children which would later become a mode of
instruction. He says, “So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day
on. But he was not always alone, because, years afterward, he became a man and married. But that is a
story for 147 grown-ups.” (67) This is a clear indicator that the target audience of these stories were not
adults but in fact, children. At the very outset of The Jungle Books Kipling highlights the innocence of a
child in the story Mowgli’s Brothers. He writes, “Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch,
stood a naked brown baby who could just walk – as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a
wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.” (6) Here one can clearly see
that the ‘naked brown baby’ who is later named ‘Mowgli – The Frog’ is laughing in the face of a beast
and is unafraid. Due to this we can conclude that he belongs to the first stage of Erikson’s theory. He
faces the psychological crisis of ‘trust and mistrust’ as he finds the warmth of the ‘Wolf pack’ inviting
and the “square head and shoulders” of Shere Khan hostile. The most significant relationship of a child
in that stage is that with the mother and Mowgli is clearly drawn towards the Mother Wolf, Raksha who
also is instantly taken by him and vows to protect the ‘man cub’. In the past, since the children of the
East were simpler and a little behind the times than the Western children, so there was never much
stress laid upon their education. In the West the teachers, parents and other educators expect and want
the child to be aware and well informed. That is why acquainting them with the political setup and other
things of an educative background are deemed essential. By their mention in The Jungle Books Kipling
has made an attempt to give the Western child a sense of what the political setup of a place like India is.
Kipling attempts to make the young readers of The Jungle Book aware of the workings of the political
system by using the terminology involved. He talks about ‘Pack Council’ and ‘The Law of the Jungle’
where “Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle.” (10) This not
only makes the children aware about the political scenario in a fun easy way but also reels them in on
the entire teacher student dynamics. Kipling also creates a political satire in The Jungle Book. In the
story Kaa’s Hunting he talks about the ‘Bandar-log or the monkey people. He says that, “They would sit
in circles on the hall of the king’s council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men.” (Kipling
38) Here the Bandar-log represent the uncivilized sect of the society. They are actually ruling over the
world but are not remotely civilized but only pretend to be so. The Bandar-log are nomadic and
unsettled. Their actions reflect their nature and lack of compassion for others. “…whenever they found a
sick wolf, or a wounded tiger, or bear, the monkeys would torment him, and would throw sticks and
nuts at any beast for fun and in the hope of being noticed. They would howl and shriek senseless songs,
and invite the Jungle-People to climb up their trees and fight them, or would start furious battles over
nothing among themselves, and leave the dead monkeys where the JunglePeople could see them.” (29)
This attitude of the monkeys is bordering on barbaric. There is also quite an apparent dislike for them in
The Jungle Book. This gives the children a clear lesson about what not to do and who not to become.
Their disregard for rules and of other people makes them intolerable to others and children are
indirectly cautioned against becoming like them. Through this the message that the unsettled can never
be a part of the civilized society is imparted. The children are unable to trust the Bandar-log and
subsequently loathe their presence in the stories just like the other characters. Moreover, when they
149 kidnap Mowgli, this mistrust further intensifies. “The next thing he remembered, was feeling hands
on his legs and arms – hard, strong, little hands – then a swash 150 past. The reason is that the children
are comparatively more confident and hence would respond somewhat similarly if they were put in the
equivalent circumstances. Another important trait that the children need to develop is that they should
not be afraid to ask for help when in time of need. After Mowgli is kidnapped, Baloo and Bagheera try to
follow his trail to get him back. It is during this time that they meet Kaa, the rock python. “It – it is the
Bandar-log that we follow now,” said Baloo, but the words stuck in his throat, for that was the first time
in his memory that one of the Jungle-People had owned to being interested in the doings of the
monkeys.” (35) Both Baloo and Bagheera are not on the best of terms with Kaa yet, they do not hesitate
to ask for help when they feel that Kaa might be able to help. This shows that they are mature enough
to keep their differences aside and ask for help rather than fanning their egos and staying in trouble. At
this point of time, the safe return of Mowgli is of prime importance to them and hence, they ask for
Kaa’s assistance since they know that the uncivilized and nomadic Bandar-log cannot be tackled by
anyone else but him. Erikson’s first stage talks about the development of the quality of Hope. Through
this incident this development is reinstated since with every passing page in the story there is a Hope
that Mowgli will be rescued and Baloo and Bagheera will be able to save him in time. Further, it is
Mowgli’s staunch Will that helps him in getting through the nonsensical theatrics of the monkeys. He
seriously injures himself in trying to get away but his Will remains intact. Also, both Baloo and Bagheera
are driven by the same Purpose and that is to rescue Mowgli. Lastly, Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa
demonstrate their Competence when they work together as a team and succeed in defeating the
Bandar-log and rescuing Mowgli. Here, all these characters display the 151 virtues that a child possesses
according to Erikson’s theory. These virtues are Hope, Will, Competence and Purpose. The children who
read these stories tend to emulate their favorite characters and try to inculcate the qualities that they
display in themselves. The importance of learning and education has been stressed upon as well. In the
story Kaa’s Hunting, Baloo’s delight with Mowgli is quite apparent since Kipling remarks, “The big
serious, old, brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil…” (24) Also, retention needs to be tested
since what is taught cannot be forgotten as the purpose is to educate and not just teach. In other words
the child needs to be able to use this education in his future life. So Mowgli was supposed to “recite the
day’s lesson to Baloo” (25) so that it could be gauged whether or not he remembers what is being
taught to him. Education was more staid in the past and there was always a fear of failing. The children
were very aware of the fact that if they failed then they would become the butt of many jokes. What
others thought about them was very important and it was the root cause for the fear residing in children
against failing. In the present scenario the children are least interested or worried about what others
think about them. There is so much pressure from all fronts that the children want to do well for them
and not to show off to someone else. Progressing in the world, making a name for oneself and emerging
on top are things that today’s child is worried about. These things were not so vehemently important
initially even though there were premier educational facilities in the past, not many children had access
to them. The situation is altering gradually both in the East as well as the West. 152 Children are good
learners. Their impressionable minds grasp things easily. One of the most common ways in which
children learn things is by looking and observing their elders. They intently look and then try to ape what
the elders are doing. Watson is of the view that the elders should “lead by example” and Kipling has
highlighted the power of observation of Mowgli through the incident in which he goes to the edge of the
‘man village’ with Bagheera and watches a man light a fire and a woman blowing into it to keep it alive.
The man and the woman keep adding coal or ‘black rocks’ as he calls it, into the fire to keep it burning.
