Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination [Paperback]

Vigen Guroian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2002

As the popularity of William Bennett's Book of Virtues attests, parents are turning more and more to children's literature to help instill values in their kids. Now, in this elegantly written and passionate book, Vigen Guroian provides the perfect complement to books such as Bennett's, offering parents and teachers a much-needed roadmap to some of our finest children's stories.
Guroian illuminates the complex ways in which fairy tales and fantasies educate the moral imagination from earliest childhood. Examining a wide range of stories--from "Pinocchio" and "The Little Mermaid" to "Charlotte's Web," "The Velveteen Rabbit," "The Wind in the Willows," and the "Chronicles of Narnia"--he argues that these tales capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, in which characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds. Character and the virtues are depicted compellingly in these stories; the virtues glimmer as if in a looking glass, and wickedness and deception are unmasked of their pretensions to goodness and truth. We are made to face the unvarnished truth about ourselves, and what kind of people we want to be.
Throughout, Guroian highlights the classical moral virtues such as courage, goodness, and honesty, especially as they are understood in traditional Christianity. At the same time, he so persuasively evokes the enduring charm of these familiar works that many readers will be inspired to reread their favorites and explore those they may have missed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Guroian is an Eastern Orthodox theologian whose intention is to help busy parents make the right choices of "what books and stories to read with children." But this hasn't the content of William Bennett's anthology, and it's scarcely a guide in the way that Noel Perrin's recent first-rate volume, A Child's Delight, is. Guroian devotes the bulk of the text to explaining the Christian (ergo "virtuous") underpinnings and symbology of a few works by Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. The problem is he never gives a sense of artistic proportion or shows how or why classic stories are more likely to "[a]waken a Child's Moral Imagination" than a Spiderman comic. Ironically, he points out that "[m]ere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil's will is coerced." His discussions are often just that, loudly demonstrating nothing so much as his own facility in detecting biblical allusions. He finds that the themes of love and friendship in Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio and Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows owe their sublimity to Christianity rather than their authors' humanity. Having damned critics Roger Sale and Jack Zipes for discerning faults in Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," he says of the story's ending that we must ask ourselves: "why would we want our children or ourselves to be content with [300 years of mer-life] when [Christian] immortality has been proffered?" Unfortunately, such arrogance pervades Guroian's tome. The concluding bibliographic essay is dismally short of recommendations.-- when [Christian] immortality has been proffered?" Unfortunately, such arrogance pervades Guroian's tome. The concluding bibliographic essay is dismally short of recommendations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

The word virtue in the title, as well as the reference in the introduction to William J. Bennett and Russell Kirk, bear witness to the author's position as a conservative and a member of the religious right. His aim in this intelligent and persuasive book is to encourage parents in their efforts to "form moral character in the young" through stories that are rich in moral messages and Christian mystic vision. He finds these qualities in works by Hans Christian Andersen, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and classic 19th-century and early 20th-century literary fairy tales with themes of good and evil, sin and redemption, faith and mystic love. As a teacher of children's literature, he is well aware of educational programs propounding values clarification, and literary critics who approach stories from secular, social scientific, and psychological viewpoints, but what he seeks are works that embody "universally binding moral norms" with values that are rooted in God. Not surprisingly, Guroian finds these qualities in stories of the last century, when education was a matter of building character rather than acquiring information and practicing critical thinking. This scholarly yet readable book will provide assurance and inspiration to adults who look for titles that are strong in what he calls "moral imagination." His discussions of the religious and ethical assumptions on which the works of these classic authors are founded will, for teachers and literary critics, provide a useful corrective to postmodern reliance on secular and psychological analysis of all texts. His is a responsible voice for the value of tradition and of religion.
Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195152646
• ISBN-13: 978-0195152647
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars December 28 issue of Breakpoint January 4, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

When Vigen Guroian [veegun ga-ROY-un] set out to teach a class on children's literature to his undergraduate students at Loyola College in Maryland,he invited his daughter's fourth-grade class in for some of the discussions. But after a discussion of Pinocchio, the undergrads were shocked and embarrassed to find that the fourth-graders had understood the book better than they had. Why was this?

