What Literature Does for Young Children: A General List in no order of importance or chronology

1. Teaches them the visual codes of their culture (develops imagistic literacy)

2. Helps them focus diffuse emotional responses into concrete imagery ("gives us images to think with"==Aidan Chambers)

3. Provides storied representations of unconscious developmental processes

4. Presents them with culturally saturated images of the "other"

5. Lets them know what the "other" expects of them  

6. Create the associations that develop into stereotypes.  

7. Teach children how to value the stereotypical images.

8. Shows them what is meaningful in life.

9. Shows them how to create meaning in their lives.