Mowgli takes the fire pot from a child. “They are very like me,” said Mowgli, blowing into the pot as he
had seen the woman do. “This thing will die if I do not give it things to eat”; and he dropped twigs and
dried bark on the red stuff.” (17) This quick learning and subsequent repetition of the action
demonstrates that it does not take children a lot of time to grasp certain things and therefore, it is
imperative for writers of children’s fiction to be careful with what they choose to put in literature that
they produce for them. In the West a child is prepared not to be afraid from the very beginning. Once a
child is born, it has its own nursery where it sleeps and the mother monitors it via a baby monitor. This
fact points towards the assumption that a child needs to be made strong and independent from the very
beginning. In the East, a mother prefers to sleep as close to a child as possible in case he needs anything
in the night or he may get scared. Therefore, there is a difference which exists in the understanding and
tackling of the concept of fear. Since Kipling had written these stories for his daughter and other
Western children like her, he stresses the fact that it is okay to be afraid. Later, after the circulation and
popularity of these stories among the Eastern children a contrast was observed. The 153 present
situation is the East and the West is still quite different as far as this one thing is concerned. The
psychology of children is such that they adopt and adapt very quickly. Thus, they can be regimented
quite easily as well. There is an incident in Mowgli’s Brothers where Bagheera instructs Mowgli and says
that “All the jungle is thine and thou canst kill everything that thou art strong enough to kill; but for the
sake of the bull that bought thee thou must never kill or eat any cattle young or old. That is the Law of
the Jungle.” Mowgli obeyed faithfully.” (13) This clearly shows that the relationship between Mowgli
and Bagheera is that of trust and that is why whatever is said by Bagheera, Mowgli follows without any
questions. This obedience is also based on the faith that they have on each other. In Erikson’s first stage
a child oscillates between trust and mistrust and here Mowgli knows that if Bagheera asks him to do
something then it must be for his own good and Bagheera on the other hand has faith on his pupil
Mowgli that he is going to follow his orders and not disrespect him by disobeying them. In the East as
well as the West, there has always been a concept of the evil and the good. Whether it is Christ vs. Judas
or Rama vs. Ravana, the evil has always been portrayed to exist alongside the good. This concept has
been repeatedly reinstated among the children through stories. The Jungle Books are also a labyrinth of
such complex ideas and teachings but they have all been delivered in a fun and easy manner so that the
children can enjoy while they learn. Kipling makes this representation with the help of Mowgli and Shere
Khan. The triumph of good over evil reinstates the faith of a child in the goodness that exists in the
world and hence encourages the child to be good as well. It 154 gives him the confidence that like the
characters that he admires, he will also be able to gain victory over evil. Moreover, the adults actually
believe that they know what is best for children. That is why there is a strict set of rules for the children
and they are expected to follow them. If, however, they fail to adhere to these rules then they are liable
for punishment. This is similar to Watson’s concept of ‘reinforcement’. The child becomes aware that
what he or she has done is not right and if the action is ever repeated then punishment will be meted
out once again. Mowgli is also punished by Bagheera after he is kidnapped by the ‘Bandar-log’. Bagheera
says that “he has done mischief, and blows must be dealt now.” (48) And he is given the punishment of
“half a dozen love-taps” which reinforces the severity of his actions, makes him ready to face the
consequences and also makes him cautious for the future. In his theory of ‘Behaviourism’, Watson also
talks about the ultimate goal of reinforcement being the control of inappropriate behavior. In this
incident when Mowgli is punished by Bagheera, the children who read the story understand the
consequence of making a mistake knowingly or being deliberately mischievous. This works towards the
control of inappropriate behavior since the children now know that if one is deliberately out of line then
they will be punished. Also, in the West, the punishment factor is taken more seriously. Punishment is
considered essential in order to make the child aware of the severity of his actions. In the East, due to
the existence of joint families, someone or the other usually protects or shields the child because of
which the purpose of the exercise of punishment is defeated at times. 155 The Jungle Book, even
though it has been written by a European writer, has a very Indian setting and the characters are also
laced with Indianness. At the centre of the stories is the colonization of India and the Indian people. This
is so because at the time that Rudyard Kipling wrote these stories, India was colonized by the British and
there was a lot of talk about this. Also, since Kipling and others like him, both from India and England,
grew up looking at and listening to things that are related to colonization. The effects of this are seen in
The Jungle Books as well. In the story Letting in the Jungle, Mowgli clearly remarks “They be white and it
is said that they govern all the land, and do not suffer people to burn or beat each other without
witnesses.” (196) This shows that he is aware of the physical differences that exist between them. In The
Jungle Books Kipling uses a unique character development trait. He gives human qualities to the animals
of the jungle. During the time of Kipling, Charles Darwin had come up with his theory which steered
humanity into the direction of the animal kingdom. Due to Darwin’s story a link was established
between the humans and the animals. This opened the doors to the possibility that humans can possess
traits like animals and vice versa. Kipling illustrates this ideology in his stories and displays a belief in this
kinship with animals. This fact is constantly reiterated by Mowgli when he remarks that “We be of one
blood”. He says this to snakes, wolves, and other animals throughout the stories. Mowgli also displays
an understanding of this kinship because in the story Letting in the Jungle he remarks that “Men are
blood-brothers of the Bandarlog.” (195) One of the elements of Piaget’s theory can also be viewed in
context of Mowgli’s character. Piaget talks about a child moving from ego-centricism to socio-centricism
which means that a child is reserved and aloof at first because he does not trust the unknown that
easily. However, as he grows up he develops an understanding of things around him which prompts him
to open up and become more social. When Mowgli is sent to the man village after having spent a
decade of his life in the jungle, he feels like an outsider and does not feel comfortable enough to open
up. He is like a new born in a new world. He does not recognize or trust anything or anyone. The only
person that he trusts is Messua. She is a lady who had lost her son a while ago and Mowgli reminds her
of him and she has always been kind to him. According to Erikson’s modal the first significant
relationship that a child has is with his mother. Even though Messua is not Mowgli’s mother yet he is
instantly drawn towards her. It is clearly seen in the stories that she has a motherly instinct towards
Mowgli and he is able to feel it too. In the story Letting in the Jungle Mowgli is about wage war against
the man pack and destroy the village. However, he knows that Messua and her husband are trapped by
the villagers in her hut. So, before he acts upon his plan he makes sure that both of them are safely
escorted out of the village. He gives this task to his wolf brothers because there is no one that he would
trust more with this. He risks his life in doing so but he does not hesitate to return the kindness that was
shown towards him by Messua. Children are much the same. They are drawn towards people who are
kind and affectionate towards them and do not care much for people who are hostile. Kipling has spread
Mowgli’s stories across both The Jungle Books. He has added a diasporic element as well which births
the existential crisis that he faces. “Mowgli is caught in an existential predicament and he feels
ostracized by his fellow men and also feels disconnected from his animal brethren. Although Mowgli is
human, he is 157 recognized by a myriad of different names which are, jungle boy, wolf child and man
cub. All these designations, which identify him as both man and animal represents the same person.
