The Dog's Tale: Chinese, Hungarian and Swedish ...

International Journal of Early Years Education

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The Dog's Tale: Chinese, Hungarian and Swedish children's narrative conventions L'Histoire du Chien: Les conventions narratives chez les enfants Chinois, Hongrois et Suedois El Cuento del Perro: Convenciones en la forma de narrar de niños Chinos, Hungaros y Suecos Maj Asplund Carlsson , Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson , Anna Soponyai & Quifang Wen To cite this article: Maj Asplund Carlsson , Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson , Anna Soponyai & Quifang Wen (2001) The Dog's Tale: Chinese, Hungarian and Swedish children's narrative conventions L'Histoire du Chien: Les conventions narratives chez les enfants Chinois, Hongrois et Suedois El Cuento del Perro: Convenciones en la forma de narrar de niños Chinos, Hungaros y Suecos, International Journal of Early Years Education, 9:3, 181-191, DOI: 10.1080/09669760120086938 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760120086938

Published online: 21 Jul 2010.

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International Journal of Early Years Education, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2001

The Dog’s Tale: Chinese, Hungarian and Swedish children’s narrative conventions

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L’Histoire du Chien: les conventions narratives chez les enfants Chinois, Hongrois et Suedois El Cuento del Perro: convenciones en la forma de narrar de ninõs Chinos, Hungaros y Suecos MAJ ASPLUND CARLSSON , INGRID PRAMLING SAMUELSSON & ANNA SOPONYAI Department of Education, Go¨teborg University

QUIFANG WEN Nanjing University, China

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore children’s (6–7 years) making up of their own stories in different cultures (China, Hungary and Sweden). Ninety-three children were asked individually to tell a story about a dog. They were supposed to invent the story themselves. Qualitative differences in children’s life worlds, which could be related to their cultural backgrounds , stood out in the results. The characters used in the children’s stories could be summarised in terms of family members, ordinary humans, unusual persons, harmless animals, dangerous creatures, and fantastic characters. The most characteristic events were: play and co-operation, con icts and ghts, death, and exchange of commodities. The Chinese children focused mainly on play and co-operation, while the Hungarian children focused on con icts and the exchange of commodities. The Swedish children focused on play and death. The results are discussed in relation to traditions and practices of retelling and telling of stories and children’s life worlds in different cultures. RE´SUME´ L’objectif de cet e´tude est d’explorer la forme dont les enfants (de 6–7 ans) construisent des histoires dans des cultures diffe´rentes. On a demande´ a` 93 enfants de raconter une histoire de leur propre invention sur un chien. Les diffe´rences existantes dans l’expe´rience de vie des enfants, susceptibles d’eˆtre mises en rapport avec leur milieu culturel, apparurent dans les re´sultats. Les personnages des histoires raconteés entrent dans les cate´gories de membres de la famille, personnes ordinaires ou extraordinaires, animaux inoffensifs ou dangereux et personnages de fantaisie. Parmi les actions les plus characteristiques se comptent le jeu et la coope´ration, les con icts et les disputes, la mort et l’ećhange d’objets. Les enfants chinois se sont concentre´s sur le jeu et la coope´ration, les hongrois sur les con icts et l’ećhange d’objets et les petis sue´dois sur le jeu et la mort. On discute les ISSN 0966-9760 print; 1469-5463 online/01/030181-11 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0966976012008693 8

