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The Revolt against Realism: The Attraction of Fiction for Young Writers

In this article I explore the implicit boundaries on topic choice established by early proponents of writing process pedagogy and trace these boundaries to a widespread cultural concern about the disappearance of a pretechnological form of childhood. This orientation has resulted in a reluctance to examine (and in some cases even to allow) children to write nonrealistic fiction modeled after the popular visual media (cartoons, movies, television). The study reports on interviews with 77 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students from 4 classes in which they explain the attraction of nonrealistic fiction. Drawing on the work of Dyson and Pratt, I urge a dialogic view of writing that acknowledges the positive contribution that children's media affiliations can make to writing development.