Mowgli is a victim of circumstances since he is born as a human but is raised by wolves. He represents
an amalgamation of both ‘Law of the Jungle’ and ‘Law of Man’. The jungle and the village are
geographically separated in a manner that it represents the difference which exists between men and
animals. Both these spheres are governed by their own law. There is The Law of the Jungle in one part
and the Law of Man in the other. Nonetheless, as a product of both worlds, Mowgli is able to transcend
these boundaries.” (Wikipedia.org) However, he has to face a lot of difficulties while doing so. This
difficulty is clearly highlighted in the following lines. “Wolf! Wolf’s cub! Go away!” shouted the priest,
waving a sprig of the sacred tulsi plant. “Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is
because I am a wolf.” (64) The dilemma that Mowgli faces is clearly stated in these lines. He is not able
to associate with either of the two worlds since he feels that he is a misfit in both. This is the reason why
he filled with remorse as well as anger and he lashes out in his own way. Watson talks about prediction
and control of behavior. Mowgli has learned to predict the behavior of other people towards him and
with the passage of time it does not bother him anymore that he is not considered a part of either the
village or the jungle. Since he is unable to control this behavior of others he has no choice but to control
his own behavior. Through this children are given the lesson to feel the rage but channelize it in a
productive way. In the second Jungle Book Mowgli is called back into the village contrary to being cast
out of it like before. This happens when Mowgli begins to lead the children outside 158 the village in a
fit of excitement and merriment. However, he is reprimanded by the turbaned man because he sees the
jungle as “a dangerous place.” But Mowgli is not an ordinary man since he has spent a huge chunk of his
life in the jungle. Regardless of whether Mowgli is cast out of the village, called back into it, cast out of
the Jungle, or called back to it, he faces the dilemma of associating with either man or beast. “Because
Mowgli is under the jurisdiction of both the Law of Man and the Law of the Jungle, it is difficult for him
to associate with one or the other. Is he a man? Or is he a beast? In the story Letting in the Jungle
Bagheera answers this impending query of Mowgli. He says, “Thou are of the Jungle and not of the
Jungle,” (200). Regardless of the dichotomy drawn between the Laws of the Jungle and the Laws of Man,
Mowgli dances to the beat of his own drum just like any other child would want to. That is why Mowgli
is such a hero in the eyes of the young readers. This is something which is common in the East and the
West. Whether jiving to the beat of the jungle rhythm or swinging in time to the symphony of man,
Mowgli chooses to work under the guidance of both, rather than one Law. Mowgli’s persona is
comprised of his rationale as a human and his instincts as an animal. He is a unique being; he is
amalgamation of both man and beast.” (Wikipedia.org) Rudyard Kipling considered himself to be much
the same since he was not purely Indian and having spent a lot of time in India, he was not purely British
either. The children in the East and West consider themselves to be an amalgamation of a lot of things
since they have access to everything at the click of a button. Rather than being restricted the world now
is a big melting pot of everything and everyone. It is a complex emotion which might have been
overlooked by the children in the East as well as the 159 West but slowly, with the passage of time the
children have grasped this complexity and appreciate it too. Due to all these predicaments that Mowgli
faces and also due to the time that he has spent in the jungle he has accepted the notion that he needs
to be the fittest in order to survive. This is similar to the dictum ‘survival of the fittest’ which is quite
diligently followed in the West. Theirs is a culture all about the individual and is full of the ‘I’ being most
important. This is vividly echoed in the stories with the constant bloodshed and battle that takes place
among the animals. For example, in Tiger- Tiger! Mowgli kills Shere Khan and skin’s him. It is certainly a
defiant turn from Mowgli’s human side as he brutally demonstrates domination in his kill. In illustrating
Mowgli’s brutality, Kipling develops the animalistic side of his nature and firmly develops the character
of Mowgli as possessing animalistic drives. In the past, writing such a story was unheard of since it is too
violent for the taste of the elders to be approved for children. In the present context, especially during
the time that these stories were written, violence was common due to all the wars both international
and domestic. Since this is what children were seeing around them, Kipling’s stories only reaffirm the
fact that just like Mowgli emerges victorious after defeating the evil Shere Khan, so will they. This is
especially relevant in context of the children of the East since they were the ones facing the dark era of
slavery and were desperate for some solace. Complimenting this side of Kipling’s writing is the
development of human characteristics within the animals. Characters like Shere Khan illustrate the need
to 160 belong to a group even though they are completely wicked. It is true that many animals travel in
packs and stay within their own groups. However, in the human realm this demonstrates an emotional
need to belong somewhere. This is in fact above the natural drive to run in a pack. Mowgli’s desire to
belong to this group is similar to the human phenomena of belonging to a gang. In a test of will, Shere
Khan pits Mowgli against Baloo to affirm his alliances. This tactic of his backfires but the manner to
create a wedge between others in order to progress is typical of the human race but is demonstrated
through animals by Kipling. This trait is a hint at the fact pointed out by Erikson in his theory. He says
that children who are more outdoorsy enjoy reading stories that have animal characters in them. They
are curious and have a tendency to explore the outdoor world. This link created by Kipling between the
animal and the human world makes the reading of his stories more appealing to the children. They are
able to satiate their curiosity by reading these stories. In the West, children are usually cooped up in
their homes playing some sort of video game or the other. Although in the East also the same trend is
catching up. But, by reading stories like The Jungle Book which are about the wild and natural things,
they get encouragement to do some exploring of their own. The biggest asset that the human race
possesses is that they have the ability to think and reason as opposed to animals. Even the jungle
animals are aware of this in The Jungle Books. In the story Letting in the Jungle Bagheera remarks, “We
of the Jungle know that Man is the wisest of all.” (187) This clearly points out that even though they are
anthropomorphic representations, Kipling’s animals are aware of the fact that the human race is more
developed and evolved. When the children read these stories, they 161 are actually able to feel superior
and according to Erikson this is what motivates them to become self sufficient. When Mowgli enters the
village society in Tiger-Tiger! He asserts his status as a man through his rationale. Mowgli’s intelligence is
evident when he strategically orders Akela, the leader of the wolf pack, to herd the bulls towards Shere
Khan. Akela obediently follows the orders of Mowgli even though he is the leader. He does so because
he is aware of the cunning intelligence that Mowgli possesses. Western children are self-sufficient by
nature and through stories like these they are given the training to try and become even more so. An
incident from one of the stories which teaches good manners to the children is when Bagheera chides
Mowgli for making fun of Baloo. He says, “It is not good to make a jest of thy teacher.” (155) This
incident tells children that teachers are to be respected and it is not polite to make fun of teachers, or
anyone for that matter. When the child receives positive reinforcement for doing something then he
gets encouragement to continue with it. However, if negative reinforcement is meted out then it is a
sort of discouragement to continue with the same thing. On the other hand Piaget also talks about
‘empirical abstraction’ which means being able to differentiate between objects due to constant
exposure to them. If a child rolls a ball by accident once then he tries to repeat the action hoping that it
would roll 162 again. If that happens then it gives immense joy to a child and he continues to do so. This
repetition is like a reinstatement of the fact that a ball rolls when thrown in a certain manner on the
floor. Mowgli comes across prickly pears and touches them by accident. Since the thorns prick and hurt
him he does not understand the reason so he repeats his action. When he feels the same stimulus again
so he is able to associate the prickly pears with pain and abstains from touching them ever again. This is
empirical abstraction since due to exposure to the plant he is able to distinguish between plants that
hurt if touched and the ones that don’t. Now, since one thorny plant pricked and hurt him, he becomes
cautious of all such similar plants. This is the development of the ‘discriminative ability’ that Piaget talks
about. By looking at a plant that looks similar o a prickly pear he is able to associate that plant with the
pain that he felt when he touched a similar plant. He is able to deduce that this plant will also hurt. This
ability to be able to discriminate is developed in children gradually on their own due to their own limited
experiences which they gather in their lives. In the story Letting in the Jungle Kipling talks about Mowgli
finally realizing his own worth and asserting his power over the animals of the jungle. There is an
incident in the story where Bagheera remarks that “By the Broken Lock that freed me! Art thou the
naked thing I spoke for in the Pack when all was young? Master of the Jungle, when my strength goes,
speak for me—speak for Baloo—speak for us all! We are cubs before thee! Snapped twigs under foot!”