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re´sultats de l’e´tude a` la lumie`re des traditions, des pratiques narratives et de l’expe´rience de vie des enfants dans des cultures diffe´rentes. RESUMEN El objetivo de este estudio es explorar la forma en que ninõs (de 6 y 7 anõs) construyen sus propias historias en diferentes culturas (China, Hungrõá y Suecia). Se solicito´ a 93 ninõs por separado que contaran una historia de su propia invencioń sobre un perro. Las diferencias existentes en la experiencia vital de estos ninõs, pasibles de ser relacionadas con sus respectivos medios culturales, se hicieron evidentes en los resultados. El tipo de personajes que aparecen en las historias entran en las siguientes categorõás: miembros de la familia, seres humanos ordinarios o inusuales, animales inofensivos o peligrosos y personajes de fantasõá. Entre las acciones ma´s caracterõ´sticas se cuentan el juego y la cooperacioń, los con ictos y peleas, la muerte y el intercambio de objetos. Los ninõs chinos se centran en el juego y la cooperacioń, los huńgaros en los con ictos y el intercambio de objetos y los ninõs suecos en el juego y la muerte. Los resultados del estudio se analizan en relacioń a las tradiciones y praćticas narrativas asõ´ como a la experiencia vital de los ninõs en diferentes las culturas. Background Today, there is an enormous output of commercial culture for children manufactured and distributed by adults. However, the necessity that children’s own production of culture comes to the fore has also been observed lately, as a consequence of a renewed interest in children’s rights to express themselves. An educational programme such as ‘the Story Ride’ (Riihela & Rutanen, 1998) in Finland, has attracted a lot of af rmative attention from teachers and parents as well as administrators and politicians. It is somehow taken for granted that children’s own stories and narratives reveal something about their needs and wishes for the future and are more valuable as data than observations of their behaviour, for instance. Bruner (1990), even claims that narrative discourse is a basically human way of organising thoughts, feelings, and events; that is, human experience. Pitcher and Prelinger (1963) were among the rst to use children’s fantasy narratives in a large-scale study of their ‘ego-development, differentiation of self from others, development of social roles and skills, and the socialisation of the drives of infancy’ (Fox, 1993, p. 71). Applebee (1978) used the same collection of stories and launched an outline of the development of story structure and characterisation in children’s stories. Sutton-Smith (1981) also analysed a large collection of children’s stories with reference to their similarity to role play and folklore, while Fox’s (1993) main interest lay in how children’s own stories were in uenced by children’s literature and other sources. Thus, we may conclude that children’s narratives can be used in research with many diverse aims and purposes. That there are cultural differences in story apprehension was shown by Machet (1996) as well as Asplund Carlsson et al. (1996). Scollon and Scollon (1981) pointed out that culture has a strong in uence on the story-making procedures, and Heath (1983) showed that ethnic background , although in a multicultural environment, is just as decisive. African American and white middle-class children tell stories in different ways, although they share the same classroom. The purpose of this study, however, is to look at differences in stories produced by children in mainly monocultural classrooms in three different parts of the world: China, Hungary and Sweden. Although we do not claim that national belonging is synonymous with cultural belonging we dare suggest, though, that the school culture and the supply of children’s literature in education are unique for each of the three countries and that this has some

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in uence on children’s storytelling procedures, as has been suggested by the previous studies. However, how this in uence takes form in the children’s stories was something we wished to explore with this study.


Method Narrative or story can be anything from a sequence of two (Labov, 1972) or three (Prince, 1973) sentences, which are ordered in a temporal or causal sequence, up to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The narrative contains at least one character, at least two events and makes some kind of point (Polanyi, 1979). What constitutes a fantasy narrative, though, is the element of ctional discourse; that is, characters and events should be made up and not recalled. In all, 94 children, aged 6 and 7 years, were asked individually in their schools by an interviewer who was not their teacher, to tell a story about a dog. Thus, the main character was given but nothing else. The story should not have been told previously by either their parents or their teachers nor read out from a book. The children were allowed to think out the complete story before they told it. During the narration the children were allowed to speak without interruption. The interviewer gave af rmative comments only if a pause ensued. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thirty-two children were Chinese, 18 were Hungarian and 44 were Swedish. The Chinese children were interviewed by the Chinese researcher, while the other children were interviewed by an interviewer who spoke Hungarian as well as uent Swedish. The Chinese stories were subsequently translated into English and the Hungarian stories into Swedish, while the Swedish stories were retained in the original language. In the analysis, we looked for qualitative differences in the stories; that is, neither length nor structure were found to be important in this context, but rather issues which pointed out qualitative differences in children’s life worlds, and which could be related to their cultural background. In the analysis, characters and events from the stories were rst categorised into qualitatively different categories and in the second step the occurrence of a certain kind of character or event in the stories was quantitatively related to cultural belonging. Results The Characters The only prerequisite of the child’s tale was the main character, which was to be a dog. However, a dog is a complicated character to use in this context since it is highly culture dependent. In China, for instance, dogs are not kept as pets in the cities. In Sweden as wells as in Hungary, a dog is generally regarded as a useful animal. In the rural areas dogs are used as gundogs, hounds or guard dogs, in the urban districts as police dogs or pets. There were some children, who started their tale with a dog as the main character, but who rapidly proceeded to tell the interviewer about other characters. The story ‘about a dog’ meant that the dog did not necessarily play the leading part. There were also children who used the dog as a symbolic child and told a story about themselves in disguise. The dog could be a family dog as well as a dog in a fable, based on Aesop’s famous fable of the dog and the bone. Although the main character was xed, it functioned in many ways, depending on the narrating child. However, we have not categorised the main character, since it was predetermined. Depending on how the dog was characterised, the human characters in the stories were also presented in many different shapes and functions. If the main character ‘dog’ was a family dog, or belonged to a relative, it had a proper name (‘Akos’, ‘Morris’, ‘Jana’, ‘Roy’, etc.). The

