This article describes a project that studied 15 preservice teachers' perceptions of and reactions to responding to children's and young adult literature using a Ning blog. These perceptions and reactions provided insight into various practical aspects of using a social networking blog to facilitate literature response in a teacher education…

In the last ten years, historical fiction picturebooks have won numerous children's literature awards and have assumed a prominent role in the literacy landscape of elementary and middle school classrooms. Whether read in read-alouds, study groups, as a focus of genre study, or as a supplement to the social studies curriculum, historical fiction…

This column examines research studies that foster children to explore the relationship between text and images. The collaboration of an engaging picturebook and a good teacher unlocks rich discussion and interaction among the students. Through visual literacy, children are active participants while making meaning and strong connections. The cited…

Stories are woven so tightly into the fabric of our everyday lives that it's easy to overlook their significance in framing how we think about ourselves and the world. Stories are meaning making, providing a means of structuring and reflecting on our experiences in order to understand their significance. Story is also life making, a way of…

In this article, the authors share findings from a study in which immigrant students responded to the wordless text "The Arrival" in small-group, bilingual literature discussions. The interpretive processes of two of the children with different ethnic backgrounds, levels of English proficiency, and styles of response are highlighted as exemplary…

Concerns for the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth and the children of families who so self-identify suggest that teachers may need additional support in fostering classrooms that welcome all students. The field of children's literature has long-standing interests in multiple cultures and the literature…

Neely sought to draw upon her experiences in teaching courses in children's literature, research on global/multicultural education, and her own beliefs in order to design and implement a course on literature written about and after the end of segregation in the United States and Apartheid in South Africa. The course included travel to some of the…

A year after the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, Lehman and Logan have a virtual conversation with Jocelyne Trouillot, author and publisher of Haitian Creole children's books, founder of the Haiti section of the International Board on Books for Young People, and head of the Universite Caraibe in Port-au-Prince. They discuss the…

O'Connor, an author of realistic fiction for children, shares her attempts to strike a balance between carefree, uncensored, authentic, realistic writing and age-appropriate writing. Of course, complicating that balancing act is the fact that what seems age-appropriate to her might not seem so to everyone. O'Connor suggests that while it may be…

In this paper, the author looks at how she attempted to teach her students--preservice teachers--to engage in dialogic conversation about gay and lesbian identity using children's literature with gay and lesbian characters as a jumping off point. Through her analysis, the author has identified two requirements for dialogic conversation among…

Ironically, adults control most of the world of children's literature: adults write the books; adults choose which books to publish; adults review the books, adults bestow the awards on books and adults purchase the books for bookstores, libraries, and their children. In this paradigm of adult control, children's opinions are often overlooked. The…

Divakaruni reflects on her path to becoming an author for children, including her formative encounters with stories told by her grandfather in her native India, and experiences as a mother and as an Indian woman in the post-9/11 context of the United States.

Using a framework grounded in critical literacy, the author describes her 1st-grade students' responses to works of literature that portray the impact of war. When given opportunities to read works of literature that address social justice issues, such as the consequences of war, her primary-age students' written, drawn, and spoken responses were…

In this article, Boldt considers decisions teachers must make about the value of children's writing as a form of play in primary classrooms. She offers a brief history of the framing of this question at 1966 Dartmouth Conference on English, focusing particularly on the perspective of Jimmy Britton. She highlights the relationship between Britton's…

Immigrants currently make up over 12% of the U.S. population, with children of immigrants comprising more than 20% of the population. Consequently, English learners are the fastest growing group in U.S. schools today, accounting for 10.5% of the total public school student population in Pre-K through Grade 12 in 2004-2005, a 56.2% increase over…