This study identified the number of natural environment picturebooks read by young children in Chinese and Korean picturebook libraries and analyzed their content from an ecocritical perspective. The findings indicate that, first, although the number of natural environment picturebooks read by children is higher in Korea than in China, in both…

This study explores the potential of illustrated barcodes of picturebooks in the educational context. The study reviews the modification by artists of conventional and mandatory barcodes into creative barcode placements in picturebooks. By raising awareness of the aesthetic subtleties of barcodes, the paper articulates how these attractive and…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion has long been the focus of educational scholarship. This study explores the potential of wordless books with protagonists of color for children to access portraits of diverse characters and engage with various stories. To expand the existing body of literature on diversity in picturebooks, this study offers two…

Based on critical content analyses of picturebooks about children who have sought refuge, we outline a scaffolded method for social studies teachers and teacher educators to historicize forced displacement in children's literature. The method integrates critical literacy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and inquiry-based social studies…

Art museum educators have drawn on contemporary learning theories emphasizing viewers' meaning-making as individual, constructed, contextual, and subject to interpretation. This learner-centered turn toward meaning-making and away from the object and the discipline of art applies especially to young children's learning, which needs to be…

This study expands and complicates ideas about what makes text complex in picturebooks. The study involved multimodal analysis of one visually and scientifically complex picturebook, "Gravity," by Jason Chin. The authors also analyzed a transcript of three third graders discussing the text. This analysis illuminated how student talk…

We analyse a corpus of 99 recent Spanish-language picturebooks, based on converging recommendations of prestigious reading promotion institutions in different countries. Focusing on the books that feature non-human characters, we inquire into how animals and other creatures may open possibilities to present diverse and intercultural worlds…

This article reports on a content analysis of human demographics represented across the picture book collection in one university's teacher education laboratory. Drawing from an established history of the representation of marginalized groups in children's literature and prior scholarship on content analyses of similar collections, this study aims…

This article draws on research with elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) in a children's literature course focused on understanding and appreciating picturebooks as esthetic objects through multimodal analysis and multimodal response. PSTs received explicit instruction on picturebook and visual design elements then designed digital/multimodal…

In classrooms, reading and responding to literature has been identified as a powerful method for dealing with critical social issues, including bullying and racism. The purpose of this article is to analyze children's literature published from 1997 to 2017 that highlights the intersection of bullying and racism. Our article begins with a…

There is a history of innovative educators who have taught mathematics through literacy-based activities that enable children to connect new mathematical knowledge using children's real-life experiences. The picture book, "Math Curse", was utilized as the stimulus for 72 preservice teachers to analyze the structure and content of the…

In this paper, I analyze representations of refugee flight in children's literature to extrapolate related assumptions about power and agency. The findings suggest that picturebooks tend to adhere to refugee flight as a bureaucratic process and refugee as an institutionally imposed standardized identity. Specifically, stories canonically mirror…

Participation in a classroom-based study provided Grade 4 students with multiple opportunities to develop their visual meaning-making skills and competences, as well as their aesthetic understanding of and critical thinking about multimodal ensembles. Intentionally-designed instruction during the multifaceted research included a variety of…

Guided by Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, this article examined whether characters in emotion picture-books express and talk about emotions in ways that are consistent with theory and research on children's emotions. In general, we found that picture-books recommended by experts in social-emotional development contain content that is…

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…