(206) This points out that the young grows up one day, that the weak becomes strong. Mowgli was
dominated by all of them since the very beginning but now he has come into his own. A child gets a
sense of self worth by reading about this because it lets them know that they will not be weak and
vulnerable always but will grow up and become strong. Piaget talks about notions like ‘right’, ‘valid’,
‘necessary’ and ‘proper’. These notions can be applied in context of this incident as well. After having
been dominated for so long it is only right and valid that he takes a stand for himself and because he
does so it becomes necessary for Bagheera and Baloo to bow down in front of him. The reason is that
since he is human he has certain definite advantages over these beasts. Also, accepting the power and
authority of Mowgli is only fair and the proper thing to do for them. The Jungle Book aptly represents
the tradition of telling stories to the children. The importance of the story telling experience and the
impact that it has on children is unmatchable. In the story Tiger-Tiger! Baldeo, the hunter of the village
that Mowgli was sent to had gathered all the children around him and was telling them the story of his
adventures in the jungle and his encounters with beastly animals. They also listened 164 If one was to
analyze this from a Western perspective then a look into the story telling history of the West would
suffice. Characters like “Boogey-man” and “The Grinch” have been part of their literature for a very long
time. The intention behind creating such characters was not just to scare the children but also to make
them stronger in the process. The idea behind the entire thing is that it gives the children a chance to be
prepared for the impending danger. The Westerners do not try to unnecessary shield the children but
make them realistic and strong enough to face all the challenges of the world. Piaget clearly states in his
theory that children are attracted towards the different and the unknown. Since Kipling has based the
stories of The Jungle Books in India he talks about a number of superstitious beliefs which appear
attractive to the Western children since they are something new and different. In the story Tiger-Tiger!
The village hunter Buldeo has gathered the entire village out in the open area and is telling them a story
about a money-lender named Purun Dass. He says, “…the tiger that had carried away Messua’s son was
a ghost-tiger, and his body was inhabited by the ghost of a wicked, old money-lender, who had died
some years ago. And I know that this is true because Purun Dass always limped from the blow that he
got in a riot when his account books were burned, and the tiger that I speak of he limps, too, for the
tracks of his pads are unequal.” (55) While listening to the story, all the people present there, especially
the children are quite intrigued and this was the intention of Kipling. By adding such intriguing episodes
in the stories he is able to generate the curiosity of the children and hold their attention. Even though
the children of the West are not familiar with concepts like these, 165 they find them interesting since
such stimulating episodes only make the stories more appealing and fascinating to them. Contrary to
popular knowledge, there are several other stories in The Jungle Books apart from just the stories about
Mowgli and his friends. These stories also tell tales about wisdom and the good conduct of life. They are
also anthropomorphic representations and follow the same type of narrative style. These stories are, in
fact, intertwined with the Mowgli stories and together they make a perfect blend of the wisdom that
Kipling aspired to offer to the children. The most popular among them is the story titles Rikki—Tikki—
Tavi. It is a story of a Mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi who is brought to an Englishman’s house. They
are kind to him, save him from a flood and in return Rikki-Tikki vows to protect them from any snakes
that might try to harm them. In this story Kipling has tried to show how parents, mongoose parents in
this case, encourage their children to nurture their curiosity and not be afraid to explore. “The motto of
all mongoose family is, “Run and find out…” (92) Children are naturally inquisitive. This trait is shown by
Kipling through Mowgli’s desire to know more about his kind. “He would go down the hillside into the
cultivated lands by night, and look very curiously at the villagers in their huts…” (12) It is not just that he
mentions curiosity he also encourages the development of this trait through this story. Curiosity is one
trait that all elders encourage in children. It is by being curious that a child tends to learn new things. In
the West the curiosity of a child is rewarded with favorable words to motivate the children to satiate
their inquisitiveness by trying to find answers to questions that arise in their minds. Psychologists view
curiosity as a sign of a 166 healthy mind. As compared to the East there is a better understanding and
acceptance of this curiosity in the West. In the past the eastern children did not get as much exposure as
the Western children. That is why they were not very inquisitive because their horizons were limited
which made them less liable to ask questions. In the present context, however, the level of exposure is
almost same so the level of inquisitiveness is also almost the same. In The Jungle Book Kipling illustrates
this curiosity and hence motivates the children to develop the same characteristic. By attempting to
satiate their curiosity the children gather a lot of knowledge. This knowledge is of no use if it is not put
to use. The use of learning new things is only when they are put into application. In The Jungle Book,
there is a story titled The Undertakers which a story about a Jackal and a crocodile named Mugger. Once
they were talking and the Mugger was showing off all the knowledge that he possessed about the village
and its people. The Jackal gets annoyed and says, “Now, of what use is that knowledge?” (221) The
Jackal gets annoyed because all that the Mugger does is lie on the bank of the river all day and does
nothing else. Even though he had all this knowledge he did not do anything about it. The annoyance of
the Jackal is an indicator for the children that their knowledge is of no use unless they put it to test. Like
all fables, the purpose of the stories that are part of The Jungle Books is to instill good manners and
conduct in the children. There are several incidents in the stories which are meant to steer the children
in the right direction of learning the secret of becoming a good human being. In the story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
the mongoose asks Kala Naag about the mark on the back of his hood and in turn the cobra tells him a
story. He says, “The great God Brahm put his mark upon all our people, when the first cobra spread 167
his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept.” (94) This incident reveals that if one does good to
someone then in return he gets good. This reference is typically Indian but the children of the West
would take interest in the incident since through this they would come to know an interesting anecdote
about a culture that is so different from theirs. The response of the Western reader is one of intrigue
and interest since through this he makes the discovery of something new which becomes a source of
great joy for him. B.F. Skinner believed that encouraging good behavior motivates the child to continue
with or maintain that behavior. This reinforcement is clearly seen in another story from The Jungle
Books titled Toomai of the Elephants. It is a story about a man named Toomai who is responsible for
taming the elephants of an English official named Petersen Sahib. Little Toomai is the son of Toomai and
is learning how to tame elephants from his father. Since he has grown up looking at his father doing the
same thing every day so he has a natural talent for doing the job. Once Little Toomai manages to calm
and control and angry elephant all by himself so Petersen Sahib says to him, “…here are four annas to
spend in sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under that great thatch of hair.” (115) Petersen
Sahib’s encouragement not only validates the good taming of the elephant done by Little Toomai but
also gives him the boost to continue with the good work and strive to become better and better.
