INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU MALAYSIA

KAMPUS BATU LINTANG KUCHING

93200, KUCHING SARAWAK

PROGRAM IJAZAH SARJANA MUDA PERGURUAN

(PISMP)

COURSEWORK

TSLB3223 – READER RESPONSE

TASK 2
1. NAME : EBY ASYRUL BIN MAJID
2. IDENTITY CARD NO. : 010901131075
3. INDEX NUMBER : 2020042340164
4. CLASS/GROUP : PISMP TESL SK 1 JUNE 2019
5. LECTURER’S NAME : GEORGE AK DI-IE
6. DATE OF SUBMISSION : 26 FEBRUARY 2021

7. “I HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD ALL THE FEEDBACK GIVEN BY MY

LECTURER FOR THIS TASK
8. SIGNATURE :
9. DATE
DEFINITION
Children’s literature is defined as literature that is exclusively about children or aimed at
children. It is a written works and illustrations produced in order to entertain young people. It
concerns literature that involves ideas and language that are often viewed as simple and easy
to understand, which is able to teach the child a moral lesson. Children’s literature denotes
ideas related to short stories, folktales and drama, exclusively created for children as the target
area. The short story that I have chosen is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and the poem
that I have chosen is Little Bo-Peep.
SHORT STORY: THE GIVING TREE
The story is about the relationship between a tree and a boy. The boy would come and
see the tree every day when he was young. He would swing over her roots, eat her apples, and
the tree would be happy as long as he did that. He needs more and more from the tree as the
boy grows older. He wants money, and that tree gives him apples to sell. He wants a house, so
the tree gives him the branches of a house to build. The tree indicates that she is happy after
giving much of herself to the boy. Then he wants a boat, and the tree gives him a trunk so that
he can build a boat. The tree is left as a stump at this point. He visits the tree one last time as
the boy reaches old age and the tree tells him that she has nothing left to give him. Then the
boy wants a place for him to rest, so the tree gives him a stump so he can rest. The book ends
by telling the tree that she is happy.
‘Little Bo-Peep’ by Mother Goose is a five stanzas nursery rhyme that follows a simple
rhyme scheme of ABCB, changing end sounds from stanza to stanza. The nice, and often dark,
song explains how Bo-Peep's sheeps went missing one day. She looked and found them, but
they did not have their tails. She discovered these, too, sometimes later. Although the tails she
hanged up to dry were absent, something happened to the sheep. To have them reattached,
Bo-Peep grabs them and rushes away. There are variations of this poem depending on the
region, for example there are different versions of this poem in America an England, as the
poem contain different words or phrases. For example, the last line sometimes reads “to tack
each again to its lambkin” and other times “That each tail be properly placed”.
THEME
In the The Giving Tree, the tree represents the parent meanwhile their child is being
represented by the boy. In this story context, parents gives so much to their children that they
are left with nothing else to give. In the long term, a parent's selflessness ends up damaging
themselves. The parent may barely hear a "thank you" in return after giving their children too
much, but they are still grateful that they are willing to provide for their children. The tree, or
parental figure, is seen by some critics as an enabler, and the boy, or child, is seen by some as
a greedy individual who only takes without being grateful. For the settings, The Giving Tree
could take place anywhere that a tree could grow. And it could take place at pretty much any
time in human existence after the creation of overalls, money, and markets for selling goods.
The apparent theme for Little Bo-Peep are guilt and loss of responsibility. The poet
described the concerns of a young girl. A poor girl is too young to protect her animals from
enemies. Somebody, as a result, catches her sheep. She never reunites with them and to honor
them, keeps their tails. Since this poem is for children, it gives the perspective of a young girl
who, when she can't find them, loses her sheep and is heartbroken. She is told the flock will
eventually come back, but she goes to sleep and hears the bleating of her sheep. To her
surprise, she finds them still missing when she wakes up. So, she tries to find them and finds
their tails hanging on a tree later on. The expression of grief begins with a touch of laughter in
the first line and continues throughout the poem. What remains in the reader's mind, however, is
her unbound passion and her sheep's intense affection. For the settings, this poem takes place
on one summer evening, when the sun was setting.
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
In terms of language style, The Giving Tree uses a plain language. Silverstein's brand of
poetry uses straightforward language that still manages to appeal to the senses. In the first
pages, the phrase "gather her leaves," which is very soft, is accompanied by several repetitions
of hard "c" sounds: "come," "crowns," "king," and "climb." These words help us hear the crunch
of the fall leaves the boy is gathering…and of the apples he eats. There are few words of more
than one syllable, and there are no words that require definitions, even for very young children.
Meanwhile, for the Little Bo-Peep poem, Mother Goose uses a lot of literary devices.
Literary devices are devices used by authors to express to their readers their thoughts, values,
and interpretations. For example, Imagery. Imagery is used to make the readers visualize things
with their five senses. The lines “And dreamt she heard them bleating”; “Then up she took her
little crook” and “She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,” helps the reader to feel the Bo Peeps
emotional state. There is also Hyperbole. Hyperbole is a type of expression in which a thing or
incident is amplified to an extreme by the speaker. The poem has a hyperbole in the third line of
the third stanza, “She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed.” Here, the heart does not
bleed. Instead, it represents the acute pain she feels over her loss. This shows that this poem
and The Giving Tree are different in terms of their language and writing style.

CONCLUSION
To conclude, short story and poems both have their differences and similarities. Both tell
the stories or an event and both are short thus making it easier to be understand without the
need of spending a lot of time to summarize. Furthermore, both poems and short stories give
out moral values that can be applied to a students daily life as they learn what is wrong and
what is right from the literature they have studied.
(1104 words)
REFERENCE
Hummel. J. (2020). Similarities and Differences between Short Story and Poem (Venn
Diagram). Retrieved from
https://creately.com/diagram/example/hkhprsdx/similarities+and+differences+between+Short+s
ory+and+Poem
on 26th February 2021.

Definition and Examples of Literary Terms. Retrieved from

https://literarydevices.net/little-bo-peep/
on 26th February 2021

Clifton Fadiman. Children's literature. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/art/childrens-literature
on 26th February 2021
APPENDIX
Little Bo Peep Lyrics
“Little Bo peep has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could,
As a shepherdess should.”