CONTEMPORARY:

Often described as “silent parent”, CRF stories, when well-selected allow children to experience life. These stories are anchored in the world that children live in. The characters look like them, behave like them and think like them. These stories are often “windows” (Bishop, 1990) to the life experiences of others in their time. For this reason, for CRF stories to secure a place on the shelf of a child’s library, they should reflect the world of the child with some degree of accuracy.

When they do, they comfort children with a sense that there is someone within their vicinity who is experiencing the same challenges as they are.
The educative function of CRF stories is for children to consider how characters who are the same age as they are navigating life with all its challenges. As children read these stories, they observe and reflect on how the challenges that they are facing could be solved. In instances where children are reticent about the challenges they face, whether on the playground or at school, these stories are a storehouse of existent wisdom. These stories fill the gaps that children of even the most attentive parents may encounter.

 

For this category of stories, select stories about children in their context and where the
protagonist is the same age as the child reader.