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Allison James, "Confections, Concoctions, and Conceptions"

Stephanie K. Dalquist
-How might this article tie in to the preoccupation with food seen in both Harry Potter and other traditional fairy tales, as mentioned in "Peasants Tell Tales?"
-What could the relation/significance be to today's contemporary American junk food/fast food nutrition? If "kets" were so exclusively British, why does junk food now seem so exclusively American?
-I'm surprised Douglas categorized drinks as not having a "necessity in their ordering." What about tea, coffee, aperitifs?

Joseph Kaye
-Kets have an interesting extension into convenience food marketed at kids today. Kraft, for example, is very aware of these associations, and some of the marketing is aimed at adults while some at kids. For example, as James notes, the unnatural colours of kets provide a particular attraction. The huge popularity of Jello-Pops and Kool-Aid is entirely exemplary of at least a continuation if not an integral part of this genre. Market research has shown that kids love blue food: that's why Kraft Mac & Cheese has blue everywhere possible on it
-I was told at a visit to Kraft that they had experimented with blue Mac & Cheese and that kids loved it, but parents refused to buy it. I wonder if as kids develop great economic and culinary independance if we'll see more food (not ket-type) products marketed at kids directly: blue microwave dinners, anyone?

Walter Dan Stiehl
-What other products are marketed to children to appeal to their nasty, disgusting, anti-adult side? I know of garbage pail kids, but what is the newest, biggest selling gross product?

Adrienne DeWolfe
-After reading James' comments on the place of food in children's culture, I can't help but see a connection to Rowlings' portrayal of food in Harry Potter. Certainly, there is a lot of attention and detail paid to the description of food and Harry's "kets" in particular. The ear wax any flavor bean that Dumbldorf eats towards the end strongly contrasts the child's obsession with gross food and the adult's inability to enjoy or understand it. I wonder, was Rowling's at all familiar with James' theories?

Max Bajracharya
-I have a hard time seeing the child eating kets as assuming control of one of his orifices; perhaps control over something the adult world is condemning and consequently a certain power in this respect. How does the mouth specifically play a part in the assumption of power?

David Mellis
-Really, all I can ask is "what the hell?" I don't see the point this article is trying to make. Okay, kids eat different candy than adults, and the candy is marketed in different ways than adult food. How is this significant?

Girim Sung
-Where does food, or more specifically, kets, fit in the children's world of play? In a way, kets seem to be somewhere in the boundary between fantasy (kets) and reality(food), (i.e. in Harry Potter, there were these wonderful fantastical descriptions of the sweets).
-Children seem to be reframing the common routine eating into a luxurious forbidden pleasure.

David Spitz
-Obviously the authors are primarily concerned with the written word, but can the same story be written about children's individualized relationship to music or even television? Why or why not?

Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-Is James implying that children are actually aware of their rejection of adult culture that is occuring by the eating of kets? I think children simply adore sugar and the sensual, hands-on experience that kets provide makes them that much more attractive. Only an adult could construct the "metaphoric meal" theory. Ask a child.

Brandy Evans
-How long do these words, like "ket", that have been given an altered meaning by children, stay in the vocabulary? Are they just another form of slang that gets cycled out every few years (or less) or is this a more permanent phenomenon?
-What are some examples from other topics besides food?

Jeannie R. Ben-Hain
-Does this article not take into account the US? James says that the sweets phenomonen is "entirely British". Im sure at least the US discounts this generalization, if not many other countries.

Christian Baekkelund
-The essay talks a lot about the differences between desires and what is acceptable between children and adults, but it doesn't talk that much about why such differences exist... Why do these difference exist? Why do adults care a lot more than children about knowing the contents of what they eat, and why are adults so disgusted by the dirtiness of the children's eating habits? Why do chlidren like colorful kets and adults like mono-color sweets? Where do all these differences come from, and at what point in a person's aging do these differences develop? When does a person start caring about whats in their food and how they buy it, for example?

