Theodore Taylor's "The Cay" received a great deal of criticism upon its publication in 1969 for its racism, yet it has remained in American public school curricula for over fifty years. Defenders of the novel have argued that it advocates for color-blindness, a position that has helped entrench it in schools. Meanwhile, few critics have…

This paper explores the importance of students responding to children's books for diversity and disabilities. The main claim of the paper is that we need to explore new ways of engaging children to respond to diversity beyond the traditional model of Reader's Response Theory. Even though Reader's Response Theory is a very important framework to…

By implementing carefully selected children's literature into the current reading curriculum, teachers can help students develop into civic-minded citizens who are willing and able to take meaningful action. Much has been written about the need to link learning and culture in our literacy classrooms (Banks, 1995; Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995,…

This article reconsiders Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" 50 years after its initial UK publication, and over a hundred years since Dahl's birth. It suggests that the book has often been misinterpreted, in that the work is more critical of modern capitalism than is often recognised, capturing a post-World War II shift in…

This article argues that revisions of curricula in teacher education, undertaken in response to the UN's Agenda 2030, goal 4.7, and the OECD's The Future of Education and Skills, need to consider new ways of teaching topics related to current environmental issues. Grounded in ecocriticism and dialogic teaching practices, this article promotes…

The contribution deals critically with the issue of citizenship and children's rights, identifying a silent void starting from the change we have witnessed with the progressive questioning of the principles, secular, and religious, of adult authority and the sacrosanct affirmation rights of minors and their defence against violence and abuse. This…

The Great Terror of 1936--1938 and mass deportations of "enemies of the people" between the 1930s and the 1950s are among signature atrocities committed by Stalinist Russia. Claiming the lives of several million Soviet citizens and foreign nationals, these executions and deportations were a silenced topic until the collapse of the Soviet…

This paper examines the changing presentation of teachers in the post-Mao era. The image of teachers was almost sacred in traditional Confucian society until Mao Zedong launched China's Cultural Revolution in 1966, when children were encouraged to use the pretext of class struggle to critique and even to attack their teachers. As such, restoring…

This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…

This article explores posthumanism as a philosophy that emphasizes human relationships with the natural world by examining representations of animality, both in children's literature (e.g. titles such as Where the "Wild Things Are," "Wild," "Virginia Wolf," and "No Fits, Nilson!") and in children's play in…

One prevalent practice of multicultural education is enlisting multiple perspectives for teaching. Oftentimes, these perspectives enter classrooms via digital texts, simulations/scenarios, primary documents, and debates. Children's and young adult literature play a critical role in these comparisons. However, these multiple perspectives are…

This paper uses data from children's literature and classroom narratives to consider hyperactivity, inattention, and other non-normative behaviors in children. It encourages educational thinkers and childhood mental health professionals to take a historical perspective on children's badness rather than consigning it to the realm of pathology.…

A limited number of studies have examined Asian American children's literature over the last half century. While the selection and availability of this literature has increased substantially in the last two decades, many of these texts continue to perpetuate stereotypes (Morgan, 2012), such as the overachieving model minority (Loh-Hagen, 2014) and…

The formative power of children's literature is both great and suspicious. As a resource of socialization, the construction and experience of children's literature can be seen as modes of disciplinary coercion such as Michel Foucault has anatomized. "Harry Potter", as a "craze" phenomenon, has attracted particular…

In light of the concepts of appropriation and essentialism, othering, and binary oppositions, the author will examine the interrelation between various feminist theories and gender representation in multicultural children and young-adult literature. Additionally, the author will address the practical implications of those theories and concepts for…