Biographies Essay Example

When writing any work, it be advertisement to a newspaper column, an essay, a poem or the whole story, the first that the author analyzes is a target audience of the writing, that is, a circle of its potential readers, and in the majority of cases he takes into the account their age and social status, which helps the author to determine their general perception of events, feelings and everything surrounding. Every person can differentiate between writing meant for adults and the one written for children but will everyone be able to recognize works for kids of different age?
The biography under analysis will be the one of Roald Dahl, British novelist and a short story writer, who has specialized in writing children’s books, the most famous of which are “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda”. His books have been related as fantasy as he wrote about unreal world with fictitious characters, which created a fairly-tale for small readers (Powling, 1998).
The three biographies of Roald Dahl we are going to analyze are the products of Chris Powling, copyright of 1998 (for Pre-K second graders), Jeremy Treglown, copyright of 1994 (for children of 3rd-5th grades) and Adam Woog, copyright of 2005).
The three biographies for children are all similar in their length as some parts are taken from the full version meant for adults; all of the biographies have illustrations, pictures, colorful typography in the settings made with the purpose of catching a child’s attention and encouraging him to read the books written by the author as the pictures mostly show the characters from fantastic stories created by Roald Dahl; the language style is almost the same in the three representations and all the authors of the Roald Dahl’s biographies for children modify and soften sad elements of the writer’s life or avoid them at all in order not to upset and scare a small reader but simply inform him about such events because the children’s psyche is quite tender and vulnerable which makes it easy to damage it and influence negative perception by children of some facts or events in their future real life (Treglown, 1994).
Despite the list of similarities of the three biographies compared, they differ in quite lots of factors, which can be explained by the development of a child: when he is in the age of 6 he is at the stage of cognizing the reality but when a person is getting older, he needs development even in the adult age. Taking this into consideration, authors of the books, biographies and such, try to adapt their creations to the age of the target reader. In our analysis, for example, the biography written for Pre-K second grade children differs, first of all, by setting from the two remaining, as the colors are bright and the pictures are painted with colorful pencils, besides, there exists more magic in the setting. The two remaining pictures approach to the reality, as the characters are pictured as real men, for example, Mr. Willy Wonka, the factory owner from the Dahl’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. The Roald Dahl’s biography for Pre-K second graders is described by simple and short sentences, like, for instance: “Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales.  His parents were from Norway.  He spent his childhood in England”. While the biography for children of 3rd-5th grades describes the same events of the Roald Dahl’s life as follows: “Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff, Wales. He had a difficult childhood as his father and older sister died when he was three. His mother raised him as well as three sisters and two step-sisters. He liked to read adventure stories as a kid”. Comparing pieces of the biographies for kids of different age, we may say that they are quite different as there are much more information included in the second piece; the events of death of members of the Dahl’s family are hidden in the first fragment and the grammar is more complex in the second piece of the biography. The text for Pre-K second grade children is supplemented with no activities after the biography unlike the Dahl’s biography for 3rd-5th graders which is built on the question-answer basis with the purpose of making the text better structured and making it easy for children to answer the questions below the text and fill in the gaps in front of each period of the Roald Dahl’s biography; besides, the text for the readers of this age offers the list of novels written by Roald Dahl, which is not included into the first biography, but is present in the third biography for 6th-8th graders. Also, children of Pre-K second grade have to find in the text words which are described by several synonyms in the activities zone. In the age classification of the biographies, language differs as well: for example, the first text is filled with the words like “only” which provides proper reaction for a reader, and the ones which deliver the emotional response, while the biography for 6th-8th grade children simply states the facts of the writer’s life and of writing his experience, probably, because children of this age are already more experienced in perception of surrounding conditions and there is no need for the author to hint at a certain way of reacting on the issues. The plots of all the three Dahl’s biographies are consequent and coherent in their structures, and there are no contradictions in the texts, though the higher age category of groups of readers is, the more information about the writer’s life is given (Woog, 2005).
I liked the Roald Dahl’s biography for 3rd-5th graders the most, because children go through the most interesting age when they already understand something but still there are a lot of things and issues they have to learn and investigate. The biography for this age group is supplemented with pictures for such age and it is joyous but cognitive; besides, there is a section with activities in it which are meant to draw their attraction and help them to take in the material better. The list of the books by Roald Dahl is another point drawing attention of a small reader which makes him think about reading one of those which is the main teaching goal of the biographies if used in lesson, for example. Before writing the essay, I knew the Dahl’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, which is the most famous book of him and some facts from the author’s biography, but after reading these three biographies, I got to know a large amount of details from his childhood and the start of his career as a writer, which made him one of the best writers of the children’s books.

Works Cited

Powling, Chris. Roald Dahl. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda, 1998. Print.
Treglown, Jeremy. Roald Dahl: A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994. Print.
Woog, Adam. Roald Dahl. Detroit: KidHaven, 2005. Print.