Children take time to discover their skills and talents gradually. Due to this, whatever venture they step
into and complete successfully turns into an accomplishment. Appreciation goes a long way in
enhancing that side of the child and in The Jungle Book, Kipling has made use of such things which have
become a matter of serious 168 psychological study for scholars and researchers. This trait of rewarding
a child if he does anything good is common to both Eastern and Western cultures. This overlapping has
been maintained through the generations and certain cultural differences may exist in the manner or
type of reward and the manner in which it is given but the main essence of the idea is common to both
cultures. Another thing that the children are inadvertently made aware of is the fact that there exists a
transfer of power from father to son. Usually the son ends up taking the same job as the father. This
especially happens in government jobs. In the story Toomai of the Elephants, Little Toomai is excited
about his father’s elephant taming job and hopes to do the same thing some day. In this context Kipling
remarks that, “according to custom, he [Little Toomai] would take his father’s place on Kala Naag’s neck
when he grew up.” (110) In the West, however, this pressure is not seen so much. The society is more
open and hence, the child has more freedom to decide what he wants to do with his life. If the child
wants to follow the footsteps of his father then he is welcome but if by chance he chooses to opt for a
different path then he is met with more acceptance than the East. Watson talks about ‘Invalidism’
saying that parents and elders should not set up unrealistic expectations for the children by trying to
shield or protect them from everything. Since they are a part of this world so it is only natural that they
will be exposed to all that it has to offer which includes both the good and the bad. In the story Servants
of the Queen which is a story about a troop-horse named Billy and his friends the horse remarks,
“Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I think, if they see things they don’t understand.”
(132) This not only is an acceptance of the fact that 169 there might be things out there that are beyond
one’s comprehension but also that it is okay to be afraid at times. This acceptance makes children
comfortable in being open about how they feel about certain incomprehensible things and also helps
them to deal with the repercussions of that thing. Contrary to this Kipling also cautions the children
against harboring unrealistic fears. In the story Toomai of the Elephants an elephant named Kala Naag
was part of the elephant troops of the Indian Government. Before one of the wars his mother Radha
Pyari tells him that, “elephants who were afraid always got hurt.” (108) This is also what Watson had
said in his theory. He was of the view that for the all round development of the children it is imperative
that they are made aware of both the good side of things as well as the bad. Unless a child is able to feel
the fear he or she will not be able to overcome it. That is why Watson talks about letting a child deal
with both sides which is also seen in The Jungle Books. The perception and acceptance of fear in the
Eastern and Western context is very different. As discussed before in the West a child is prepared not to
be afraid from the very beginning because he is made to sleep alone at night. Also, Westerners see fear
as a sign of weakness and so children are told stories of bravery and hence indirectly willed to be strong
and fearless. These stories allow children to embrace the fear and try to learn to accept it so that they
can gradually learn to overcome it. The Jungle Book gives the young readers and the elders a means of
accepting it. There is another story titled Servants of the Queen which a story about a bullock named
Two-Tails who used to pull the cart full of goods for the Englishmen. Once when he is pulling a cart when
he suddenly pulls and the yoke snaps and he runs away. He does 170 so because he is afraid of the
Englishmen. By seeing this, a man remarks, I never knew before what made Indian cattle afraid of
Englishmen.” (141) The ‘Indian cattle’ here is a metaphor for the Indian people and Kipling has
inadvertently mentioned here that the Indians were afraid of the British. This becomes important from
the perspective of an East-West analysis because since the primary audiences of these stories were the
British children so subtle instances like this were not a problem. However, later, after the spread of
these stories several scholars dug deeper into the colonial aspect of these stories. Another metaphorical
reference from the same story is when an Asian chief remarks, “But are the beasts as wise as men?”
(143) Here it is questioned whether the Indians are as wise as the British. It is a rhetorical question since
no answer is expected and it is asked only to create a dramatic effect. A Western child enjoys this
reference because indirectly it is him that the world is afraid of. The English ruled over more than half
the world and even though the children that are part of the world now are not in any way part of that
generation which was ruling but they are inadvertently born with an innate sense of superiority. This
feeling of superiority is going to take time to go away. Further on, another story talks about a family of
Seal hunters and how they are the best among their kind. The name of this story is The White Seal in
which Kipling talks about hierarchy. He talks about Kerick Booterin, the chief of the seal hunter and his
son, Patalamon. Before a hunt began the hunters were given an opportunity to ride the seals. The chief
hunter and his son got to pick first and all the others had to choose from the ones that were left. This
again is reminiscent of the fact that the Westerners chose what they wanted first and the leftovers were
left to be divided amongst the others. This 171 established the hierarchy among the people to be
followed. This is true in context of the children as well. In order to ensure to instill the fact in the
children that they need to respect their elders, it is essential that they are made aware of the hierarchy
that exists in the world. Due to this awareness they will not only be able to recognize who is above them
but will also become humbler human beings. It is natural for children to make mistakes because that’s
how they learn. Watson laid emphasis on the external reactions of people to situations. In one of the
stories from The Jungle Books titled How Fear Came, which a story about a drought and how all the
animals dealt with it and lived through it, there is an exchange between Tha, the first of the elephants
and the First of the Tigers. In this particular incident the First of the Tigers has been branded with black
stripes by the trees since he was guilty of killing and eating the child of a man. Tha is angry with him and
the rest of the animals are scared of him and says that no one is now going to give him the same kind of
respect that he got earlier. To this the First of the Tigers remarks, “They will never fear me, for I knew
them since the beginning.” (161) He calls all the animals “but they all run away from him who had been
their Judge, because they were afraid.” (161) This incident reveals that once a person loses his credibility
then it is very difficult for him to rebuild it. The external reaction that Watson talks about in his theory is
of fear in this case. The animals are scared of the First of the Tiger because now that he has killed and
tasted the blood of man he is bound to become more ferocious than ever. His blood thirst might be
uncontrollable due to which they prefer to keep their distance from him. This incident warns the
children against making such objectionable mistakes which results in them losing their credibility. Also,
this story is a caution against trusting such people like the 172 First of the Tiger. He lied to his friends
and continued to deceive them which is not something that a good person should do. The culture of the
West would necessitate the strictest of punishments for the defaulters. The ideology of the people is
that a crime must not go unpunished if an example is to be set in order to deter others from repeating
that same mistake again. Also, it is good to give second chances but in the West once the credibility of a
person is lost then it takes almost an entire life time to build it up again. This may not necessarily be true
in the Western context only but in the East people give second chances more readily as compared to the
West. The Jungle Books also teach a lesson on ethics. In is not enough to merely understand the
distinction between the right and the wrong. It is also important that the children understand to
differentiate between what is ethical and what is not. In the story How Fear Came Kipling talks about a
drought. There is immense scarcity of water and a narrow stream is the only source of water for all the
animals. At this time all the animals declare a Water Truce which forbids any animal to kill another at
the place of drinking water. Flouting this rule was punishable by death. In this regard Kipling remarks,
“By the Law of the Jungle it is death to kill at the drinking-places when once the Water Truce has been
declared.” (151) This is a very apt lesson on ethics and this certainly reveals to the children and helps to
instill the belief that if animals can possess the wisdom to behave ethically then so can we as humans.
