I am a fan of Lois Lowry. I mean, who isn’t? So when my son asked me to read Lowry’s book Gooney Bird Greene, I was eager to comply. The book begins when a new second grade student enters the classroom and asks for a desk in the middle of the room because she likes “to be right smack in the middle of everything” (3). Gooney Bird (we later find out her name) is given a desk in the middle of the room, and goes on to be in the middle of every scene and in most of the pictures as well. She is the main character, after all. 

I was dumbfounded. I have two degrees in Literature, and before my son was born, I was teaching literature at the college level. Yet it had never occurred to me in such simple terms that the main character was the one “in the middle.” 

We devoured the book, my son and I. And then we read it again. Then my husband read bits and pieces while I listened through the baby monitor while nursing our daughter in the other room.

Gooney Bird told us that stories need characters, and dialogue, a beginning, middle, and end. It was the basis of all literary criticism, the basis of narrative, and it was so simple. My three-year-old was learning literary analysis. Why had this stuff seemed so complicated in grad-school? And yet here it was, in child-sized bites.

Of course when I was in grad-school we were swimming in the deep end. Forget the main character; we were following the underwater current of narrative-voice, stream-of-consciousness, authorial intent, mimesis of thought — it’s a thrilling ride, but  after so many years in that vein (to mix metaphors), the simplicity of Gooney Bird Greene was both shocking and delicious. 

“Literary Analysis” is, itself, an overly complex phrase. At the heart, it is just thinking, talking, and asking questions about stories. We do this every day. 

After reading Gooney Bird Green, I began thinking about literary analysis differently. “Who is in the middle of everything in this book?” I would ask. If my son wasn’t sure, we could flip through the book and look at the pictures, “Who is on this page? What about this page? Who do you see here?” It turns out that main characters usually are “right smack in the middle of everything.”

Once my son understood the term “main character,” I began to wonder what other terms I could teach him. Not for the sake of knowing terms, of course, but because knowing how to name a thing gives us the power to begin talking about it. We began talking about character needs and wants, about problems and solutions, about metaphors. 

Now our discussions are richer, our questions are more intentional, and my son’s understanding of characters and narrative elements is growing and deepening. 

Of course when we work with children, we always have to keep in mind the stages of development that govern their inclinations, abilities and concerns. Understanding their development and sensitive periods is especially important in the selection of books and stories, but also bares significance on the kinds of questions we ask them to consider as we are reading our chosen books. 

My goal in creating Literary Littles is to share with you some of the essential questions that writers and literature professors consider as they evaluate literature, and to give you the guidance and tools to begin using these insightful questions in developmentally appropriate ways with your own Literary Littles.