Student engagement in the process of transduction concomitantly affords them with opportunities to develop and express their critical and creative thinking competences. Reconfiguring or remaking knowledge or meaning in modes other than those of the original sources of information requires affective, imaginative and cognitive activity by…

This qualitative study examined the written responses of 58 undergraduate, preservice teachers in three online children's literature courses to the graphic novel, When stars are scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. Findings from a summative content analysis of participants' written responses showed five response themes: Connections…

Calvino's apology of multiplicity starts with the exposure, revealed by his take on typically modern novels, of some fundamental contradictions underlaying the modern quest for knowledge, which are definitely not alien to our day education. Then, when Calvino goes on to explore how twentieth century literature transcended those difficulties, he…

Book banning and censorship in the U.S. prompts necessary conversations on how critical literacy, dialogue, and inquiry are used in various school and library settings. We share guiding questions alongside three examples of textual analyses centering on gender fluidity with three young adult novels. We believe that English language arts teachers…

This article offers a reading of Kate Darbishire's novel Speechless Stickhouse Publishing, London, 2018), following Harriet, a girl with cerebral palsy. It examines her irritation, born of her resentful awareness of her disability, as well as how she grapples with her life as an ordinary schoolgirl. The novel presents Harriet as an everyday child,…

Theodore Taylor's "The Cay" received a great deal of criticism upon its publication in 1969 for its racism, yet it has remained in American public school curricula for over fifty years. Defenders of the novel have argued that it advocates for color-blindness, a position that has helped entrench it in schools. Meanwhile, few critics have…

The medium of illustrated novels has been neglected by educational research, and the limited current research on the influence of illustrations on a reader's mental images is largely negative in tone. However, by adopting a participatory multiple case study methodology, this research provides a new understanding of the nature of mental picturing…

This study examines the ways pre-service English language arts teachers (PSTs) conceptualized activism and experimented with visual and multimodal approaches to composing about activism. Drawing on qualitative methods, we examined 22 PSTs' graphic narratives completed as part of their teacher preparation coursework, and center our discussion on…

This article highlights how Wolfgang Herrndorf's bestselling novel "Tschick" (2010) is particularly well suited for advanced courses focused on cultural and linguistic enrichment. Herrndorf's "Tschick," I argue, facilitates interaction, engagement, and individual interpretation; is linguistically accessible because of its use…

This comparative study looks into the image of the wolf in Genghis Aitmatov's "Plakha" and Jack London's "White Fang." For this purpose, first, the concept of the wolf in fiction is discussed, and the representation of wolves in these two texts is analyzed. This study explores the relationship between wolves and human beings as…

Using adaptation theory and my own novel, "Shield Maiden," published in 2023 by Hachette, I examine how history of the English language (HEL) scholarship intersects with creative writing and writing craft. I've identified a large gap in our knowledge and understanding of how HEL can give us perspective and access to ancient texts and…

Critical approaches to literature in secondary English require greater attention to narrative discourse. In this conceptual article, I provide interpretative tools from contemporary narratology and demonstrate their critical potential for high school English. In particular, I outline critical literacy's vital but overattentive focus on the…

The idea of a sign language town, or a Deaf utopia, where Deaf and signing people can come together to live in a geographical or figurative homeland has long persisted in US Deaf life, letters, and literature. In the wake of the Milan Congress of 1880, Alexander Graham Bell's alarming rhetoric concerning "a deaf mute variety of the human…

Linda Zagzebski's theory of moral exemplarity emphasizes the importance of admiration in developing ethical behavior. This essay argues that admiration involves wonder and distance and is best evoked by mixed or flawed characters; it demonstrates this through discussion of the characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and…

In this article, N.K. Jemisin's multiple-Hugo-award-winning trilogy "The Broken Earth" (2015-2017) is read with Sylvia Wynter's genealogy of who counts as human, and Donna Haraway's conception of the "Chthulucene," a spatiotemporal location in which all beings are interconnected with each other. The article argues that…