Offers an account of school literacy development for all children. Uses a metaphoric "drinking god" to capture the influence that children's nonacademic textual experiences have on their entry into school literacy. Aims to describe how children use old resources from familiar practices and adapt them to enter into new ones. (SG)

Considers the importance of materials from popular culture in children's literate activities. Emphasizes the dynamic ways in which children adapt symbols from popular culture for their own academic and social purposes. Argues for the need to view popular culture more respectfully. (NH)

An ethnographic study of African American first graders showed how their use of media material is linked to family and community memberships. Storytelling and play involved recontextualization (borrowing, translating, retelling) of the material. Context shaped their participation in school literacy practices. (Contains 70 references.) (SK)

Discusses the social processes that undergird the media's influence on children's cultural lives. Discusses stories as cultural tools and how people claim stories as their own. Illustrates how one teacher of seven- to nine-year-olds exploited these processes for children's intellectual, social, and literacy growth. (SR)

Building on the author's groundbreaking work in "Building Superheroes," this book traces the influence of a wide-ranging set of "textual toys" from children's lives--church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays--upon school learning…

A qualitative study, presented in the form of an analytical narrative, examined children's symbolic and social use of superhero stories--popular media stories that vividly reveal societal beliefs about power and gender, which are themselves interwoven in complex ways with race, class, and physical demeanor. A second-grade classroom in an East San…

Based on an ethnographic study in an urban classroom of 7- to 9-year olds, this book examines how young school children use popular culture, especially superhero stories, in the unofficial peer social world and in the official school literary curriculum. In one sense, the book is about children "writing superheroes"--about children…