EA300 Children’s Literature - Finished

Last night I handed in my last assignment for EA300 Children’s Literature with the Open University.  After 9 months of hard work (the worst of it seems to have been over the last 3 weeks) I’m glad it’s over and my weekends and evenings become my own again.

But I have enjoyed the course, hard work though it was.  I was a little worried that studying some of my old favourite books like Swallows and Amazons or Tom’s Midnight Garden might spoil them for me but if anything they have been enhanced by the academic essays and course materials.  And I’ve met some new books which will become old favourite like Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry.  I also took the opportunity to read as many children’s books as possible over the last 9 months including some I read as a child and I think this added to my understanding of some of the issues we studied.

As someone who writes fiction I’ve also found the insight into why writers have done something and how the history of children’s literature has influenced their writing over the years fascinating and I hope useful to my writing not just my essays.

I may never trust Disney again, and I remembered my hate of writing essays very quickly but the course materials were so interesting I have no regrets.

So now I await my results which should arrive sometime in the summer and try and decide if I should do another one.  With only two more courses needed (or 120 credits, 60 each) to be awarded a degree it is quite tempting.  It helps that I’ve seen a couple of course that interest me.  I wonder what ‘im outdoors would say…