The transaction that Rosenblatt talks about exists between the reader and the text. In The Jungle Books
the reader constantly engages in this give and take with the text. Whatever has been preached in
Kipling’s collection of stories is meaningless according to 173 her theory and gets meaning only when a
child reads it and gives it meaning based on his own individual experiences. So, in that case, the story of
Mowgli and his struggle to fit into either the jungle or the man-village becomes significant only when a
child empathizes with him. The devotion that Baloo and Bagheera show towards Mowgli also becomes
significant when a child, irrespective of his domain of experiences, understands and relates his own
friendship with theirs. He establishes a link between his life and the life of Mowgli and identifies with
the struggle of growing up in a world that is at times unable to understand his needs and desires.
Further, Jauss talks about the Horizon of Expectation. The Jungle Books were written with and Indian
setting but were primarily meant for children of the West. The West still perceives India as a land of
elephants and snake charmers. So, when a Western child begins to read these stories he brings with him
an expectation that expects the stories to be all about that or something close and similar. However, the
primary reason for the popularity of the collection is that it supersedes the expectations of the average
audience. It reveals in front of the readers a picture of India that is both interesting and refreshing. So it
appeals the young readers who are able to enjoy something that is so uniquely amazing. Also, the
readers in the Eastern children feel an affinity with Mowgli and are able to feel at home in the setting so
they enjoy it anyway. The animated series and the abundant merchandise related to The Jungle Books
have only added to the immense popularity of the stories which is one boon of the modern world that
helps things to widen their scope. The implied reader that Iser talks about is that reader for whom any
text is written. In other words, any writer, before beginning to write a text has a target audience in
mind. 174 Due to this the manner of writing a text and the themes and mode of narration, all change
keeping in mind that intended reader. This implied reader in the case of The Jungle Books was a child
from the West who viewed India with intrigue. Due to this there exist several gaps and blanks in the text
which the young reader fills based on his own ideology and perception. Moreover, Fish talks about
‘interpretive communities’. These are nothing else but a set of assumptions and beliefs that re
associated with a community and any text is understood in relation to these assumptions only. In the
case of The Jungle Books these assumptions are nothing else but the lens through the Western world
looks at India and the things that it contains. For example the Bandar-log in the stories are uncivilized
and incapable of ruling in a proper manner. This is what the Westerners thought about the Indian
people who aspired to rule the world at the time that the stories were written. In other words they
represent the third world. It was a time when the Indians were struggling to gain freedom and the West
was reluctant to grant it. This inherent struggle underlies the text. Hence, readers today are globally
aware of what The Jungle Books are all about and the perceptions and impressions of each reader is
governed by the dominance of different things in their respective domains of comprehension.

Conclusion: Navigating Temporally and Spatially Literature has been around for the young and adults
alike since times immemorial. In this regard it has been observed that the adults take the help of stories
and tales in order to keep the children occupied and also to instill good manners in them. In other
words, literature has been playing the role of a mentor and disciplining the children by posting examples
in front of them to observe and learn from. Stories that are handed down from one generation to the
next connect us to our past, to the roots of our specific cultures, national heritage and general human
condition. Stories are the repositories of culture. Knowing the tales, characters, expressions and adages
that are part of our cultural heritage is part of being culturally literate. In addition, stories based on
actual events in the past help young people to gain a greater appreciation for what history is and for the
people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who made history. The reason that this research is relevant in
today’s world is because due to the changing ideology of the children the literature has also changed. It
is very difficult to separate the impact that literature has on children and the impact that the children
have on 206 Broadly speaking, Children’s Literature has come a long way from the time of oral
storytelling to the present day. Initially the purpose was to educate only then gradually the
entertainment factor also merged with it. Now, the focus is also on the psychological grooming of the
children. Due to this change the children have also evolved and hence, their ‘Horizon of Expectation’ has
also changed. They do not expect their literature to be so simplistic and plain. They expect it to be
challenging and complicated enough to be able to match their changing Mindscape. Moreover, with
development and technology becoming dominant with every passing minute, the entire world is
becoming one big unit. There is nothing that a child cannot look up on the internet. Hundred years ago a
twelve year old child was at a similar wavelength with a six year old child today. The new generation is
growing up in a complex world and that is why their personalities are becoming equally complex. Due to
this the ‘Interpretive Communities’ are no longer restricted to just a specific community or country.
Rather, there is an exchange and understanding between these various communities which are rapidly
merging into one. Also, the several ‘Gaps’ that exist in the text are filled in quickly and innovatively by
the child today. They do not rely on the elders to either tell them stories or explain the meaning to
them. In fact, many times they come up with unique interpretations based on their own experiences.
