Enchanted Hunter by Maria Tatar

The Essay: Tatar and Actual Children’s Literature

This essay should evidence your thorough understanding of Tatar’s main points and the significance of her overall argument about the power of stories in childhood. The best papers will pull from multiple sections of the text and not just a limited area. The best papers will draw upon several points to formulate an original idea about this topic of children’s stories. Use of a limited portion of Tatar’s text for your support will not show that you’ve read it thoroughly and understand the implications of its complex argument.

You should have a thesis. A thesis is what you have to say about a specific topic. It’s the controlling idea or claim that ties the whole essay together. Here’s an example of generating some questions that can lead to a thesis: Tatar says sharing the canon of children’s literature acts as a transference of “cultural capital”. Yet she also notes that not all children have been exposed to this cultural capital. This raises several questions for me as a reader: Is she right? Do certain children’s books pass along cultural values and practices, and if so, which ones? Why are those values and practices important? Can they be gotten in other ways? How? What happens to children who aren’t exposed to the canon? In what ways can that possibly affect their enculturation, their schooling, or their expectations. Here are the requirements for the first essay:

• Five to seven pages. Essays that don’t make it to the fifth page are incomplete.
• Format in MLA: 1-inch margins all around, entire paper is double-spaced, including the heading and the title, headers on each page in the upper right with your last name and page number
• We’ll also be using MLA to cite sources, so when you quote or paraphrase Tatar, you’ll use proper in-text citations and include a works cited with the bibliographic info for Tatar (and any other source of children’s literature you choose)
• A thesis that engages with any of the significant ideas Tatar brings up, or an idea that’s tangential to Tatar’s discussion and for which you can use Tatar’s text as support for your own ideas or a jumping off point for them. A summation would be redundant and not analytical. You need to go beyond what Tatar is claiming to your own analysis and claims.
• Clear, logical organization of the ideas with an intriguing introduction and a conclusion that draws conclusions and doesn’t just restate what you’ve said in the essay.
• An engaging title, even for the first draft.

When you write this essay, you’re joining the conversation about its subjects. You’re weighing in on the arguments, offering not just your opinion, but ideally your own insight, along with the reasons and evidence you have for thinking as you do.