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M. A. Carlsson et al. TABLE I. Characterisation related to nationality as a percentage of the total number of stories from each group


Family members Ordinary humans Unusual persons Harmless animals Dangerous creatures Fantastic characters

China n 5 32

Hungary n 5 18

Sweden n 5 44

59 22 0 81 41 0

61 44 11 33 50 16

41 27 9 27 7 11

dog could also be a member of a family of dogs and its mum, its dad and its puppies then became the family members of that story. The category ‘Family members’ is thus a concoction of human and canine characters depending on what kind of family is presented in the story. Other human characters than possible family members can be separated into two categories: ‘Ordinary humans’ and ‘Unusual persons’. Ordinary humans who are closely connected to the family category are the ‘old woman’ and ‘old man’ who own or take care of the dog. Other ordinary humans are children, teachers, shop keepers, butchers or doctors. On the border of the more spectacular, though, are policemen, remen and pirates, although we still consider them human. They are categorised as ‘Unusual persons’. Animals other than dogs which gure in the stories are either harmless or dangerous. Sometimes the same animal, like the fox, could take either role, depending on the context. Apparently ‘Harmless animals’ are geese, ducks and chickens, while horses and cows, roe deer and elks are potentially powerful but function in a harmless way in the stories. ‘Dangerous creatures’ are wolves, lions, tigers and bears. The Chinese children introduce a whole set of characters which is unique in this context: the honest Elephant, the dirty Pig, the beautiful Peacock, and the helpful Goat along with the cheating Big Grey Wolf and the dangerous Tiger. The Chinese wolf has more in common with a European fox, than with the dribbling wolves of the deep forests in the North and Centre of Europe. Fantastic characters are neither humans nor animals, but to the children they are just as familiar as any grandfather or fox. In this category, we have placed heroes like the Hungarian television heroes Csipet-Csapat, the Phantom, the Spiderman, as well as skeletons, vampires and other monsters. The characters in the children’s stories may thus be summarised in the following categories: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

Family members. Ordinary humans. Unusual persons. Harmless animals. Dangerous creatures. Fantastic characters.

Each story was then examined and the occurrence of at least one character belonging to each category was registered. This means that although there were several characters belonging to a category in some stories and just one in other stories, they all got one mark for the occurrence of the character in question. This method of analysis emphasises the diversity in characterisation more than the quantity. However, in the next step of the analysis, the number of stories from each country presenting at least one character in the different categories is related to the total number of stories from that group of children (see Table I).


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For example, 59% of the Chinese and 61% of the Hungarian stories introduce at least one member of the main character’s family; 16% of the Hungarian and 11% of the Swedish stories use a fantasy creature. The Chinese stories contain no unusual persons nor fantastic characters. As we can see from the table of characterisation, the Chinese stories are dominated by the dog, members of its family, and other animals, where most of them are nice and harmless, but some are dangerous or threatening. The Hungarian stories also depict family members, as well as both ordinary and more spectacular human beings. However, the animals are more dangerous than harmless. The Swedish stories resemble the Chinese, in introducing family and relatives into the stories; however, the presence of unusual persons as well as fantastic characters is more in line with the Hungarian stories. Thus, we can see that there are cultural differences in the characterisation in the different stories, although we have not made a thorough quantitative account of the number of different characters, but rather looked at the diversity in characterisation. This diversity is more limited in some groups of narratives than in others, which might have something to do with the cultural origin of the stories. The Events We also wanted to describe the events which were made use of in the children’s stories; that is, the functions observed by Propp (1968). Several functions are similar to those found in the folk tale, while others are more child oriented and speci c for the oral child tale. Botvin, for instance (in Sutton-Smith, 1981, pp. 3–6), modi ed Propp’s original functions and found 92 narrative elements, based on an analysis of stories told by New York city children who were 2–10 years of age. Although both these analyses are too encompassing in order to bring forward any cultural differences between the stories in our study, there are, however, certain points in common. Many events in our collection of stories describe some sort of conveyance, transference and even transformation. The main character, the dog, sets out for adventure, or he is abandoned by another character. This event is similar to Propp’s function XI (departure) and function I (absentation). As a consequence, the function of returning home often follows before the tale is closed. Events which function more as a break in the story line are sleeping or eating. A conclusive event is the occurrence of death of one of the main characters. Other events which are also found in Propp’s morphology are the encounter with either friend or enemy. In the rst case, this is followed by either play or some other event of co-operation; in the second case, some kind of con ict follows. The existence of commodities are both a source of con ict and of co-operation. Birthday presents and food, money and prizes at dog shows are at the centre of events describing gain and loss as well as ownership. The events in the children’s stories in this study may thus be categorised in the following functions: (A) (B) (C) (D) (E) (F) (G) (H) (I)

