Viewing Tolstoy's works from psychological and intellectual perspectives demonstrates his approach to children's literacy and especially the development of reasoning, which he presents in his writing for children and the stories he includes in his "New ABC" book (1875a) and four "Readers" (1875b). This article…

This study analyzed 90 realistic novels written and published in the United States between the years 2000 and 2010 and featuring mixed race characters. The researchers examined specific textual features of these works of contemporary and historical fiction and employed Critical Race Theory to contextualize the books within paradigms about…

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 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing in the Bahamas was simultaneously celebrated and denounced in the US. Damaging facts about Columbus and the impact of his voyages were aired along with demands for truth and change. This study analyzes the power relationships and political ideology of picturebooks about Columbus published…

This article draws on a careful study of series fiction read in the 1950s to explore how stereotypes feature in the development of a young reader's competence in learning to process stories in print. Five categories of stereotype are teased out: "embodied stereotypes," understood through physical experience; "working stereotypes," discerned…

This study identifies patterns in 11 English language young adult novels from the past three decades (1981-2011) which depict undocumented migration between Mexico and the United States. The increase in YA novels on this topic demonstrates rising public concern. These books offer sympathetic identification with border crossing youth. Eight of the…

This article takes as its starting point the concept of aetonormativity (the adult normativity germane to the discourse of children's literature), coined by Maria Nikolajeva (2010) in an attempt to unify the increasingly power-oriented theories of children's literature criticism within the past few decades. Acknowledging the usefulness of this…

As art objects, picturebooks have the potential to contribute to readers' aesthetic development. Many scholars and practitioners have recognized how using picturebooks with older students can augment their reading motivation and extend their understanding of visual elements of art and design, as well as develop their literacy, language, and…

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…

This article describes a theory of how culture enables literary interpretations of texts. We begin with a brief overview of the reader response field. From there, we introduce the theory and provide illustrative participant data examples. These data examples illustrate the four cultural positions middle grade students in our research assumed when…

The myth of home is what distinguishes children's literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer ("The Pleasures of Children's Literature," 2003) write that while "the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children's literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends with the child…

This qualitative case study explores the nature of reading engagement, taking a reader response approach to analysing and discussing the experiences and perspectives of real readers. The paper reports a collaborative research project in which a group of five primary-age children and a group of five adults of different ages were asked to read and…

This article presents a tripartite framework for analyzing multimodal texts. The three analytical perspectives presented include: (1) perceptual, (2) structural, and (3) ideological analytical processes. Using Anthony Browne's picturebook "Piggybook" as an example, assertions are made regarding what each analytical perspective brings to the…

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…