Uses the author's poems to illustrate the interrelationships among a poem's rhythm, lineation, and syntax. (MM)

Examines characteristics of quality children's literature by analyzing both children and adult responses to Ezra Keats' story, "The Snowy Day." Concludes that good literature calls forth a strong narrative voice from readers exploring their own realities as they read. (MM)

Uses stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from two alternative school students who choreographed a dance to depict their understanding of the relationship between the two central characters in a short story. Suggests that these students' account illustrates the way in which reader, text, and context participate in a complex…

Presents the third part of a six-part series in which the authors respond to a ninth grader's first impressions of "Reel One," a poem by Adrien Stoutenburg. Urges readers to participate by reading the student's impressions and reflecting on the student's interpretations. (MM)

Examines the written responses of Hispanic, African-American and Caucasian elementary students after listening to various African-American stories to see whether engagement with text is related to student's ethnicity. Finds that students were equally capable of engagement in the African-American stories regardless of their ethnicity. (RS)

Investigates readers' perceptions of bias in a Colorado ballot booklet intended to explain a tax cut proposal. Finds that readers were more likely to perceive the ballot booklet to be biased in favor of the proposed tax measure than against it. (SC)

This article considers power in text-based collaborations and proposes that in order for criticality to be directed towards the power structures at play in the discourse of collaborations, the interpretive strategies of participants need to hold in the balance the explicit or overt intentions of those with whom they are collaborating, and the…

The stasis, stock, kinetic, spectator, and dialectic responses to literature all serve to deny the popular misconception that literary analysis invariably deals a death blow to the vitally engaged, spontaneous, and thus authentic response. Stasis is a response in which an intuited imaginative identity between subject and object develops in an…

Examines Louise Rosenblatt's theory of the reading transaction to aid teachers in the dilemma of either encouraging individual responses to literature or expecting literal comprehension of the material. Encourages teachers to look at their teaching purposes for any given text and to match questions and activities to those purposes. (SR)

Describes how reader response journals encourage students to interact with literary works. Presents 20 questions, based on David Bleich's response heuristic, which help guide students' responses. (MM)

Provides a theoretical and practical basis for using reader response theory in the classroom with noncanonical literature. (SRT)

The idea of experience needs to be examined before the experiential aspect of literary reading can be understood, and before literary reading as an ethical practice can properly be defined. Open-mindedness is necessary when fostering student interpretations of a literary text, just as it is necessary for accepting the varying life experiences of…

Considers the stories that children read, hear, and make part of their lives. Focuses on the text with the understanding that texts live only when read by a person in a particular context. (MG)

States that the books remembered most vividly and most fondly are the ones that go beyond the bounds of ordinary existence. Strives to offer adolescents, in books written by the author, a chance to experience something outside their normal routine. (MG)

Debates whether a text claiming to have scientific value is using seduction irresponsibly at the expense of the truth, and discusses who is the subject and who is the object of such seduction. It argues that, rather than being an assault against scientific ethics, seduction is a necessary premise for a sensible conversation to take place. (GR)