Departure or absentation. Home-coming or return. Encounter with a friend or an enemy. Sleep. Meals. Play or co-operation. Con ict or ght. Death. Exchange of commodities.

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M. A. Carlsson et al. TABLE II. Events in the stories as a percentage of the total number of stories in each group


Play or co-operation Con ict or ght Death Exchange of commodities

China n 5 32

Hungary n 5 18

Sweden n 5 44

78 12 25 0

17 56 17 52

18 7 21 7

However, if we want to focus on cultural differences, most of these functions are not decisive in any way. The rst analysis showed that the functions of departure or return, of encounters, of sleep and meals (A, B, C, D, E) were distributed evenly across the different groups of children. They are the kinds of functions which are characteristic of the child tale in general, or indeed any ctional narrative. If we want to emphasise the cultural differences between Chinese, Hungarian and Swedish children’s tales, it seemed to be more fruitful to look at the occurrence of play or co-operation (F), of con icts of ghts (G) and of death (H). The exchange of commodities (I) is also a cultural marker in its own right. As in the instance of characterisation, we marked the stories where at least one episode with either function was found and then related these stories to the total number of stories from each group of children (see Table II). There is no point in adding the functions across nationality, since the functions occur simultaneously in some stories but not in others. Most of the Swedish stories, for instance, do not contain any of these functions. They consist of rows of encounters, absentations, meals and sleep. However, we can observe that the functions of play or co-operation occurred in 78% of the Chinese stories but only in 17% and 18% of the Hungarian and Swedish stories. Con icts and ghts occurred in 56% of the Hungarian tales and the exchange of commodities in 52% of the stories. It is also noticeable that the deaths in 25% of the Chinese stories and 21% of the Swedish stories are not necessarily preceded by a ght (only 12% and 7%, respectively). Maybe the sly wolf is tricked into a violent death by co-operating friends. Characters could also die of old age or in a hunt. Neither event is then preceded by a con ict. Hungarian con icts and ghts are not necessarily succeeded by death, though. What we also see from this table are the differences in usage of certain functions in the narratives from three different groups of children. In the next section, we wish to take a more holistic view on the stories. Differences in Stories Related to Nationality As far as we have presented the results of the analysis it is clear that there are some differences between the stories from the three groups of children. Since neither character nor the occurrence of certain functions gives a proper view of the different stories, we want to present three stories, one from each group, which in some way capture the essence of storytelling in its context. Bie Jing from China One day, Doggie went out to play. Mum said, Don’t go out to play. But Doggie insisted. Mum said that if she bought him some bones he would not go out to play. Later a big tiger was eating a hare on the hill, so was a wolf. Mum saw that. She hid the basket rst and then found a bar to beat them. What if she couldn’t kill them? The Tiger and the Wolf wanted to eat her. They

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dared not eat her because she brought out a sharp knife. She stabbed them and killed them. Then she went out to buy some bones. When she came back, Doggie was still sleeping. She woke him up ‘Look, Doggie! Bones are here!’ Doggie got up. Then he wanted to play with his toys. Later, Mum went out to buy some food. Doggie wanted to go with her. Mum said ‘Don’t go with me, There is a big tiger outside’. Then Doggie stayed. When Mum came back, Doggie was snoring. She woke him up. After eating he watched television. He went out to play again. He went swimming. After swimming, he had breakfast. After breakfast he went to kindergarten. The kindergarten was empty, with no teacher or kids. Then he waited for a while. Then the kids of this kindergarten came. ‘Let’s have class at once’. After school, Mum cooked bone soup for him. He nished his bone soup and went to bed.

