Across the country GOP legislators parent groups and school boards are banning books and attempting to take away the power of children’s literature. The resistance comes in the form of book bans and Critical Race Theory legislation. Taking away diverse books or banning the conversations that accompany such books from happening prevents books from being windows mirrors or sliding glass doors for students.

Using critical multicultural analysis and a justice-oriented approach to teaching history this study analyzes the portrayal of George Washington in children’s biographies.

As the fifth piece of our year-long inquiry asks “What does it mean to prepare students for civic engagement?” Vivian Vasquez Carolyn Clarke and Barbara Comber speak to the importance of developing learning experiences that center our students’ experiences questions and tensions when helping them develop critical literacies.

The 2023 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts are of enduring quality inviting readers to deeply engage with language in expansive and varied ways.

Although most Americans know about haiku another East Asian form of poetry is less widely shared in American classrooms: Korea’s sijo. Sijo poems are longer than haiku (with 44-46 syllables) and by incorporating sijo into the curriculum teachers can expose students to a new form of poetry and expand their knowledge of East Asian culture. This article provides teachers with the tools and resources needed to teach sijo.

Teaching within a Vietnamese Two-Way Dual Language Program the author draws upon her Asian-American background as a reader and writer to inform her pedagogy emphasizing the promotion of students’ identities as readers writers and individuals.

As states across the US begin to mandate the teaching of Asian American histories the authors offer guidance for teaching this content alongside children’s literature.

Preservice and practicing teachers analyzed and then designed innovative graphic narratives to understand and model the format for curricular inclusion in young adolescents’ learning.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Latina adolescent girls found community through writing art and storytelling in the Somos Escritoras online writing workshop.

In the context of LGBTQIA+ curriculum violence imposed on schools by policymakers this perspectives article invites educators to queer literacies rather than censoring them.

This open letter encourages educators to engage in disability history and honor disability identity to resist ableism and support inclusion in literacy spaces.

Providing student-facing templates this article offers protocols for teachers to engage students with their Individualized Education Program goals during literacy lessons.

Drawing on current literature and empirical examples this three-part conceptual framework provides pedagogical guidance for literacy educators supporting students with significant support needs.

This column describes a three-pronged approach to incorporating into a classroom a book that represents some aspect(s) of diversity.

As the second piece of our year-long inquiry asking “What does it mean to prepare students for civic engagement?” Tim O’Keefe shares how his second-and third-grade students learn to observe the world more closely and ask critical questions about those things that appear to lack adequate explanation or justice.

This column showcases winners of the 2023 Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for children.

This interview shares the groundbreaking and optimistic vision of Drs. Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin L. Ryan for expanding literacies to include the lives and issues of LGBTQIA+ people in elementary school language arts classrooms.

Building relationships embracing the cultures of your students and providing mentor texts that reflect your students can lead to a beautiful writing classroom.

Seven teachers share the challenges and possibilities of developing culturally responsive approaches that highlight how Language Arts curriculum makes a diversity of impacts.

Sharing young emergent bilinguals’ artwork and voices this article highlights drawing and talking as valuable practices to recognize capacities and create belonging in literacy classrooms.

This article explores how to disrupt anti-Blackness in early childhood education by teaching from a pro-Black stance. The authors explain African Diaspora literacy and illuminate classroom practices in kindergarten first grade and third grade. Readers are guided to transform their spaces and ensure that Black children are well.

This Perspective on Practice discusses how teachers can use hip hop lyrics as a mentor text to engage students through literacy instruction.

This article examines three interrelated aspects concerning reader access development and engagement with Black children’s literature—educational policies and surveillance of Black children’s literature publishing trends and Black youths’ reader response—to consider what these elements tell us about where the field of Black children’s literature might go from here.

Using my personal narrative as a testimony this article will demonstrate how teachers can use their stories to reflect; strengthen their literacy instruction; and cultivate a space of bravery healing and love in their classrooms.

In this column we expand the concept of Black Livingness as a lens to evaluate and select African American children’s literature.

(Re)considering ways to engage with students in the design of learning through a critical approach to curriculum.

Using topic modeling analysis we examine patterns in articles published in Language Arts from 1924 to 2020.

This piece examines a missed opportunity for dialogue after a classroom incident while unpacking different ways to talk about fat phobia with young children.

In this column the author features children’s books that facilitate conversation and inquiry that develop students’ understanding of mistakes and coping mechanisms for struggle.

This essay explores the politics of white backlash and the laws enacted across the United States that seek to censor books and discussions surrounding issues of race racism and gender in elementary classrooms.

Building learning communities open to strengthening connections through exploration of struggle can offer students avenues to bring their whole selves to their learning.

Disabled people are part of every school community. Masking and ableism prohibit disabled and neurodivergent folks from showing up as their true authentic and whole selves.

An educator reflects on her work teaching during the Ferguson Uprising sharing advice with her past self.

This article examines a cross-curricular project that focused on backyards birds integrating science English and art in a fifth-grade class.