Anindita Basu
-Instead of children actively constructing a world of their own to counteract the adult world, isn't a lot of that just children's attempts to understand the other world? A reflection of how they understand adult conventions?
-Why would children eat something disgusting just because adults don't value it? There has to be some greater appeal, such as an exciting consistency or attractive colors.
-James gives Easter Eggs as an attempt to make adult candy for children with all of the packaging, etc. What about other Easter candy such as peeps? They're still related to Easter and presumably adults are supposed to buy them for kids as such, but they're rather disgusting by adult standards with the strange consistency and bright colors and "transgressive" animal forms.

Raffi Krikorian
-What i don't understand is the transition point. when do children stop eating "keds" and move onto sweets? and why? why don't adults simply retain their tastes from when they are young, and continue to eat rubbish? i'm not contesting the fact that this transition does not happen; i can remember myself eating "junkier" types of candy when i was younger.

Shaida Boroumand
-I thought this article made a lot of assertions, but didn't bother to back them up or carry them to any conclusions. For instance, the author writes, "'Kets' have other properties, besides their cheapness, which make them them important for the child," yet she never describes (convincingly) what these properties are. I also don't understand many of the claims she makes about children's culture...she talks about it in terms of a subculture, an "alternative society" where adult food is considered harmful and children eat 'kets' as a method of rebellion. This is a very interesting concept to me, but the author does little to support her claims--what drives children to want to rebel in this way? I think the argument is far-fetched.

Char DeCroos
-James states that a sort of a secret society of culture proteced from adults by various linguistic safegaurds and semantic cues. Why does this tendency towards language protected secret societies only apply towards children? Why not many other strong interest groups such as computer lovers? Is it perhaps because this secret society of children is the only one a child can belong too?

Carlos Cantu
-I seemed to have missed the point of this essay. The way I see it, kids eat candy b/c it's sweet and 'kets' are the cheapest and easiest way to get their stimulant fix just short of eating raw sugar (adults have coffee don't they?). I just wonder if this phenomena (kids establishing their own system of meanings which adults cannot perceive) occurs in non-western countries that don't have the same relationships to sugar as we do, or is her final sweeping statement about childhood reserved only for those in New England?

Daniel Huecker
-What a great new direction as compared to many of the other readings! As we saw with Harry Potter, Pinocchio, and most of the fairy tales, food is an important part of the child's imaginary and physical life. Although food was explained in the fairly tales as reflecting a very harsh reality of malnutrition in the peasantry, we can also see that food is still significant among the well fed of today. Why then the fascination with food? Is much of the pleasure in eating 'kets' because they are looked down upon by adults. James doesn't explore how "forbidden" kets are by adults. If eating them is a transgressive or subversive act, might that make kets all the more appealing? Clearly a lot of Freud's oral stage involved here as well.

Shelby Anne Wolf and Shirley Brice Heath, "Living in a World of Words"

Stephanie K. Dalquist
-Is Lindsay a typical child? A product of a family with literary emphasis? Does her mother join in on this action? The Rapunzel story in particular seems to be about mother grounding her again in reality. What would happen if mom joined? Can mom join in?
-Is it this use of "literary interventions" where real life doesn't cut it what we're looking at in the claims about sex and violence in contemporary media? In general her parents have approved of reading whatever, so I wonder what their "small denials" (p. 420) to the girls have been...

Joseph Kaye
-Kids are cool. Can I have some??

Walter Dan Stiehl
-How does this primarily book story learning translate to today's child who is brought up by television, music, and the internet more than ever before? Are kids taking storylines and characters from TV shows and movies and reinterpretting or using them in the same fashion?

Adrienne DeWolfe
-Did one of the authors do her dissertation on her children's development of language and narrative? She definitely seemed to have a lot of time to take notes on the specific things her daughters said. This article would seem to show a lot of value of children using and adapting familiar narratives to work out conflicts in their world. As a teacher, I also felt the article validated the idea that it is "OK" for children to use and reform these narratives in their own creative writing. Their stories don't have to be completely "original" to have value. Could one also argue the valid use of television narrative (often considered kets by adults) in children's story writing? (Cassell's Ninja Turtle study for example)

Max Bajracharya
-How does literature extend to a children who are not necessarily exposed to such a rich world of stories? Does the oral tradition over written tradition change a child's use of the stories? I don't think I ever remember alluding to stories at that young of an age...is it a common practice?