The dog is a child without siblings, alone at home with his mum, and with all kinds of dangers lurking outside. His mum has to go out and he has to stay by himself, waiting for her to come back. Like many of the Chinese children, he lives with his parents in a city at and goes to kindergarten, does his homework, watches television and goes out to play with his friends. The other characters are Mum, Wolf and Tiger. The functions of absentation, coming home, play, meals and sleep are varied. The only unusual element in this story is the sudden stabbing of the two animals. The story has the form of a fable, of human beings disguised as animals, although a moral conclusion is not expressed. Emese from Hungary Once upon a time beyond the seas there was a Bodri [dog] and his master. Once they went to the hill where there grew wheat. They rested there till the rain began to fall. They saw a little house and knocked and a little old woman said ‘Who are you, what is your name, what do you want?’ The dog says Woof, his master said ‘Let me in, little woman, or else I’ll break your door’. The woman let him in. ‘What do you want?’ ‘I want to stay here till tomorrow’. He could stay. Once another man came. He also had a dog. The little old woman said again ‘Who are you, what is your name, what do you want?’ The man said like the rst one ‘If you don’t let me in, little woman, I’ll break your door’. The woman let him in. She said ‘What do you want?’ They sit down and start to talk. He asks ‘Is there another man staying here with a spotted dog?’ ‘Ah, he’s staying in room number 13’. The man goes upstairs and his dog barks. The man asks from inside the room ‘Who is it, what is it? Maybe a ko´ko´ [a ghost]?’ The man enters the room and they start to talk. The man with the spotted dog becomes very angry. The other man pushes him out through the window. The little old woman is silent. She doesn’t know what to say and enters the room. Then she sees the blood stains. But the man doesn’t know what’s happened. The dog starts to bark and the woman throws out the dog through the window. The man gets angry: ‘What are you doing to my dog?’ ‘Because he barked at me’, said the old woman. She also said the man was so stupid since he couldn’t tell her why he had thrown the other man out of the window. End of story.

This is a violent story with the avour of a European folk tale. A stranger comes to a house where an old woman lives. The people do not have proper names and the dogs behave like ordinary dogs, they bark at each other and at people. However, the people ght violently but nobody dies, although one of the men is injured. The dialogue is more developed than is usually the case in a child’s tale and carries on the event structure. This is an adventure story built upon con icts and mystery and unexpected behaviour. There are no children in the story and no play or exchange of goods. The dogs are not symbolic but real dogs. Marielle from Sweden I have two dogs, Jana and Bella, and a white mini poodle, called Denise, but the other two, they are elk hounds. They go to dog shows. And then we went to my granny’s place, my sister was there, and we had ice cream cake. Jana, and Bella and Denise, they could all come with us. When we got home, it was night and Denise could come with me to my room and sleep

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on my bed. And I have a toy, a poodle too, but only pretend. Denise plays with it. But in the morning I went with my Dad to feed the horses. And Jana went to look at the chickens. I went to my neighbours, Sigge and Tage, and I went there with all the dogs. And I got hot chocolate and a sandwich there. And Lotta and Malin came to me and we went out in the forest and had a sandwich pack and Jana went too. And we went home and I had a chicken of my own at that time. But Hans, my brother, came home and Mum said to him we had better lock the chicken up in the box, because the hen would peck it. And we asked my Mum if Lotta could stay over night and we took Denise with us and went up to the hayloft. We had to carry Denise up the ladder. It was great. We had blankets and some breakfast and some supper and in the morning when we had had our breakfast in the hay we went to Sigge and Tage and climbed the trees in their garden. That’s the end.

