"Literary Imagination and Professional Knowledge: Using Literature in Teacher Education" establishes a foundation for expanding the use of literature in teacher education curricula. The contributors to this collection have a wide variety of education and experience, thus bringing a richness to the content of the volume. Literature can be…

This study highlights a cross-course collaboration around children's literature and grammar in one teacher preparation program. Pre-service teachers created digital picture books and video feedback for their peers in which they ultimately adopted shifting stances in thinking like readers and writers throughout their process. By situating reading…

We found that there are disproportionately intractable challenges such as poverty and inequality in an area of Tanzania, Eastern Africa. There was a need to identify and develop the factors critical for their success. Data were collected in rural Iringa, Tanzania on a case study basis, using a semi-structured interview and communication with…

Classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse, and multicultural literature can be an essential tool utilized to provide representation for students from these diverse backgrounds. However, while multicultural literature can be beneficial, it is important for educators to be cautious in their selection of these books. Many of these books contain…

From the authors of the popular blog and resource for teachers, The Classroom Bookshelf, this book offers a framework and teaching ideas for using recently released children's and young adult literature to build a culture of inquiry and engagement from a text-first approach. "Reading With Purpose" is designed to help K-8 teachers tap…

This article discusses how the Korean War is portrayed in the children's literature published in the United States over 70 years since the war. Seven children's books were identified and analyzed with a theoretical lens of teaching war as difficult knowledge. Critical content analysis of the texts found two key patterns. First, there were various…

Abundant research has explored interactive book reading and children's literacy learning, but little is known about interactive digital book reading among families with refugee backgrounds. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives on social semiotics multimodality, this study investigates what happens when parents and children with a refugee…

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2019), approximately half of U.S. children come from nontraditional families, such as those with divorced parents, multiracial families, one-parent families, and families with same-sex parents. Although family structures have diversified dramatically (Powell et al., 2010), the traditional family remains the…

Children's literature is potentially a starting point to present critical multicultural concepts to young learners. It may also be a medium through which historical and contemporary ideologies of society are encouraged in the young learners. This process may be viewed as a form of cultural hegemony when the choices of literature and reading…

Culturally rich stories may not explicitly refer to mathematical content. Consequently, teachers may overlook the potential for using content-invisible literature as a resource for mathematical investigations. Reflecting on the key elements of the what from the What-How-Who structure builds teachers' capacity to develop paramount tasks from…

The author relates their involvement in the process of testing a picture storybook to teach science concepts. The project asked: If children were learning through a story where the science content was explicit, would children be able to explain the science in the context of the story and then in real-world contexts? Would the learning become…

Based on critical content analyses of picturebooks about children who have sought refuge, we outline a scaffolded method for social studies teachers and teacher educators to historicize forced displacement in children's literature. The method integrates critical literacy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and inquiry-based social studies…

In this article, we provide an overview of the ways one ecosystem-based literacy program uses high quality racially affirming picturebooks with kindergarten-third grade teachers within communities of practice to develop racial literacy and enact more effective and equitable reading practices. Racial literacy here refers to teachers' ability to…

Today's teachers are required to spend most of their English/Language Arts time in teacher-directed instruction with required text, which is primarily informational. Little, if any, time is allocated to self-selected independent reading (Garan & DeVoogd, 2008). In addition, some teachers do not understand the importance of independent reading…

In recent decades, extensive studies from diverse disciplines have focused on children's developmental awareness of different gender roles and the relationships between genders. Among these studies, researchers agree that children's picture books have an increasingly significant place in children's development because these books are a widely…