Childrens stories will always stick with us even as adults. While they are cute, they also provide good messages to take away. The purpose of children’s stories are not only to tell a story but to teach them a lesson as well.  In this article by Hephzibah Anderson, they talk about the themes that children’s stories have. They also talk about going back as an adult and reading all the stories that you did as a child. While some of these messages are more obvious, there are some that are more hidden and communicate a deeper meaning you would understand more as an adult. An example given in the article was the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas was a parable of consumerism. Consumerism is a concept most children would not get but you would understand it as an adult. Childrens stories have no age limit, and they all teach lessons that we can learn even as adults.

Communication theory is about how we understand communication. By definition communication is “The relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response” (6). We create messages to gain a response. There are several different types of messages or texts. Texts are not just books, according to communication theorists a text is “A record of a message that can be analyzed by others (e.g., a book, film, photograph, or any transcript or recording of a speech or broadcast).” (6). Communication is not just about talking, there are various other mediums used to communicate. Another important note is how these messages are interpreted. According to Griffin, “The meaning that a message holds for the creators and receivers doesn’t reside in the words that are spoken, written, or acted out.” (7). This means that messages are not explicitly stated, instead you must interpret them yourself and everyone will interpret a message differently.

The hidden messages in children’s books is a good way to start understanding communication theory. After all communication is the process of how messages are created and interpreted through various texts. All stories have meaning and messages that they convey to the readers. Stories are created and they are interpreted by whoever reads them. Like the story in the article How the Grinch Stole Christmas, this book would be interpreted differently as a child rather than adult. An interpretation that you could make as a child is that the message is just because you have been hurt, that does not mean that you get to hurt others as well. While we can still come to this conclusion as an adult, we still have a deeper understanding and can interpret the message in a different way. For example, we can think about the messages of consumerism. As seen during the holidays there are stressed out shoppers everywhere trying to buy everything that they can for gifts or for decorations, even if we do not necessarily need all of it. Not all tales have hidden meanings, and some are more straight forward, but that is up to the reader to interpret it that way. Not every message in a book will be spelt out for us. We must come to that conclusion ourselves. Much like everything else in our lives.