David Mellis
-How common is this phenomenon of acting out books? Children do have trouble distuingishing fiction books from true stories right? But do many of them have trouble telling reading from acting?

Girim Sung
-This essay concurred with the readings we've read so far about play (i.e. play has rules). However, I was a bit confused when Kenny, the father, entered the children's play space in the Cinderella story. How does the invasion of an adult change child's play? This essay seems to suggest that the adult doesn't really change the play as long as the adult follows and understands the rules. However, I would tend to thing that the play would either be more constrained or affected with an adult present?

David Spitz
-In her conclusion, James references the social pressures surrounding smoking. Aside from the challenge of rule-breaking and excess embedded in that one example, what are some other examples of the sociology of 'kets' consumption? Also, could we imagine a biological anthropologist's take on the same subject (perhaps something along the lines of "'kets' feed and stimulate children's energies in a particular way, hence the associated rituals and terminology")?

Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-This article reads like a pompous mother's long-winded entry into her children's baby book. My question is: What is Wolf's point in writing this article besides showing off her skill in fostering literacy in her kids and name dropping as many esteemed children's titles as she can?

Brandy Evans
-Um, these are really cute stories about the author's kids, but is there a point? It sounds like general parents' bragging, just more carefully documented and centered around anything involving language (although there is that stuff about being a "physically precocious child"). Maybe this is just my perception b/c I've done too much with language acquisition and am now sick to death of anything related to it, so I didn't read it carefully enough to get the point.

Jeannie R. Ben-Hain
-Why do some modifications to Lindsey's directions pass her judgement and some do not? In the example given, it seems that a temporal change is not valid, but the replacement of one object with another is. Could this difference have to do with stages of development?

Christian Baekkelund
-Lindsey and Ashley seem to have grown up in rather unique circumstances; probably, not too many children receive literature in the quantity they did or with the encouragement they did. If anything this essay is an interesting examination of, with encouragement and capabilities, what children could do with literature. However, what is the more often amongst children? How in general, not in this specific case, do children deal with literature at these young ages, and how often do children draw the literature they read into "socio-dramatic play" as Lindsey and Ashley did?

Anindita Basu
-Lindsey and Ashley are both precocious children of academics. What can we actually learn from them about children's relationships to words?
-How physically do children normally interact with words, especially in language acquisition?
-Why are cartoons regarded as "junk tv?" Don't they also encourage story telling and role-play?

Raffi Krikorian
-I just seem overwhelmed by the amount of stories and that lindsey had access to in her head. i did not have that many stories in my head, neither did my siblings, and neither did my friends. is she an exceptional case? would it be fair to state that all children have this ability when it seems that lindsey is different?

Shaida Boroumand
-The little girls in this article incorporated elements of stories they read into their own memories and experiences. At what point are children able to fully distinguish between fantasy and reality? I find this kind of imaginative play really wonderful, and I'm wondering whether the children really "remember" parts of stories as their own past, or if they are just translating the story into personal experience and know that it didn't really happen to them.

Char DeCroos
-I thought it interesting that Lindsey cound't watch "junk TV". I previously thought that all TV was pretty much junk TV, unless it had been marketed as something else. The definition/example (playacting using a scene from a watched TV show) given for the definition of good TV seems equally aplicable to junk television as well. Where does one draw the line at junk television.

Carlos Cantu
-Does this story reflect a general trend in childhood learning/behavior or are is the Lindsay and Ashley story specific to children with very literate parents (not all children have parents with PhD's)?

Daniel Huecker
-Do the metarules mentioned come from the children's stories as is suggested, or from other sources of experience (play, school, family)?