Since the children have become smart workers today, they identify with the Thirsty Crow or the Rabbit
who killed the Lion. This ‘Identity Theme’ is the result of their psychological evolution which is the result
of the changing face of their literature to a great extent. All these reasons have greatly altered the
response of the 207 children as well. Initially where the response was simple and reserved, today the
same stories get a rather complex and innovative response. Since Children’s Literature used to be an
anthropomorphic representation so, the relationship between the animals and the humans was
observed to great lengths. Animals are dominated by their senses very largely. This relation between
animals and their senses can be equated with children and the relationship that they have with their
senses. Children who are below the age of two years and fall under the first stage of Erik Erikson’s modal
rely very heavily on their senses for the perception of the outside world. Since their oratory skills are not
so well developed so they cannot convey clearly what they are thinking. This makes the use of senses
and gestures very important. The use of animals in fables establishes a sort of connection between them
and hence, the entire purpose of the fable and its message is realized. Children who are a little older and
no longer so dependent on their senses also feel a connection with the animal characters. Firstly
because it is entertaining since it is something new and different. Secondly because it reminds them of a
younger them which is very appealing and so they are willing to listen, pay attention and imbibe. In the
West the Aesop’s Fables and The Jungle Books are both dominated by animals. Whereas in the East, in
the Panchatantra there is an equal participation of animals and humans and by the time of Children’s
Omnibus, the dominance of animals has decreased considerably. In the West the tone of the text has
become more complex but it still remains symbolic. In the East the realistic aspect has emerged recently
but the stories re still didactic and the tone is still moralizing. All these things can be illustrated with the
help of some examples below. 208 In the story titled How the crow-Hen Killed the Black Snake from the
Panchatantra, the father crow goes to his friend the jackal who was very worldly wise and asks him to
tell him the way through which he could kill the snake. They devise an elaborate plan to make the
guards of the King see the snake so that they would kill him instead. A child in the East is greatly
impressed by the advice from the jackal and sees the entire episode with awe and wonder. In the West,
the child is unable to grasp the point of the entire exercise since according to them moving would have
been a less tedious thing to do. In the East people attach sentimental value to their ancestral homes
since they stay there for generations. In the West, after the child turns eighteen, he has to move out
anyway and build a new home for himself. Because of this they are not emotionally attached to the
house itself. This marks a difference in their ideology and hence marks a difference in the response that
the story gets in the East and in the West. In the case of Numskull and the rabbit also the reactions of
the child in the East and the West are different owing to the differences in the ideologies. In the East a
child reads this and reacts with joy on the destruction of the evil and the victory of the good since they
have been dominated by teachings of the Ramayana and the celebrating of Deepawali. An Eastern child
feels that since the lion was bad so he deserved to die and be punished. A child from the West, on the
other hand, does not immediately focus on the death of the lion but is rather fascinated by the
smartness of the rabbit. It is the small and insignificant seeming rabbit that grabs the attention of the
Western child who has always been focused upon domination irrespective of the size. 209 As far as the
Western literature is concerned, it can be traced back to the Aesop’s Fables which was one of the first
collections which was intended for children. It is a classic for the same reason that the Panchatantra is; it
has stood the test of time. The maxims that the stories preach were relevant and significant thousands
of years ago and still are. According to Erik Erikson’s modal a child develops the quality of Competence
by the time he reaches the age of twelve years. This quality is best realized with the help of persistence.
When a child first tries to walk, he or she does not get instant success. Nonetheless, with patience and
persistence, he is finally able to demonstrate his competence which ultimately gives him a sense of
achievement. In the story The Crow and the Pitcher, the crow is extremely thirsty and devises a plan to
make the water come up to the brim of the pitcher. He drops a pebble in it but nothing happens.
However, due to his persistence he finally succeeds in gradually making the level of the water in the
pitcher rise. In this way he not only successfully quenches his thirst but also gets a sense of achievement
which demonstrates his competence. This same story can be analyzed differently for the Western
children of the past and the present. In the past the children responded to the text as conveying the
quality of perseverance. Not giving up and striving to see the task to its end was appreciated and
respected. However, in the present scenario, the same story and its maxim is spun around to suit the
sensibility of the modern child. Rather than admiring the perseverance of the crow, the child now is
more attracted towards the smart tactic adopted by the crow to achieve its target. The difference in this
response is due to the difference in the observation of the child. The children in the past observed their
mothers follow procedure 210 and work hard with a lot of perseverance. Now, on the other hand,
mothers are becoming multi-taskers since they have a lack of time due to their busy work lives. This
observation transforms the response of the children as readers. In his theory, B.F. Skinner talks about
‘Radical Behaviourism’ which means that the environment of a person makes them into what they
eventually become. This has been illustrated with the help of the fable of The Hare and the Tortoise. In
this story the Hare and the Tortoise decide to race each other. The Hare is super confident since he
knows that there is no way that the Tortoise will be able to beat him as he is inherently much faster than
him. This makes him a little arrogant and over confident due to which he makes the mistake of
underestimating his opponent. The Tortoise, on the other hand, knows that he is much slower in
comparison to the Hare. This knowledge defines their environment which reflects in their behavior. The
Hare becomes laid back while the Tortoise is consistent. This alters the result of the race and gives an
invaluable lesson to the children that even though our environment defines our behavior, however, our
actions are completely governed by our choices which means that we can choose the manner in which
we want to behave. That is why in the Western context the children tend to be more complex since their
environment is more complex because of a better standard of living. In the East the children are much
simpler in comparison since their environment is also simple. For further analyses John B. Watson is
relevant. He claims in his theory that a child should be treated as a significant individual and not as
someone invalid. The actions and interactions of an adult determine the child’s behavior. He argues in
favour of realistic projections of the world. For example, in the story The Dog and the Shadow the 211
unrealistic expectations of the dog of being able to own not one but two pieces of meat are punished
when he loses the one in his own possession as well. Due to his greed, he barks at his own reflection in
the water and loses everything that he had. This is what Watson says in his theory. He says that
unrealistic expectations are not useful in the long run and since children are not mature enough to
understand this then it is the responsibility of the elders to help them in understanding the distinction
between right and wrong. With the help of this fable an Eastern child is able to understand the
foolishness of the dog. He is able to sympathize with him too since he loses everything. The manner in
which this story is understood is that one should be content with what they have. A child of the West
feels that the dog became hasty. He should have been a little more patient and then taken the leap. In
other words, it is good to be content but that does not mean that we should lose the desire to better
ourselves. Aspiring for better things and aiming to achieve newer heights is the ideology according to
which the Western world lives. Hence, this story is responded to differently in the East and in the West.
