This article examines reader development as a key factor in understanding the pathways through which readers connect to gender expansive books, and relates those concepts to the corpus of books available for elementary level readers. The article provides evidence for the importance of attending to both book quantity and quality, as well as…

This article explores 11-year-old children's connections to prior knowledge and experiences while reading a wordless version of "Little Red Riding Hood." The study extends pre-existing research on reader response theories by focusing on images instead of written text. The approach taken places emphasis on the reader's active engagement,…

Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale's graphic novel set "Rapunzel's Revenge" (2008) and "Calamity Jack" (2010) features fractured fairy tales that take up the issue of 'the damsel in distress,' questioning and complicating traditional gender roles in fairy tales. Throughout both graphic novels Rapunzel's character…

In multi- or intercultural educational contexts, folktales from around the world are often approached as representative of diverse cultures and used to transmit knowledge and understanding of the literary, social and cultural heritage of those cultures to children. In this article, I present contemporary critical literary, folklore and cultural…

This article discusses the results of an empirical study that examined third grade Latinx children's discussions of literature dealing with themes of immigration. The study focused on the reading of six picture books by Mexican-origin children at a public elementary school located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. The data were collected by…