Body image is a broad, multidimensional construct that encompasses an individual's perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about their own body, most often in relation to its physical appearance (Cash & Pruzinsky, 1990; Schilder, 2013; Thompson et al., 1999). Until relatively recently, the majority of body image and body-dissatisfaction research…

Nationally, one in 100 adults is currently incarcerated. Meanwhile, more than 2.7 million U.S. children--or one in 28 children (The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2010)--currently have a parent who is incarcerated, and many more U.S. children face the daily effects of familial incarceration due to past parental incarceration or the incarceration of other…

Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) emphasized that children need to see themselves as well as others reflected in the books available to them. For children who are deaf, images of themselves that are "distorted or laughable or inaccurate" (Bishop, 1997) negatively impact their self-esteem and reinforce their marginalized status. The portrayals of…

Integrating children's literature that represents diverse populations into the classroom is a key part of a culturally relevant pedagogy. Several benefits emerge when children read culturally relevant books. This research focused on the representation of Black males as characters and creators of Caldecott books through a critical multicultural…

In the realm of modern children's literature, biographies of women showcase lives of exceptional talent, perseverance, civic engagement, and more: lives meant to inspire young readers. Since its inception in 2001, the Robert Sibert Informational Book Medal and Honor award has included a biography (or two) every year, with the exception of 2004 and…

Historically, early lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-inclusive (LGBTQ+) picturebooks deployed representations of (in)human characters (i.e., birds, bunnies, shapeshifters, and more) to open readers to queer subjects (Young, 2019). While useful for expanding conceptions of queer life, such a move has had unintended consequences. The…

Children's books work to balance many opposing forces. For instance, they are simultaneously written to be read aloud as well as independently and are written for children as well as the adults who purchase and often read them (Nodelman, 2008). Children's books also attempt to impart ideas while avoiding being overtly didactic (Hunt, 1999), yet…

Children's literature scholars have written about the importance of color in the visual texts of picturebooks: Color can establish mood, provide clues to the emotional states of characters, highlight particular objects in illustrations, and signal links between characters and/or objects (e.g., Lewis, 2001; Moebius, 1986; Nodelman, 1988). However,…

Research has shown that individuals resettled as refugees are represented as passive victims who are dependent on government aid, and are often associated with trauma (MacDonald, 2015; Shapiro & MacDonald, 2017). This should not undermine the traumatic and difficult experiences that people resettled as refugees undergo, but a focus on such…

The year 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Eve Bunting's "Smoky Night" (Harcourt, 1994; illustrated by David Diaz). As a Caldecott medal winner, "Smoky Night" is the highest profile picturebook centered on an incident related to police brutality and the profiling of Black citizens--the Los Angeles riots,…

When it comes to being productive allies and co-conspirators with and for transgender people, the authors have been particularly drawn to "George" (Gino, 2015), perhaps the first mass-marketed, #OwnVoices novel with a young transgender protagonist, a White fourth-grade transgender girl named Melissa. This article investigates the…

The Randolph Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Charged with identifying and honoring the most distinguished American picturebooks annually, the ALSC Board of Directors first awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1938. This article presents a…

A limited number of studies have examined Asian American children's literature over the last half century. While the selection and availability of this literature has increased substantially in the last two decades, many of these texts continue to perpetuate stereotypes (Morgan, 2012), such as the overachieving model minority (Loh-Hagen, 2014) and…

Building on the work of children's literature scholars who are thinking about the intersection of religion and children's literature (Brewbaker, 1983; Dávila, 2015), the author conducted a literature review with two guiding research questions. What methodologies have children's literature scholars used to research religion in texts for young…

The aim of this article is to examine the immigration experiences of Latinx child characters in picturebooks, analyzing the portrayals for their potential impact as mirrors and windows for students in today's schools. This study builds on research that explores Latinx representation in children's literature by specifically attending to how authors…