Purpose: Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children's literature around fatness. This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's…

High-quality children's literature, including picturebooks, are important resources in the classroom for students to engage with complex and sometimes concerning contemporary issues. One strategy to involve students in learning about such issues is through the use of metafictive devices, which are literary stratagems that draw readers into knowing…

Religion remains an aspect of culture often missing from picturebooks, based on the misunderstanding that religion has no place in U.S. public schools. This absence is particularly critical for books reflecting the lives of Muslim children, given the rising Islamophobia in the United States. A critical content analysis to examine representations…

This article investigates one undergraduate's path towards critical literacy around racial inequalities as a result of engaging with, reading, and discussing a challenging children's novel during a book study with peers. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory, the author examines the personal and cultural resources the students brought to the…

The present study investigated how an instructional coach supported elementary classroom teachers in critically analyzing interactive read-aloud texts and facilitating critical conversations with students about inclusive picture books. Extant literature highlights the importance of the representation of all identities in children's literature.…

Literacy journals provide an important resource for teachers' professional development. Although school districts offer in-service education for their faculty and teachers often attend conferences and workshops sponsored by professional teaching organizations, journal reading remains an important source of information for teachers' ongoing…

Despite the importance of traditional children's literature in children's literacy learning, little is still known about how fairytales can be effectively used for pedagogical purposes to facilitate young children's critical participation in early literacy instruction. The main purpose of this article is to explore the intersection of…

The student population in urban elementary classrooms has become increasingly diverse over the past two decades. While teachers have responded to this diversity, in part, by incorporating diverse texts related to race, culture, and language, few teachers have incorporated texts related to people with disabilities. Consequently, children have few…

It is essential to support teacher candidates in becoming culturally responsive and learning about social justice in the classroom as schools across the country become more culturally and linguistically diverse. In this qualitative study, the author looked at children's literature as a way to support teacher candidates' learning about critical…

Since the 1990s, there have been increasing calls to "queer" curricula in order to challenge gender and sexuality norms. In this article, I develop a model of queer literacies that understands queer to encompass anti-normative ways of being and recognizes the agentic potential of queer objects to disorient individuals and spaces. I…

This article examines the pedagogical potential of art-based, early critical literacy as a space in which young bilingual children can explore the issues of human diversity and uniqueness. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this study focused on 12 five-year-old children of Mexican origin at a charter school located in Texas.

Following the announcement, in November 2018, that Scotland would be the first educational system to introduce an LGBTI-inclusive curriculum in all of its state schools, this position paper advocates critical literacy as a theoretically congruent framework within which LGBTI issues can be explored. We suggest educators could do this by…

In Colombia, some educational settings, particularly territories with high levels of educational inequality, uphold conventional teaching strategies where emotional education and critical thinking receive little attention. This study is rooted in our intention to contribute to peace education in early childhood educational environments by…

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…

This research examined preservice teachers' beliefs about critical literacy praxis in a rural teacher education program. Using qualitative methods, preservice teachers participated in interviews, reflective engagements, and picture book analysis. Thematic analysis was used to understand preservice teacher reflections on critical literacy,…