Swallows and Amazons Forever: How Adults and Children Engage in Reading a Classic Text

Abstract

This qualitative case study explores the nature of reading engagement, taking a reader response approach to analysing and discussing the experiences and perspectives of real readers. The paper reports a collaborative research project in which a group of five primary-age children and a group of five adults of different ages were asked to read and respond to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons. Rather than offering separate models of reading for children and adults, the study focuses on common responses and practices across time and generations. Transcripts of group discussions and individual interviews along with written memories and accounts are examined to generate themes that illuminate the processes of engagement used in reading, or rereading, the novel. Whilst some of these responses demonstrate an active pleasure in reading, there is also evidence that most readers encountered difficulties with Ransome's text. It is suggested that engagement with a text like Swallows and Amazons relies on three dimensions reflecting a situated reading event: reader identity, immersion, and resilience.Dr. Fiona Maine is a Principal Lecturer in Education at Bath Spa University, leading a Professional Masters Programme for teachers. Her own research focuses on young children and their critical and creative responses to text.Dr. Alison Waller convenes a distance learning MA in Children's Literature at The University of Roehampton. She published Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism in 2008 and is currently researching how adults remember and re-read childhood books.

How Could Children’s Storybooks Promote Empathy? A Conceptual Framework Based on Developmental Psychology and Literary Theory

“…What is interesting to note is the different research priorities and the different direction of travel between empathy and text, identified by literary theorists and developmental psychologists. According to Maine and Waller (2011), empathy acts as a ‘tool of engagement’ in reading, while for psychologists, there is an opposite direction of travel: motivation drives individuals to either engage or disengage with the perspectives and emotions of others (Zaki, 2014). This difference in emphasis is reflected in the explanatory pathways provided by the two disciplines for how storybooks could foster children’s empathy.…”

How children talk together to make meaning from texts: a dialogic perspective on reading comprehension strategies

“…Here, Sam empathises not just with Shane but also with the kitten, thus engaging in the world of the story. In their research investigating how children engage with classic texts, Maine and Waller argued, “feelings of empathy do more than assist readers in comprehending the text; they act as a tool of engagement” (, p. 364). Empathising in this way enabled a ‘deepening’ of the dialogic space between text and reader, enhancing the children's engagement.…”

11 Re-memorying: A New Phenomenological Methodology in Children’s Literature Studies

“…The model can be expanded in the context of lifelong reading that encompasses rereading as a natural extension of the reading act. Conceptualising a childhood reading of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930), for instance, would involve three steps: first, an examination of a child's original phenomenological encounter with the novel, including affective and embodied responses as well as moments of mental cross-referencing to other stories; second, a consideration of subsequent imaginative engagements with the novel, including rereadings, creative play inspired by the story, and continued before-andafter responses to the text; and third, an investigation of the interplay between memories of, and continuing imaginative engagement with, Swallows and Amazons for that reader at the age of twenty-one, fifty, or ninety-nine (see Maine and Waller 2011 for a study of these phases of response to Ransome's novel). Closing down the investigation at any point works to deny that rereadings are valid extensions of the reading act, or that responses to a text may continue for many years after an initial encounter.…”