This article examines the impact of immigration on Korean children through a content and literary analysis of 14 children's picture books. A majority of published children's literature dealing with the subject of Korean Americans or Korean immigration contains culturally specific themes common to the Korean immigration experience. These…

In this article the Viking motif in children's literature is explored--from its roots in (adult) nationalist and antiquarian discourse, over pedagogical and historical texts for children, to the eventual diversification (or dissolution) of the motif into different genres and forms. The focus is on Swedish Viking narratives, but points of…

The purpose of this study was to examine how the social practices of African American families--with children in grades K-2--changed as a result of participating in a family literacy program utilizing African American children's literature. The families were exposed, through a series of workshops, to an abundance of children's literature…

In this article, the authors consider whether children's trade books promote an authentic understanding of the nature of science. They begin by discussing the characteristics of the nature of science and then examine existing research in children's science books for evidence of the visibility of these features. They describe the problems…

This article explores what it means to be a competent reader of picture storybooks by examining the abilities of some 4-6-year-olds, who were read stories aloud in class. Jonathan Culler's concept of "literary competence" was used to tease out the children's implicit knowledge of the structures and conventions that enable them to read a work of…

Louise Erdrich is one of the most influential writers of the Native American Renaissance. Her contributions to the representation of Native American history have been great, and her masterpieces of children's literature have won her a prominent reputation. This article explores the (re)location of the concept of home in Erdrich's "The Game of…

Imperial British India is the point of origin for protagonists in both Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" (1911) and Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Books" (1894-1895), two influential children's stories in which late Victorian notions of childhood education and nature converge with those of national and imperial identity. In Burnett's…

Situated at the intersections of ethnography, childhood studies, literary studies, and education research, this reception study seeks to access real children's responses to a particular text, and to offer empirical description of actual reading experiences. Survey data is generated by taking advantage of an online resource: an archive of…

In this qualitative study, the author explores how young readers build literary understanding through performative responses in picturebook read-alouds. Performative responses allow children to create and express meaning in ways that go beyond talk and that engage their creativity and imagination. They include a variety of modalities, such as…

American publishers have published numerous children's books about Barack Obama over the past several years; most take the form of informational biographies. This article reports on a research project aimed at how these books incorporate sociohistorical narratives, particularly those related to the civil rights movement. Though the features of the…

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was one of the leading literary theorists of his day, and this article shows the ways in which his theories continue to be relevant for both the field of literary criticism and elementary classroom education today. The author, an eminent scholar in the field of children's literature in her own right and a student of…

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

The subject of this article is "The Royal Readers", a group of reading anthologies published in Britain by Thomas Nelson between 1872 and 1881 for use in elementary schools. The focus is not on their contribution to the teaching of reading but rather on how they functioned as the tools of an education system conceived primarily as an agent of…

Numerous children face abuse at home and in the workplace. These situations of domestic and societal abuse are found depicted in children's books for younger and younger ages. This manuscript examines books in several genres, both fiction and non-fiction. The books are analyzed for the quality of the writing, the depiction of an authentic story,…