Keepers: Marking the Value of the Books on my Shelves

Lydia Pyne in her Object Lessons book, Bookshelf, says, “Bookshelves are dynamic, iterative objects that cue us to the social values we place on books and how we think books ought to be read.” This cued me to reflect upon the books that I keep on my personal bookshelves and my deep engagement with them. This is evidenced through the markings and non-markings that my keeper books compelled me to make/not make. I then use my own engagement with my books to make various responses to positive and negative critiques of romance fiction

Latino Immigration and the Importance of Bilingualism in Children’s Literature

Sometimes, in life, a person goes through a struggle they cannot identify or explain, but when a book portrays their struggle it helps them come to terms with it. Books do not necessarily solve problems, but they can give people the confidence to name and think differently about them. This notion remains especially true for children because their limited vocabulary hinders their ability to communicate their problems to adults since they themselves cannot put it into words. When they see their struggle played out in books, they gain tools to express themselves. One obstacle children endure but cannot identify is bilingualism and the language barrier it can create. Although some think children growing up in a bilingual environment develop bilingualism easily, they actually struggle with it extremely. This struggle is portrayed and sometimes even sympathized with in the three children’s picture books titled Juana and Lucas; Mango, Abuela, and Me; and My Grandma Mi Abuelita

Open Access Books [Workshop Summary]

OA books are starting to gain traction, with more than 12,000 titles now listed in the Directory of Open Access Books, increasing attention from European funders, and a number of new university presses focusing on OA monographs. However, only a very small proportion of scholarly books are published open access, and significant challenges remain, from funding and models to rights, disciplinary, and cultural issues. Participants will be invited to consider some of these challenges and to think broadly to suggest solutions and opportunities for the future

Is Someone Reading \u3cem\u3eUs\u3c/em\u3e? Fourth Grade Students Respond to Postmodern Picture Books

The purpose of this naturalistic case study was to gain understanding about the comprehension strategies successful readers employ as they construct meaning while navigating through postmodem picture books. Participants were eight fourth grade students from a large suburban elementary school in Tennessee. Data included transcripts and field notes from ten individual think aloud sessions and five group book club discussions. Themes identified from the think aloud sessions related to the ways in which students navigated through postmodem picture books include: emotional responses, general story problem solving and postmodem story problem solving. Themes identified from the group book club discussions related to the ways in which students navigated through postmodem picture books include: aesthetic responses, reflecting on reading behaviors, general story problem solving, and postmodern story problem solving. A general linear navigation pattern was identified from the think aloud session transcripts which involved encountering metafictive elements, emotional responses and problem solving. Book club discussions, on the other hand, produced a more interactive, dynamic navigation pattern in which participants shared aesthetic responses, reflected on / their own reading behaviors, and spent time problem solving within the postmodem picture book story world. Data revealed that the fourth grade students in this study came to further their understanding of each postmodem picture book through the group book club discussions that followed their individual readings. The choice to explore the phenomenon in two ways, individual think aloud sessions and group book club discussions, proved to be integral in providing a rich description of participants\u27 experience with postmodern picture books. Literacy in the 21st century means thinking critically, making sense of a bombardment of media sources, negotiating multiple digital literacies, and making choices about what to read and how to go about reading it. The findings from this study indicate that postmodem picture books have great potential to nurture growth in these areas if thoughtfully integrated into the curriculum. With the insight gained from this study, teachers should be mindful to support and encourage students who might become frustrated as a result of more negative emotional and/or aesthetic responses to postmodem picture books. They can work to facilitate a classroom environment where students feel safe in their comments, questions, and responses during discussions about literature. The classroom environment should be conceptualized as a place where this sort of active engagement is valued and encouraged. Data from this study revealed the complexity of the ways in which children independently constructed meaning while navigating through postmodem picture books. It is recommended that further studies are conducted in order to provide insight about how students might be supported toward more positive engagements with this emerging genre

An Encomium for Community College Students in Five Scenes

Books start arriving at my apartment by the boxful. As part of the committee judging the CCCC Outstanding Book Contest, I am inundated with books, and I am excited to get down to reading them. I feel like a graduate student all over again, reading things I would never read if I weren’t “made” to (New Materialisms, anyone?). Most of the books excite me and make me think about how I can move forward as a teacher of first year writing. Some of them hurt my brain. Some of them annoy me

The Futures of Books: Technologies and Forms

Students often approach discussions about the future of the book with a narrow conception of “the book”: “book” means “codex.” By reading theoretical and historical studies of the book, writing critiques of artists’ books, and creating handmade books, students can examine and question their assumptions about the essential qualities of “the book.” This paper describes a sequence of assignments designed to move students toward analysis of the relationships between forms and content in a variety of printed books, artists’ books, and electronic books. Students come to understand more fully the historical reasons for the development of the codex form and to think more broadly about technologies and formal possibilities of “the book.

Freire re-viewed

The work of Paulo Freire is associated with themes of oppression and liberation, and his critical pedagogy is visionary in its attempts to bring about social transformation. Freire has created a theory of education that embeds these issues within social relations that center around both ideological and material domination. In this review essay, Sue Jackson explores three books: Freire’s final work Pedagogy of Indignation; Cesar Augusto Rossatto’s Engaging Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Possibility, which attempts to engage Freire’s pedagogy of possibility; and C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin’s edited collection Re-thinking Freire, which asks readers to reconsider Freire’s work in light of globalization and environmental crises. Jackson questions the extent to which Freire’s pedagogical approaches are useful to educators as well as to “the oppressed,” and whether challenges to re-think Freire can lead to new kinds of critical pedagogies

Picture books stimulate the learning of mathematics

In this article we describe our experiences using picture books to provide young children (five- to six-year-olds) with a learning environment where they can explore and extend preliminary notions of mathematics-related concepts, without being taught these concepts explicitly. We gained these experiences in the PICO-ma project, which aimed to generate more knowledge about the effect of picture books on young children\u27s learning of mathematics. The project\u27s goal is to investigate how picture books can contribute to the development of mathematical concepts in young children, and how the actions of the teacher can strengthen the characteristics of picture books that support learning. The reading sessions described in this article were not intended to be mathematics \u27lessons\u27. Instead, the reading sessions were intended to tell the children a pleasant story and, at the same time, give them something to think about. Based on our research we provide reasons for using picture books to develop mathematical thinking, and include recommendations for practitioners interested in using picture books for mathematics learning.<br /

Preservice Teachers’ Encounters with Dual Language Picturebooks

Our action research explored the potentialities of dual language picturebooks related to language inquiries with preservice teachers. For six weeks, preservice teachers browsed picturebooks featuring English and another language, starting with a familiar language and moving to unfamiliar languages. After browsing, we shared our responses to the books, made connections across books, and engaged in experiences to think about language. Initial comments indicated that readers were not familiar with dual language picturebooks and connected to their own complex personal relationships with language. The preservice teachers engaged in inquiries around audience and book design, including issues such as Indigenous books signalling a resistance to prioritising English as a stance that differed from Spanish-English books where the design signalled a higher status to English. In this article, we discuss our findings using Ruiz’s (1984) language-as-resource framework, showing how the preservice teachers used dual language picturebooks to develop their critical awareness of language-as-resourc