Realistic Fiction Genre Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Realistic Fiction Genre Study - Essay Example Realistic Fictions are stories that children of all ages will enjoy, since they help such children to understand the human relationships, thus preparing them for a life in the future, since they will have already understood the human problems (O'Connor, 2010). This makes them understand themselves better, as well as understanding the human potential in them. Through reading Realistic Fiction stories, children are presented with a mirror to see the world, allowing them to understand the complexities that exist in our world, while also preparing them psychologically for things to come. The essence of reading Realistic Fiction stories is not only to help children see the world in a clear view and prepare them for the future, but also to present an opportunity for such children to choose what they would want to be, based on the characters presented by the stories (Galda, Cullinan & Sipe, 2009). While the children are reading these stories, they engage directly with their favorite charact ers, closely observing how they dealt with the real world hardships and struggles. This shapes the children’s personality and attitudes towards life, since children can see themselves doing the same things. Therefore, Realistic Fiction Genre helps children to understand different people, places and cultures, giving them an opportunity to understand the world beyond what they see every day, while helping children to discover what they want to become in future. While selecting the books for my genre study, I embarked on defining the criteria to be used to come up with books that truly fit in the Realistic Fiction Genre. The criteria was assessing the books on the basis of evaluating whether they present every day realities that are essential in helping children understand the world. Additionally, the books were selected based on their ability to present characters that are realistic and credible, presenting opportunities that enlarge the readers thinking perspective, and presen ting topics and discussions that seems real and consequently believable. Through selecting books that qualify such criteria, the aims of Realistic Fiction Genre are satisfied, making the books appropriate and meaningful for reading by children. The first book I selected was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Twain, Mark. This novel is about a mischievous and very adventurous boy called Tom Sawyer, who was living along the Mississippi River, in the St. Petersburg, Missouri (Twain, 1990). Tom is an ill-behaved boy, who engages in fights at school, consequently dirtying his clothes and arriving home a total mess. As a punishment for his misbehavior, he is required to whitewash a fence, which he is apparently not willing to do. Therefore, he applies his cunningness to trick his friend into doing it, with a promise of granting him some treasure in form of tickets to a Bible memorizing contest, where one would end up with a Bible as a prize. Despite being cunning and lazy, Tom is also immora l and dishonest. He happens to fall in love with a new girl who had recently arrived in town, Becky Thatcher, and asks her to kiss him, as a sign of engagement. Becky reluctantly agrees to kiss him, only to realize the dishonesty of Tom later on, when she discovers that she had been previously engaged to a different girl, Amy. Consequently, he is rejected by Becky and reverts to his mischievous life, this time in the company of Huckleberry, who was a son of a famous town drunkard. In their adventure to a grave to try out some cure, they witnessed a