RESEARCH REPORT

Munisch, Robert. “The Official Robert Munsch Website”.17 November 2008. Robert Munsch. 10     February 2009. http://www.robertmunsch.com/bio.cfm

ABSTRACT

Robert Munsch is the author of several children’s books, including his best seller, Love You Forever.  He has created a website, www.robertmunsch.com, to allow the world to know a little bit more about himself and his work.  The front page of the site contains animated pictures for links that connect you to, among other things, stories told by Mr. Munsch, poems, pictures, and a full biography.  The site is very children friendly with bright colors and drawings of children from left to right.  Through further exploration of the site you can find out a great amount about Mr. Munsch’s work, and his purpose behind writing children’s books.

DESCRIPTION

Once on Robert Munsch’s official website, you have an option to choose from 13 different brightly colored links which are each an adventure on their own.  Mr. Munsch is in the background of the links along with several drawings of children in bright colors.  As well as the links, there is a featured poem right below that has been submitted by an admirer of his work.  The current poem is by Tyanna mabberley and is called “Tyanna’s Prayer, which is about a prayer to heal a boy named Kyle.  The first link on the list above the poem is a link to “The Books and other things”.  This brings you to a page with over 30 pictures of book covers with the publication date. There is also an option to listen to the book or to read about it.  This is great for children who are too young to read because they can decide which books they want to further pursue by looking at the book cover and hearing a quick overview of the book, without needing the ability to read.   Some of the books on this page include his best seller, Love You Forever, as well as a series of books called Munschworks.

A couple links over from “The Books & other thinks” link is a pink link to his biography.  This biography is set up in the same way as a children’s book in many aspects.  Each page does not have more than a few short paragraphs, and there is a picture on every page, just as most children’s books do.  The biography starts on the day he was born, June 11, 1945 and ends with some “strange facts” about Mr. Munsch.  In-between is information on his childhood, adulthood, and his inspiration behind writing children’s books.  Throughout his childhood, Mr. Munsch had a very tough time in elementary school where he says he, “almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, fourth, and fifth.”(Bio Page 1 www.RobertMunsch.com)  Although during this time he was not doing well in school, he was still writing all sorts of poetry.  Once grown up, Mr. Munsch studied to be a Jesuit priest, and worked part-time at an orphanage “to escape from deadly classes in philosophy.”(Bio Page 3 www.RobertMunsch.com)  This is when Mr. Munsch started writing his first book called “Mortimer”, which took him over 12 years to complete.

As Robert Munsch’s writing career started to take off he explains why he wrote his bestselling children’s book, Love You Forever.  The inspiration to write the book came when his wife gave birth to two born dead babies.  When this happened Mr. Munsch created a song called “Love You Forever” as a memorial to his two lost babies.  The song went as follows, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”  He liked the song so much that he decided to create a book out of it.  Soon after, Love You Forever was published in 1986 and turned out to be the bestselling children’s book of all time beating Goodnight Moon, which Mr. Munsch thought “had been #1 forever.”(Bio Page 4 www.RobertMunsch.com)  Six short pages later Mr. Munsch ends his biography with some interesting facts about himself.  One fact explained was that he visits schools and daycares for free, and sometimes unexpected to tell children stories.

Once at the end of the bibliography there is a link that says “All the way back home…” that takes you back to the main home page of links.  Here the remaining links include, “Poems”, “Photos of Robert”, “Shows & Book Signings”, “Kids Art”, “Unpublished Stories”, “Class Pictures”, “Class Visits”, and a link to E-mail Mr. Munsch.  All of the remaining links have pictures on every page and the text is written in a very child like tone with many words and phrases written in full caps.  The site as a whole really conveys a positive message about emotional issues to children, just as his most popular book, Love You Forever, does.  It is happy and bright; however, it also touches upon darker issues such as diseases, born dead babies, and the circle of life.  Clearly Robert Munsch has an important message that he wants children to grasp at a young age, which further exploration of his site really shows.

COMMENTARY

The Robert Munsch Official Website is a great resource for our group’s project on the children’s book he wrote, Love You Forever.  Through looking how the site is set up and the format of each link it shows how greatly he combines a children’s atmosphere with grown-up knowledge.  The site is very colorful and children friendly, however, in these colorful and children friendly links there is information about things like death and disease, which are very grown-up topics.  Just as his site is children and grown-up friendly, his book Love You Forever combines the two in the same way by talking about death and the circle of life in a very children friendly way.  This could greatly explain why the book was loved equally by children, parents, and even grandparents.  This site also gives our group many possibilities in directions to go for our project, such as the emotion involved in creating the book, and the classic structure of the one page picture, one page writing of children’s books.  By looking at Robert Munisch’s site you get to know a good amount about the person who created Love You Forever, and that alone really helps you understand the book.

RESOURCES

1) Munisch Robert.  Author Study: Robert Munsch eThemes eMINTS.  eMINTS and The Curators of the University of Missouri.  17 February 2009. 

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=3299

2) Munisch, Robert.  Robert Munsch Scholastic.com.  Scholastic Inc.  18 February 2009. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=3299\

3) YouTube-Love You Forever.  YouTube LLC. 10 February 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyZaOQu9chQ

4) YouTube-Robert Munisch Reading “Mortimer”.   YouTube LLC. 18 February 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3b7CaGkEY