Language Arts - Volume 86, Issue 3, 2009

The growing number of immigrant children and English learners in schools today has resulted in an increase in the number of children’s picture books that address the issues surrounding learning a new language and culture. While on the surface, the emergence of books that highlight the cultural and linguistic adjustments involved in learning a new language seem to be a positive trend, a closer examination of the books and their themes and messages is needed.

This article explores how reading strategy instruction that targets children’s literature can unwittingly interfere with the development of a reading life. It compares the use of story-based children’s literature for reading strategy instruction with the "untaught" story. It asks: What, if any, role does a read aloud that is unfettered by formal instruction related to comprehension play in early education?

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.

This article provides a background on research and government policy that has shaped the parameters of thinking about literature in and across the curriculum. The author calls for all who value children’s literature to learn from different perspectives and try to understand each other’s language when talking about literature and literacy in order to identify useful similarities from which we can build a strong theoretical rationale for literature as the content of reading.

This article presents a review of the authors’ long-term research in urban classrooms. The authors explore six illustrated information books created by children as culminating activities of integrated science-literacy units, Forest and Matter, that they developed, implemented, and studied in several 1st-3rd grade classrooms in Chicago Public Schools.

Here is the print version of Rudine Sims Bishop’s acceptance speech for the 2007 Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Award. The speech was given at the NCTE Elementary Section Get-Together on November 15, 2007.

Reviews in this issue focus on books that explore essential understandings about the impact of books on a child’s understanding and self-image. Materials reviewed include: www.americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com and www.oyate.org, Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Impact on American Culture by Anita Clair Fellman, Take Up Thy Bed and Walk: Death, Disability, and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls by Lois Keith, and Storytime: Young Children’s Literary Understanding in the Classroom by Lawrence R. Sipe.

The authors explore innovative and integrative books of children’s literature from 2008. Titles reviewed include: Cool Daddy Rat by Kristyn Crow; The Blacker the Berry by Joyce Carol Thomas; How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz; Tin Lizzie by Allan Drummond; The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin; Naming Liberty by Jane Yolen; Duel! Burr and Hamilton’s Deadly War of Words by Dennis Brindell Fradin; Boys of Steel by Marc Tyler Nobleman; The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry; Lady Liberty: A Biography by Doreen Rappaport; Eleven: A Mystery by Patricia Reilly Giff; The London Eye Mystery by Siobahn Dowd; Click: One Novel Ten Authors by David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Nornby, Margo Lanagan, Gergory Maguird, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Sue Park, and Tim Wynne; Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson and Marc Aronson; and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart.

A whimsical poem about poetry that will delight children and inspire their own playful compositions.