In Defense of Crappy Literature: When the Book Is Bad but the Literary Thinking Is Rich!

When a kindergarten student, after hearing a storybook read aloud by his teacher, proclaims “Now, that was a crappy piece of literature!” his proclamation provides an opportunity for an examination of literacy, identity, agency and power. Critical issues and provocative questions emerge about the importance of “crappy” literature and how we create spaces in our classrooms for students to question, examine, respond, and think in a variety of ways about all types of texts.