The answer, Guroian says, is that we have neglected the development of the moral imagination. The college students literally were less capable of understanding the moral themes in the story of Pinocchio.

As Guroian writes in his new book, Tending the Heart of Virtue, the undergrads noticed that the fourth-graders were better at grasping "the nature and source of Pinocchio's temptations and backsliding, and were less ready to excuse him for the behavior that got him into so much trouble and caused his father such grief."

His students even began to suspect that "maybe they had lost something in growing up -- a sense of wonder that might have been better tended and retained" if they had been brought up reading books like Pinocchio. "Perhaps," Guroinan concludes, "the fourth graders they had met were actually nearer than they to the wellsprings of human morality and were better served by reading Pinocchio than they had been by taking a required college course in ethics."

Guroian's new book is subtitled, How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination, and in it he explains that children are born with a strong moral sense. They always want to know if a character in a story is good or bad. "This need to make moral distinctions," he says, "is a gift, a grace, that human beings are given at the start of their lives." But it is a gift that needs to be cultivated or it will atrophy and disappear.

And that's exactly what's happening, as Guroian's experience with college students has proved. "Our society," Guroian warns, "is embracing an antihuman trinity of pragmatism, subjectivism, and cultural relativism that denies the existence of a moral sense or a moral law." And in this intellectual climate, the moral imagination is being starved.

One of the best remedies can be found in classic literature. Moral education is best accomplished through stories, through depictions of courage and the other virtues, showing what they look like in action. A classic story like Pinocchio or Peter Pan or the Velveteen Rabbit communicates vital truths about what it is to be human. It teaches us what bravery is, how to resist temptation, how to practice love and self-sacrifice. A dry course on ethics simply cannot begin to bring these themes to life in the same way.

Why not pick up a copy of Guroian's Tending the Heart of Virtue, and reacquaint yourself with classic children's literature, and read it to your children. Who knows? If you start early enough, by the time they're in college--even the most secular one imaginable--they just might graduate with as much moral discernment as they had when they were in fourth grade.

Charles W. Colson (c) 1998 Prison Fellowship Ministries

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An absolute must read for all parents. June 9, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This book is a classic "must read" for all parents who want to instill solid character into their children. Guroian reviews many of the "classic" fairy tales and reveals the unbelievable distortion that has occurred with modern day translations, abridged versions, and animated movies. Time after time, Guroian traces the same awful conversion from the original Christian virtues and values to the quicksand-like obsessions with physical beauty, romantic love, and self. Reading his book gives parent's the truth about why fairy tales are so important for "tending the heart of virtue" in their children. For children reading the original fairy tales, they will see themselves and the deeper reality of things, complete with good and evil components, in a framework of an interesting and powerfully written story. In subsequently reading the original Pinocchio (covered in the book) to my two boys (8 and 10); we were all absolutely "stunned" by Collodi's brilliance, his language, and the truth that this great classic reveals about ourselves.

Don't miss this one. You and your children will benefit immensely.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Prompted to re-read the classics December 19, 2001

By Ellen Shay

Format:Hardcover

I stumbled across this book a few years ago when browsing through the various sections on Amazon's web site (it was in the National Public Radio section). The reviews sounded interesting, so I took a chance. I am so glad I did.

Like most people, I have been bombarded with the "Disney-fied" versions of most of our children's classics, where all the characters are cute and there are several shades of gray when it comes to the moral or point of the story. I had forgotten how dark the original fairy tales were and how clear they were about good and evil. The part of the book about Guroian's college class and a fourth grade class' reading of Pinochio reminded me just how much children really understand and how clearly and, sometimes, simply they view the world.

Reading this book has prompted me to find copies of the original stories. What an interesting discussion it would be to compare adults' and children's understanding of the how the original versions of the stories differ from the more recent or animated versions.