When mostly white, middle class, female undergraduate preservice students enter social studies, reading, and language arts methods courses, they usually have not yet been asked to think critically about the curriculum they will be responsible for teaching. One of the primary conduits for sending messages to students about themselves and the world…

Picturebooks were one format of multimodal text used during the classroom-based research that is featured in this article. Although the research conducted with a class of grade 7 students had several overarching purposes, the two most relevant to this article were to investigate student development of visual meaning-making skills and competencies…

This article describes results from an examination of common characteristics in the award-winning United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) Outstanding International Books for Grades K-2 from 2006 to 2012. Books nominated for the USBBY Outstanding International Books List must be currently available in the United States market. The…

This study illustrates the presence of Mock Spanish in some English-based picture books and the ways this usage misrepresents Latino people, language, and culture. The author conducted a critical content analysis of five Skippyjon Jones books. Her guiding question was, How is language used, particularly Spanish, in these English texts, and what…

Learning through drama and other art forms enriches children's learning by expanding the possibilities for how children create and express meaning (Adomat, 2009; Berghoff, Egawa, & Harste, 2000). The arts are rarely suggested as a way of opening up broader understandings for young readers; yet drama has been shown to be beneficial in myriad ways…

Ideological assumptions about childhood play into the production and selection of children's literature. Various ideologies proclaim that children should be happy and free from stories of evil, children's literature should help children encounter the joys in life, it should be filled with bright colors to keep children's attention, and it should…

The Coretta Scott King (CSK) Award, instituted in 1969 and recognized as an official award by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1982, is conferred annually to an African American author and an illustrator for their outstanding contributions to literature about the Black experience for children and young adults. A partial impetus for the…

Children's literature can broaden and enhance readers' views of themselves and others. When children's literature from abroad as well as from the United States is incorporated into the literacy practices of a first grade class, the potential exists to widen the children's perspectives of the world and build insights about others. Additionally…

In this article, the authors explain how nonfiction literature can demonstrate the nature of problem solving within disciplines such as math, science, and social studies. This literature illustrates what it means to puzzle over problems, to apply disciplinary thinking, and to develop creative solutions. The authors look closely at three examples…

If an entire village is needed to raise a child, and the successful launch of the Apollo XI required 400,000 men and women, then surely it stands to reason that a book that wins the 2009 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction also must have required a team of talented individuals, each contributing some direction and adding some…

During the past three years, the author has been exploring Grade 5 students' processes of reading and understanding contemporary picturebooks with Radical Change characteristics and metafictive devices, and examining how students use their knowledge of these characteristics and devices to create their own texts. "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other…

The quest to explain the extreme realism found in some Newbery Award books led the authors to discover that there is no unified view of childhood affecting children's literature today. While some adults feel that children must be protected against the evil surrounding them, others feel that they must be prepared to face the world in which they…

This article explores young readers' fascination with particular authors. It begins with a brief analysis of the contents of fifth graders' letters to their favorite authors. It then juxtaposes their range of responses with the varying perspectives that teachers typically adopt when designing an author study, advocating a model of author study…

The three books reviewed in this article represent the continuous effort to make visible the significant bridge between theory and practice in the fields of literacy and children's literature. While the authors maintain distinct purposes for their creations, the texts each speak to a strong theoretical support for the practices they describe. The…