At the same time if one shifts focus towards a more contemporary time frame then The Jungle Books
are an apt example to analyze the Western sensibility of a child since Kipling intended this collection of
stories for a Western audience only and he has given several hints in the text in this regard. At the very
outset of The Jungle Books Kipling highlights the innocence of a child in the story Mowgli’s Brothers. He
writes, “Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just
walk – as soft and as dimpled a little 212 atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into
Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.” (6) Here one can clearly see that the ‘naked brown baby’ who is later
named ‘Mowgli – The Frog’ is laughing in the face of a beast and is unafraid. Due to this we can conclude
that he belongs to the first stage of Erikson’s theory. He faces the psychological crisis of ‘trust and
mistrust’ as he finds the warmth of the ‘Wolf pack’ inviting and the “square head and shoulders” of
Shere Khan hostile. The most significant relationship of a child in that stage is that with the mother and
Mowgli is clearly drawn towards the Mother Wolf, Raksha who also is instantly taken by him and vows
to protect the ‘man cub’. If interpreted in the context of the East and the West together then this fact is
constant in both places that a mother is the most significant relationship for a child. The Western sees
this association with the wild as ordinary for the people in the East because they have this impression in
their minds about the East. Moreover, the importance of learning and education has been stressed upon
as well. In the story Kaa’s Hunting, Baloo’s delight with Mowgli is quite apparent since Kipling remarks,
“The big serious, old, brown bear was delighted to have so quick a pupil…” (24) Also, retention needs to
be tested since what is taught cannot be forgotten as the purpose is to educate and not just teach. In
other words the child needs to be able to use this education in his future life. So Mowgli was supposed
to “recite the day’s lesson to Baloo” (25) so that it could be gauged whether or not he remembers what
is being taught to him. 213 Education was more staid in the past and there was always a fear of failing.
The children were very aware of the fact that if they failed then they would become the butt of many
jokes. What others thought about them was very important and it was the root cause for the fear
residing in children against failing. In the present scenario the children are least interested or worried
about what others think about them. There is so much pressure from all fronts that the children want to
do well for them and not to show off to someone else. Progressing in the world, making a name for
oneself and emerging on top are things that today’s child is worried about. These things were not so
vehemently important initially even though there were premier educational facilities in the past, not
many children had access to them. The situation is altering gradually both in the East as well as the
West. In the West a child is prepared not to be afraid from the very beginning. Once a child is born, it
has its own nursery where it sleeps and the mother monitors it via a baby monitor. This fact points
towards the assumption that a child needs to be made strong and independent from the very beginning.
In the East, a mother prefers to sleep as close to a child as possible in case he needs anything in the
night or he may get scared. Therefore, there is a difference which exists in the understanding and
tackling of the concept of fear. Since Kipling had written these stories for his daughter and other
Western children like her, he stresses the fact that it is okay to be afraid. Later, after the circulation and
popularity of these stories among the Eastern children a contrast was observed. The present situation is
the East and the West is still quite different as far as this one thing is concerned. 214 In the Indian
context one of the most significant contributors in the field of Children’s Literature has been Ruskin
Bond. Even though he has written several stories, novellas and novels for children his collection titled
Children’s Omnibus is the most significant since it is a collection of the most popular tales by Bond.
Several examples of the Eastern mentality are seen in Ranji’s story. In the story when the boys have to
unwillingly let the elders play with them in the match. They know very well that they are not very good
but are also scared to point this out lest their gaming privileges are taken away. Ruskin Bond remarks in
this context that “The fathers weren’t very good but you couldn’t tell them that. After all, they helped to
provide bats and balls and pocket-money.” (4) Here the fourth stage of Erikson’s modal is illustrated. A
child in this stage values friends and school most. Ranji and his friends are too much into sports.
However, at the same time they also demonstrate their Competence which is the most dominant quality
of this stage. They not only demonstrate their competence in the game of cricket but also in the fact
that they handle the elders’ poor display in game in a mature manner. In the past not telling the parents
was viewed from a moralistic perspective which means that a child was expected to be courteous and
polite towards the elders. It was something mandatorily ingrained in the children. In other words they
did not even mind as much because of the ideology. However, in a more modern context, the child
bargains with the parent without even saying anything. Ranji and his friends depend on their parents for
their gaming privileges as well as money for equipment. That is why they deliberately choose not to say
anything even though they mind. They keep quiet about the elders’ poor performance to satiate their
own individualistic needs. 215 In The Blue Umbrella when Rajaram and Ram Bharosa bargain for the
reward for stealing the umbrella, it becomes clear that Ram Bharosa really wants the umbrella and that
is why Rajaram does not hesitate to exploit the situation in his favour. Even though this is an exchange
that does not warrant a very pleasant response, especially from the elders, yet is does show how the
boy is aware of things beyond his age. This is a direct reflection of the modernity of the age. Initially
children were not so aware, outspoken and daring but as time has passed, they have become more
ready to take risks. There is also an inherent negativity in everyone but in modern times people have
gradually started to become more easily swayed by it just like Rajaram. Due to the ever increasing
pressure in the world the parents have to work twice as hard as they had to in the past. That is why they
don’t have enough time to devote to their kids. In this case what they do is they give the children some
incentives like chocolates and video games to make up for the loss of time and also to keep them
pacified and occupied so that they get some peace and quiet. It seems like a very harmless thing to do
but the children in the modern world are inadvertently learning these tactics and at times applying them
in the negative sense. In this case it needs to be remembered that the three rupees that Rajaram will get
in exchange of the stealth of the umbrella is not reinforcement that Skinner talks about. According to
Skinner when a child does something good and the elders want to encourage the child to continue with
that work then they are given appreciation or some treats which act like reinforcement to continue with
that work. In the case of Rajaram, since he is not doing something good so whatever Ram Bharosa offers
him is not because he wants him to continue but because he wants to satisfy his own selfish greed. Ram
216 Bharosa is greedy and this we come to know when he says to Rajaram that, “I want the umbrella
because — because I want its beauty to be mine!” (34) This clearly reflects his greed and his willingness
to do anything in order to possess it. This incident also helps the children to develop their discriminative
ability that Piaget talks about. On the one hand there is Rajaram and on the other hand there are Binya
and Bijju, her brother. While Rajaram is a liar and is deceitful, Binya and Bijju are truthful and honest.
Through these opposing examples the children get to view both sides of the world. They are able to see
and assess for themselves that who is right and who is wrong. In other words, by being exposed to both
types, they are able to discriminate between and then decide for themselves that who they want to
become like. In this manner they are invariably made aware of their instincts. This is also known as
reflecting abstraction. In other words, a child is able to distinguish between two or more things in
comparison to other things. So, here the child is able to compare Rajaram and Binya and Bijju and then
determine for themselves that who is better and hence, who do they want to emulate. In the East a
child associates this with sin and the fact that he is going to be punished by the gods. In the West the
child sees the negativity of the situation as an opportunist mentality. In both cases the reception and
response is negative but in the East it is associated with the cultural construct of sin and in the West it is
simply viewed as a cunning and shrewd mind’s projection and an opportunity very craftily grabbed to
take advantage of a situation. 217 This changing face of Children’s Literature can be greatly attributed to
the changing psychology of the children. Since they grow and evolve so quickly, the literature that is
intended for them also needs to change and evolve quickly in order to keep pace. On the other hand,
the gradually increasing complexity of the genre plays a very big role in the evolution and complexity of
the children. hence, we can conclude that the children and their literature are both inter-dependent on
each other and one grows and evolves with the other.