Children's picture books contribute to children's development of gender identity and can impact aspirations and expectations of roles in families and society. However, the world represented in children's books reflects predominantly middle class, heterosexual, male heroes and characters. This paper reports on a cross-cultural study investigating…

Abundant research has explored interactive book reading and children's literacy learning, but little is known about interactive digital book reading among families with refugee backgrounds. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives on social semiotics multimodality, this study investigates what happens when parents and children with a refugee…

Every year, the Rainbow Round Table Committee from the American Library Association (ALA) selects quality lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual+ (LGBTQIA+) books for the ALA's Rainbow Book List. The committee evaluated approximately 450 titles published in the United States and Canada between July 1, 2020,…

This paper reports on a qualitative research study that examined how 10 literacy teacher educators (LTEs) utilized children's literature to invite teacher trainees to critically engage with social issues, challenge their assumptions about literacy, and begin to develop the knowledge and dispositions to work alongside diverse learners (e.g.,…

This article presents a way to use award-winning books as mentor texts for very young writers. Books were selected as mentor texts from the winners of the Australian Early Childhood Children's Book of the Year Award and the American Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. The authors explain the value of using award-winning texts in the classroom and describe…

The present article attempts to show how important and easy it is to use authentic material in the classroom. However, the teacher who copies news reports from the Internet may infringe the copyright law. The article offers a comparative analysis of copyright laws in Common Law countries and the EU countries in relation to fair use. The article…

Mere days before the announcement of the new children's book ambassador, speculation was still running wild. However, when the Library of Congress introduced Katherine Paterson as the new kids' book ambassador on January 5, the choice was greeted with unrivaled enthusiasm. A two-time winner of the Newbery Medal (for "Bridge to…

All those who dream of working for themselves and being their own boss, whether they are fresh college graduates, recently unemployed, or newly retired from one career, have a thousand questions about where and how to begin. New entrepreneurs especially will need professional, expert help to start and run a small business effectively and…

Language can provide an entree into an academic discipline, but can also serve as a barrier to exclude newcomers. How does this apply to academic developers trying to promote teaching and learning on their campuses? Using an online survey, academics at two institutions in the UK and USA were asked to describe their typical and ideal reading in…

"The Outsiders" if often credited with marking the emergence of YA literature. It was written by a teenager and was intended to represent honestly the difficult lives of other young adults. Despite the novel's audience and purpose and its potentially provocative acknowledgment of the problems of social class, "The Outsiders"…

The purpose of this study was to examine books that support transitional readers to determine the representation of people of color. The findings were analyzed using critical race theory (CRT), a theoretical framework that places race at the center of educational research and discourse. The results indicate that despite the increasing ethnic and…

This article presents annotations of 30 trade books on the 2008 list of Young Adults' Choices that are the result of voting by students in five different regions of the United States. Trade books (books other than textbooks) published in 2006 were submitted by more than 50 publishers. Each book had to have at least two positive reviews from…

In this article, I present a qualitative analysis of third graders' experiences with a unit from their district-mandated commercial reading curriculum in which the children made strong connections between a fictional account of a Depression-era farm family's economic hardships and their own 21st century lives in a city with one of the highest…

Just 10 years ago the Academy of American Poets initiated the observance of National Poetry Month to celebrate poetry and its place in American culture. Since then, the movement has continued to gain momentum with the emergence of Young People's Poetry Week in 1999, a focus on poetry slams as the centerpiece for Teen Read Week in 2003, and the…

Over the past decade in the United States, levelled texts, or "little books" with finely graduated levelling of text difficulty, have regained their status as a literacy staple for beginning readers. Despite their resurgence, questions remain regarding the reliability and quality of these books. In this study, we conducted a detailed…