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Book Detectives: Treasure Hunt According to the Theory of Cognitive Development

Prize awarded author Koray Avcı Çakman's Book Detectives: Treasure Hunt tells the reader the fantastic events that a group of friend experiences.

Prize awarded author Koray Avcı Çakman's Book Detectives: Treasure Hunt tells the reader the fantastic events that a group of friend experiences. In the context of fantastic events that take place in narrative, both characters and the reader are in the period of "formal operational" according to the cognitive stages of development. In this article, I will deal with the events experienced by the characters of the book in this context.

In the narration; events, which are experienced by four friends, namely Melis and Ozan, and twins Cemre and Emre, occur in a site which is very safe and surrounded by an artificial garden. Along with the rumor that a stranger has entered the site these buddies start pursuing it. The starting point of the events is the artificial purple bushes in the garden. They dig those purple bushes and find a puzzle in a bottle. This puzzle will only be able to be solved by reading Alice in Wonderland. The clues lead the characters to look for a rabbit sculpture in the garden. When they find the rabbit, they encounter a riddle again, and the riddle leads them to read the Almarpa's Mystery, and then the characters solve this puzzle too. The new puzzles they find allow them to read other books.

While the narrator constructs the events, he grounds them in a mysterious frame. Then, the narration takes the responsibility of making the characters to gain some features such as developing perception about abstraction and solving multiple problems. In other words, as Piaget argues in his cognitive development theory, in the age group to which the narrative is addressed, there is a transition from the "concrete operational" period to the "formal operational" period. Achieved gains during concrete operational period make it possible for the characters to move to a higher level. This period is called the formal operational period. The person in this period perceives the concepts of "now" and "here" and considers the possibilities that are not available, thus, has the ability to evaluate things (Ahioğlu 6).

Evaluating the possibilities while pursuing the mysterious person who has entered to the site, Emre, Cemre, Melis and Ozan seems supporting this argument. Emre and Cemre hear the event and share it with Ozan and Melis. Only a few would be able to see see the mysterious people who entered the garden late at night. The first example is their assessment of the likelihood of who may have seen them. Considering these possibilities, Emre and Cemre remember that their grandfather went to bed late at night and decide to ask him about it. In fact, grandfather sees mysterious people and says that they buried something under purple bushes. Thus, the probabilities are the result of the research that they have solved the first step of their problem.

According to Pigaet's theory, the person in the formal operational period gains the ability of "connective thinking". In this system of thinking, one has to solve a problem involving more than one variable by evaluating it together with all possible variables. The following fantastic riddle attracts their attention and they start searching: "The seeker finds/Curiosity leads to another curiosity/The thing you are looking for is neither in the air/nor on the moon/nor in the underground.../If you were next to Alice, she would tell you/The rabbit would go ahead/You also follow it like Alice/This is an easy puzzle/It will quickly be solved/The rabbit will guide you/The wall will join another wall/The two walls will take you to the mystery/The rabbit and the gardener will follow you." (Çakman 105). They consider many parameters in combination while trying to figure out the first fantastic riddle. They even write the words in a reverse order and see if there is any meaning, and examine the paper with the magnifying glass to see whether it is actually a map or not. As a result of all these variables, they found that the word “Alice” in the riddle refers to the story of Alice in Wonderland, and the only way to solve it is reading it. After reading the story, it is necessary to evaluate the parameters in the story and in the riddle all together:

"Melis: (...) What happened after Alice followed the rabbit? (...) She reached to an extraordinary world by going through a tiny rabbit hole... We must follow the rabbit, but this may not be a living rabbit ...

Cemre: There are very small sculptures in the garden. (...) I think there is a rabbit sculpture somewhere on the site. I think we should find it ... "(116-18).

With "connective thinking", they find that the answer to the mysterious riddle is in the rabbit statue placed the site gardens.

The stages of research and problem solving that the characters have pursued through fantastic events that take part in their ordinary lives coincide with the age group of the main characters in the narrative and with the age group of the reader. According to Piaget, the process of the comprehension of events by readers, who is on the formal operational period, will overlap with the character's comprehension of the events. Perhaps, with the characters in the narrative the reader will resolve these fantastic riddles, and moreover, similar fantasy narratives will affect positively the cognitive development of this age group.

 

Bibliography

Ahioğlu, E. Nihal. LİNDBERG. Piaget ve ergenlikte Bilişsel Gelişim. Kastamonu Eğitim Dergisi 1/19 (Ocak

2011):1-10.

Çakman, Koray Avcı. Kitap Dedektifleri: Hazine Avı. İstanbul: Doğan ve Egmont Yayıncılık, 2017.