“Back to the Ways of Pooh”: Intergenerational Reading, Teaching, Learning, and Re-Learning with and from Children’s Literature
Title and/or Affiliation
Associate Professor of English
Presenter Bio
Abby Sloan is an Associate Professor of English at Blue Ridge Community College, where she has taught since 2007 and co-advises the Phi Theta Kappa chapter. Her research and teaching interests range from Shakespeare to Stephen King, and she is grateful for this opportunity to share some of the reflections on children's literature that she has formed through both college classroom teaching and early reading experiences with her own children.
Session
Developmental (Re)Readings
Start Date
10-7-2026 11:00 AM
End Date
10-7-2026 12:15 PM
Abstract
I date my literary criticism career from age seven. I closed The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and announced, “Aslan is Jesus!” I have long encouraged students to build on these moments of recognition in their own education. A favorite in-class example involves watching The Lion King in childhood and then in high school or college meeting those characters again in Hamlet. The cast of Winnie the Pooh, this conference’s headliner, could have walked out of a medieval beast fable, morality play, or mystery play into the Hundred-Acre Wood. The Care Bears, Paw Patrol, Heeler family from the Australian cartoon Bluey, Berenstain Bears, and more characters written for children, through allusions and revisions, make literary/artistic productions generally considered prestigious or “experts-only” accessible to even the youngest children—we are born effective literary audiences. When we realize that Simba is Hamlet or Uncle Scrooge McDuck originates in Dickens, not Disney, we learn that we are capable interpreters of canonical material, remaking what has been written and performed before. Teachers, parents, and caregivers experience that recognition in reverse, remembering our own early readings, blending them with new ones, and guiding younger readers. These understandings demystify canonical classics and elevate modern productions. Winnie the Pooh is not the “easy” version of a fable or morality play, but rather we create the same equally valuable art and artistic responses—in ways suitable to our time in history and of life—as the creators and audiences who came before and will come after.
“Back to the Ways of Pooh”: Intergenerational Reading, Teaching, Learning, and Re-Learning with and from Children’s Literature
I date my literary criticism career from age seven. I closed The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and announced, “Aslan is Jesus!” I have long encouraged students to build on these moments of recognition in their own education. A favorite in-class example involves watching The Lion King in childhood and then in high school or college meeting those characters again in Hamlet. The cast of Winnie the Pooh, this conference’s headliner, could have walked out of a medieval beast fable, morality play, or mystery play into the Hundred-Acre Wood. The Care Bears, Paw Patrol, Heeler family from the Australian cartoon Bluey, Berenstain Bears, and more characters written for children, through allusions and revisions, make literary/artistic productions generally considered prestigious or “experts-only” accessible to even the youngest children—we are born effective literary audiences. When we realize that Simba is Hamlet or Uncle Scrooge McDuck originates in Dickens, not Disney, we learn that we are capable interpreters of canonical material, remaking what has been written and performed before. Teachers, parents, and caregivers experience that recognition in reverse, remembering our own early readings, blending them with new ones, and guiding younger readers. These understandings demystify canonical classics and elevate modern productions. Winnie the Pooh is not the “easy” version of a fable or morality play, but rather we create the same equally valuable art and artistic responses—in ways suitable to our time in history and of life—as the creators and audiences who came before and will come after.