Marielle tells a story based in her own everyday life on a farm in the north of Sweden, with dogs and horses and chickens, with family and neighbours and friends. As we can notice, there are departures as well as homecomings, encounters, play, meals and sleep. She does not describe any con icts and if a death ever occurred in her world it would be to one of the farm animals, maybe to the chicken, since there are latent but not overt dangers and threats directed at chickens and other weak animals. One could say that there is no obvious point in the story, no message, but more a detailed description of a rural pastoral. Discussion We will now proceed with a discussion of the educational practice related to storytelling in the classroom in the three school cultures, narrative conventions in children’s literature and differences in children’s life worlds in the respective settings for the study. Traditions and Practices of Retelling and Telling in China, Hungary and Sweden Stories for as well as by children might be used as a content of learning in pre-school and school. There are both academic and developmental aspects concerned with different storytelling practices. In the Chinese context, retelling a story is a very common practice in pre-schools and primary schools. Retelling is not the same as reciting, but the children are encouraged to use their own words and sentences to talk about what they have previously heard. Such an activity is considered useful in order to foster children’s concentration, comprehension, memory and uency of spoken language. Of course, children are also encouraged to tell a made-up story in class. However, its purpose is different from retelling a story. For this kind of story, the children are expected to exercise their speaking skills and foster their creativity. These two kinds of activities go hand in hand since they develop children’s different kinds of abilities. A third method of promoting memory and speaking skills is practising reciting exercises, although this activity is uncommon in the current school system. In Sweden, reciting was practised widely only one generation ago but is rare in Swedish schools today. Nowadays, small children are often encouraged to tell and write their own stories, in promoting emergent literacy. They may pretend-write their stories at an early age and then ‘read’ their stories aloud in class. Story making is a way to bring joy into literacy and in this way prepare the ground for further success in reading and writing. The practice of retelling is used rarely in the Swedish context. In Hungary, as well as in other Western countries, storytelling at bedtime is used widely among (middle-class) parents. Retelling as a practice is quite common in the Hungarian school. The children read a text, a story or a tale during the lesson, and subsequently tell it again in their own words. The aim of this procedure is to develop their understanding of the text, to

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practise presentation and logical as well as coherent text forming, and to develop their vocabulary (to use words not known before the reading of the text). Creation of stories by the teacher or by the children may occur in some schools in Hungary but is most unusual. How do these different practices, expectations and paragons in uence the children in our study? The Chinese children made a point of composing the story before they told it, while both the Hungarian and Swedish children made up their stories as they told them. While the Hungarian children had an implicit story plan, that is, a plot, most of the Swedish children’s stories lacked a plot. Characters and setting were more important and events were added in a chain pattern.


Narrative Conventions All the children’s stories are in uenced by narrative conventions, which can be found in children’s literature. The question is whether the narrative conventions are general or culture speci c. A characterisation of the literature produced for children in the three national contexts shows that the latter is more likely the case. In the Chinese context, almost all the stories for children intend to teach a moral lesson. The stories usually try to tell children that they should be honest, kind, brave, ready to help others, follow their parents’ instructions, love physical labour and love studying. Furthermore, the stories may warn children that there are some people who are bad in nature and like to cheat children. Thus, the children are advised to be cautious about these bad people and should not be cheated by them. The typical bad character in pre-school children’s stories is a big grey wolf. Sometimes, the fox is also depicted as a cunning animal. A list of children’s (and parents’) favourite reading in Hungary shows that the classics are still the most popular in Hungary. Tales from Slovakia, Russia and other Eastern cultures as well as collections by H.C. Andersen, the brothers Grimm, and Perrault are much used, along with the picture books by Richard Scarry and Jean de Brunhoff. In Sweden, Astrid Lindgren is by far the most popular author of children’s books. Although the market for new children’s books is still ourishing, many authors of children’s books started their careers in the 1970s and are still selling thousands of copies every year. Pippi Longstocking made her entrance on the scene as early as 1945 and was followed by the Bullerby and Emil sequences (inter alia) and nally the three tales Mio, my Son, Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter and The Brothers Lionheart. Lindgren’s stories never cease to be popular and new generations of children learn to love them. The animal story is a genre of its own in children’s literature. Shu-Jy Duan (1996) has made an analysis of the two predominant conventions in this genre: rstly, there are animals that speak and wear clothes and serve as substitutes for human characters, and, secondly, there are animals proper that behave as if they were animals. Examples of the former convention are E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Examples of the latter convention can be found in the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams, as well in a number of books published in the Western world about horses and ponies, following Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. It is obvious that the children in our study are aware of both these conventions and make use of them in their own storytelling. Children’s Life Worlds In China, since the early 1980s, the ‘one family, one child’ policy has prevailed, especially in cities. As a result, a child lives at home without siblings as playmates. S/he is surrounded only


