Student enjoyment is important when creating any unit, but teachers should also consider if an activity will enhance learning. In addition to being enjoyable, drama-based activities enrich learning by disrupting passivity, encouraging participation, and enhancing comprehension. This article showcases ways to include these activities in a unit…

The novel, it has generally been assumed, was from its very beginnings a literary form designed to be read by solitary, silent individuals. One consequence of this assumption is that the class novel, read amid all the noise and sociality of the classroom, tends to be treated as a preparation for more authentic, private reading, or even as a poor…

In the last twenty years, the teaching of reading in Britain has moved away from an interest in how children take delight in, and make meaning of, their literature to a preoccupation with a mechanistic approach to literacy which breaks down texts into bite-sized chunks and fragments reading into a series of isolated skills. Although an expensive,…

This textbook is a reader intended to develop children's taste for classic, diverse works. In addition to providing a definite and flexible method for teaching beginners to read, effort has been made to include only material that may justly be called classic and that have held up under repeated school use. Care has also been taken to present a…

This textbook is a reader intended to develop children's taste for classic, diverse works. In addition to providing a definite and flexible method for teaching beginners to read, effort has been made to include only material that may justly be called classic and that have held up under repeated school use. Care has also been taken to present a…

While the past issues of the "Journal of Children's Literature" have shared many professional resources that support thinking about international children's literature, the field is continually refreshed by new titles such as the ones described in this article. Each title offers a unique consideration of how literature might be used or…

University students in India generally dislike reading English classics, but some students well prepared in advance enjoyed Dickens'"Tale of Two Cities." They first read an illustrated comic book version, then read a dramatized version while listening to a recording, and then read an abridged version before reading the original. (CFM)

Notes that with so many multivoice novels accessible to teens, there is a great opportunity to expand students' reading repertoire. Proposes that young adult novels are an excellent transition to classic literature that may seem remote or difficult. Offers advice on teaching multivoice novels. Concludes that multivoice novels show young readers…

Reports findings of a survey in which approximately 800 fifth and sixth grade students chose their favorite children's "classics." (FL)

Describes in detail a successful unit of study done on the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" that both satisfies particular curricular demands and suits the temperament and interests of young adolescents. (KEH)