In "Reading "Salt and Pepper"" Anderson examines a story written by three third grade girls and their insights about that story as they re-read it during its production and retrospectively, eight years later. Using a frame for understanding children's writing as social practice, the children's interviews, showing their multiple and sometimes…

The relative absence of nonfiction in literature for young readers may have serious implications because nonfiction literacy matters. Nonfiction material is the crucible within which readers can gain the knowledge and skills that enable them to reach sound decisions in all arenas of life, avoid gullibility born of ignorance, and participate in an…

Describes the qualities which make a good book good to both critic and child and defends the criticism of children's literature. (DD)

Compares two film adaptations of Robert McCloskey's "Homer Price," concluding that the Weston Woods' version, "The Doughnuts," is valuable for use in the language arts program. (DD)

Defines and describes the fantasizing motif in children's literature and explains how teachers can use this motif to help children learn to live in society. (JL)

Urges teachers to let students read without quizzing them about every sentence or every book they read. (DD)

Describes how a teacher researcher invited her students to be detectives on the lookout for language and to take a critical perspective on how it varies with each speaker, purpose, and context. Suggests that educators need to be careful about how they present language varieties so that their students appreciate them as more than "quaint artifacts…

Discusses gender issues that arose in a college-level children's literature course. Discusses the use of myth criticism to look at children's stories. Suggests that the growing consensus is that educators owe it to children to teach them to argue with what they hear and see, as well as read. (RS)

Presents an interview with literary critic Northrop Frye in which Frye comments on the purposes and importance of literature in education; goals, growth, and development in literary study; the literature curriculum in elementary schools; and strategies for teaching literature. (GT)

Presents the responses of three fifth-grade students to two current children's novels to show how popular literature and personal response can provide teachers with insights about the literary understanding of their students. (HTH)

Tells benefits of approaching the study of literature through a study of folk tale variants; suggests a plan for helping children analyze and compare folk tale variants. Includes a model of a discussion based on three versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk," and lists and annotates variant editions of nine familiar folk tales. (ET)