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by adults except when at school. The children are well protected and, in most cases, spoilt. But from a different perspective, it can be said that their lives are sad since they have no playmates to talk to and play with when they are at home. Since the children are often alone until their parents nish work at 5 or even 7 p.m., they are not allowed to play outside on their own or with friends, but have to stay indoors for safety reasons. There are also frequent rumours about kidnapping in the cities, where valuable boys are transported to remote and rural areas. When the Chinese data collection was made, these rumours had begun to spread. Although families in Sweden often comprise working parents with children, children are not left on their own, since pre-school child care should be available by law. In addition, an after-school-hours service is available for children who are 6–12 years old, if their parents work. On the whole, Hungarian children are encouraged to study and strive for high academic achievement. Since competition for good schools and high grades begins at an early age in Hungary, children are aware of the fact that they have a lot of hard work ahead of them, if they want to lead a good life in the future. Formal grading is absent in Swedish education up to the age of 15, although informal developmental grading is used early. If we interpret the stories that we collected in the three countries in terms of different school practices, varying literary conventions and diversity in children’s life worlds, the differences between the stories become more apparent. Swedish children are content with their world.. They tell nice or fantastic stories about a happy life with no surprises—except for the occasional birthday gifts. Animals are important members of the family in rural areas as well as in the cities, and death, when it occurs, is only natural. Children are listened to and feel no pressure from expectations of academic achievement or competition, at least not at this age. The Chinese children in the study are lonely and well protected at home but like to play with other children at school. They know how to achieve at school and how to co-operate in order to fool and overcome the Grey Wolves in their lives. The Hungarian children’s heroic tales about con icts and ghts remind us of their competitive attitudes early in life. No one, though, is harmed to any extent by this competition. Like a hero in a folk tale the Hungarian child will conquer the threats from the future as they have always done in the past. In short, Hungarian children compete and conquer, Chinese children co-operate, and Swedish children are provided for. Although this summary is too simple to do the stories justice, it still gives us a hint of children’s life worlds as they are expressed in their stories. There is no single factor, though, which in uences children’s story making more than any other, but the in uence on children’s stories, as on any other verbal work of art, consists of a web of conventions, experiences and contexts. References APPLEBEE, A.N. (1978) The Child’s Concept of Story (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). ASPLUND CARLSSON, M., PRAMLING, I., WEN , Q. & IZUMI, C. (1996) Understandin g a tale in Sweden, Japan and China. Early Child Development and Care, 120, pp. 17–28. BRUNER, J.S. (1990) Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). DUAN, S.-J. (1996) A tale of animals. A study of animal fantasy for children from Aesop’s Fables through 1986, in: M. MACHET, S. OLE¨N & T. VAN DER WALT (Eds) Other Worlds Other Lives: Children’s literature experiences. Proceedings of the International Conference on Children’s Literature, 4–6 April 1995, Pretoria, Vol. II, pp. 149–169 (Pretoria, S.A., UNISA Press). FOX, C. (1993) At the Very Edge of the Forest: the in uence of literature on storytelling by children (London, Cassell). HEATH, S.B. (1983) Ways with Words: language , life, and work in communities and classrooms (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

The Dog’s Tale

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LABOV, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press). MACHET, M. (1996) Literacy in a multicultural environment , in: M. MACHET, S. OLE¨N & T. VAN DER WALT (Eds) Other Worlds Other Lives: Children’s literature experiences . Proceedings of the International Conference on Children’s Literature, 4–6 April 1995, Pretoria, Vol. III, pp. 32–45 (Pretoria, S.A., UNISA Press). PITCHER , E.G. & PRELINGER , E. (1963) Children Tell Stories. An Analysis of Fantasy (New York, International University Press). POLANYI, L. (1979) So what’s the point? Semiotica, 25, pp. 207–241. PRINCE, G. (1973) A Grammar of Stories: an introduction (The Hague, Mouton). PROPP, V. (1968) Morphology of the Folktale, 2nd edn (Austin, TX, University of Texas Press). RIIHELA, M. & RUTANEN, N. (1998) Visible Child–Invisible Quality. Summary report on the International Conference 15–18.11.1997, Helsinki. Themes from Finland 5/1998 (Helsinki, Stakes). SCOLLON, R. & SCOLLON, S. (1981) Narrative, Literacy and Face in Inter-ethnic Communication (Norwood , NJ, Ablex). SUTTON-SMITH, B. (1981) The Folkstories of Children (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press).