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HUMOR AND EDUCATION

by Don L. F. Nilsen

and Alleen Pace Nilsen

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HUMOR IN EDUCATION

James Gordon of Brigham Young University says that “when students are having fun, the class time virtually flies by, and the 50 minutes of class seem like a mere 48.”

Sometimes he tells students that the day’s topic is so boring that it fits Mark Twain’s description of “chloroform in print.”

Then he turns away for a minute and reappears in a simple disguise.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 188)

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HUMOR IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Antiauthority Humor

Comedies of Manners

Exaggeration is the most common feature of humorous children’s literature; however there are other features as well:

Intellectual Play, including fantasy and wordplay

Parody

Surprise, Incongruity and Scary, Shocking or Verboten References

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ANTIAUTHORITY HUMOR

Alison Lurie in her Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Why Kids Love the Books They Do conjectures that one of the reasons children love the Winnie the Pooh books is that they identify with Christopher Robin, who gets to be an all-powerful, beneficent dictator, or at least the parent figure, for Eeyore, Kanga, Baby Roo, Owl, Piglet, Pooh, Rabbit and Tigger .

(Nilsen & Nilsen 68)

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COMEDIES OF MANNERS

One of the most entertaining comedies of manners is Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in which the worst kids in town, the Herdmans, who have even been known to smoke cigars and to steal stuff from the Sunday School cupboard, are assigned the best parts in the Christmas program.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 69)

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EXCUSES

Children are really good at thinking of excuses for being absent, or for not doing their homework assignments. When students brought excuses to Bill Haggart he would have the students place them on the bulletin board under one of the three following categories:

Helpless, Hopeless, or Not in Control of the Body.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 263)

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EXAGGERATION

The greedy children who get their just desserts on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory make readers feel superior as the characters do in Harry Allard and James Marshall’s The Stupids Have a Ball, The Stupids Step Out, and The Stupids Die.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 68)

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LANGUAGE PLAY

One of Judy Blume’s strengths in such books as Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is the witty dialogue of her characters.

A book such as Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day makes readers laugh at Alexander’s frustrations while at the same time lending reassurance that people do survive bad days.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 69)

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Walter Redfern, in his Puns says that children play with words much like they do with toys.

He says that without humor, they would lack practice in the art of thinking—the most complex and powerful survival tool that humans have.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 70)

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The puns and double meanings in nursery rhymes and nonsense verse get children ready for the double meanings of words in the eleven Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish.

Amelia is a housemaid who takes everything literally. When she is told to “put out the lights,” she hangs

the light bulbs outside on the clothesline. When she is told to “dress the chicken,” she puts

ruffles and a skirt on it. When she is told to “draw the drapes,” she gets

out a sketch pad and makes a picture. (Nilsen & Nilsen 70)

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SHOCKING AND SURREALISTIC INCONGRUITIES

Maurice Sendak has created such imaginative books as Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen.

Sendak’s dream sequences are as creative as the ones in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass. And Sendak’s books are accessible to much younger children.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 70)

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Young children can be shocked by very simple allusions.

For example, kindergartners’ eyes grow big when they imagine Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor without his clothes, and they giggle at the sight of holey socks, boxer shorts, garter belts, and bras in Karla Kuskin and Mark Simont’s The Philharmonic Gets Dressed.

For a similar reason, kids love Dave Pilkey’s Captain Underpants books.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 71)

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Harve and Margot Zemach’s Duffy and the Devil is for slightly older children.

This is a Cornish version of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a frustrated devil turns Squire Lovel’s newly knit clothes to ashes leaving the squire out on the moor naked except for his boots and the hat he clutches in front of his genitals.

(Nilsen & Nilsen 71)

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Roald Dahl is even more shocking in writing about his Big Friendly Giant who thinks “whizzpopping [farting] is a sign of happiness…music to our ears.”

In Dahl’s The Twits, Mr. and Mrs Twit are two of the grossest characters in all of children’s literature.

Mr. Twit is repulsive and hairy and has a disgusting beard that is a smorgasbord of moldy, rotten leftover bits of food stuck to his whiskers.

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Mrs. Twit is ugly mainly because she is filled with “ugly thoughts.”

In one scene she drops her glass eye into Mr. Twit’s beer so that when he gets to the bottom of the glass he is amazed to see it staring up at him.

“I told you I was watching you,” cackled Mrs. Twit. “I’ve got eyes everywhere so you better be careful.”

(Nilsen & Nilsen 72)

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PARODY

Children also love parodies, such as Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, The Frog Prince Continued, The Stinky Cheese Man: And Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and The Math Curse.

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RIDDLES

A girl is locked in a room that is empty except for a piano, a wooden table, a saw, and a baseball bat. The door is locked and there are no windows or other openings. How does she get out?

She breaks out with the chicken pox.

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Other possible answers are:

She used the saw to cut the table in half. Since two halves make a whole, she crawled out through the hole.

She played the piano until she found the right key. Then she unlocked to door and let herself out.

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She ran around the room until she wore herself out.

She swung the baseball bat three times. It was three strikes, and she was out.

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What has 18 legs and red spots and catches flies?

A baseball team with the measles.

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J. Kenneth Whitt and Norman M. Prentice wrote an article in Developmental Psychology which illustrated the stages of riddle appreciation that children experience.

PRE-RIDDLE: What did the big firecracker say to the little firecracker?

You’re too little to pop!

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HOMONYMIC NEUTRAL RIDDLE: Why is a packed baseball field always cool?

It has a fan in every seat!

HOMONYMIC SUPERIORITY RIDDLE: Why did the little girl eat bullets?”

She wanted her hair to grow out in bangs!

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! IMPROBABLE RELATIONSHIP RIDDLE:

Where can you find roads without cars? On a map!

RIDDLE PARODY: What do squirrels have that no other animal has?

Baby squirrels!

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!!A MORE SOPHISTICATED RIDDLE PARODY: In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten tells

about a father who asks his son, “What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet, and whistles?”

When the boy cannot guess, the father responds, “It’s a herring.”

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!!! “But” says the son, “a herring doesn’t hang

on the wall.” The father responds, “So hang it there.”

“But” says the son, “a herring isn’t green.” The father responds, “So paint it green.”

“But” says the son, “a herring isn’t wet.” The father responds, “It is if it’s freshly painted.”

“But” says the son in exasperation, “A herring doesn’t whistle.” “Right,” said the father, “I just put that in to make it hard.”

(Nilsen & Nilsen 257)

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HOT POTATOES HOME PAGE

For creating interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises.

http://hotpot.uvic.ca/

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References # 1:

Cart, Michael. What’s So Funny? Wit and Humor in American Children’s Literature. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995.

Donelson, Kenneth L., and Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Today’s Young Adults, Seventh Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2005.

Huck, Charlotte S., Susan Hepler, and Janet Hickman. Children’s Literature in the Elementary School. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, Javonovich, 1993.

Lurie, Alison. Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature. Boston, MA: Little-Brown, 1990.

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References # 2:References # 2:

Martin, Rod A. Martin, Rod A. The Psychology of Humor: An The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative ApproachIntegrative Approach. London, England: . London, England: Elsevier, 2007.Elsevier, 2007.

Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

Rosten, Leo. The Joys of Yiddish. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1968.