This article examines adolescent literacy practices related to "The Hunger Games," a young adult novel and the first of a trilogy. By focusing on the interaction of social identities, discourses, and media paratexts within an online affinity space, this ethnographic study offers insight into how young adults engage with contemporary…

Stories are woven so tightly into the fabric of our everyday lives that it's easy to overlook their significance in framing how we think about ourselves and the world. Stories are meaning making, providing a means of structuring and reflecting on our experiences in order to understand their significance. Story is also life making, a way of…

Divakaruni reflects on her path to becoming an author for children, including her formative encounters with stories told by her grandfather in her native India, and experiences as a mother and as an Indian woman in the post-9/11 context of the United States.

In this article, the authors propose a revised way of thinking about reading levels, one that promotes a wider and more flexible view of teacher decision making about the use of leveled texts in classrooms. They share five key principles to consider when looking at the use of instruction that involves matching leveled materials with readers.…

This article considers three emergent themes from informal discussions with fourth and fifth graders about their book selections from the Vermont Children's Choice program. Twelve students were interviewed about how they selected books from the list. Student responses showed that they held the DCF nominee list in high regard, that they relied…

Beginning with the premise that pleasure is a driving force in life, this article examines the relationships between pleasure, schooling and society across the past century. Through the examination of school texts, narratives, and histories of literacy instruction, a case is made that part of the move away from keeping pleasure at the heart of…

This article shares findings from a collaborative, qualitative research project investigating what happens to first and third graders' comprehension of picturebooks if we intentionally teach them the language of art--Elements of Art and Principles of Design. Work with the art teacher and two classroom teachers transformed the traditional picture…

This article shares the voices of preadolescent girls as they participated in an eight-month book selection study which enabled them to be active agents in their book and reading experiences. The girls, school-identified as struggling readers and self-identified as resistant readers, complicate current notions of reading, as influenced by…

O'Connor, an author of realistic fiction for children, shares her attempts to strike a balance between carefree, uncensored, authentic, realistic writing and age-appropriate writing. Of course, complicating that balancing act is the fact that what seems age-appropriate to her might not seem so to everyone. O'Connor suggests that while it may be…

In this article, Boldt considers decisions teachers must make about the value of children's writing as a form of play in primary classrooms. She offers a brief history of the framing of this question at 1966 Dartmouth Conference on English, focusing particularly on the perspective of Jimmy Britton. She highlights the relationship between Britton's…

Early twentieth-century social activist Jane Addams is best known for her work at Hull House, the settlement house she founded with Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Adams was also a pacifist, storyteller, writer and philosopher. Through her actions, stories, and writing, Addams modeled a philosophy of democracy-in-action based in imagination and…

In this article, the author explores how a group of ten fourth-grade students who were avid readers became a community of inquiry. The primary goal of this study was to document the children's reading engagement: how they created, entered, and sustained the world of the story. This article also reflects the impact of three elements--data…

In this paper, the author looks at how she attempted to teach her students--preservice teachers--to engage in dialogic conversation about gay and lesbian identity using children's literature with gay and lesbian characters as a jumping off point. Through her analysis, the author has identified two requirements for dialogic conversation among…

Dutro discusses an analysis of the disconnect between the material realities of the lives of a group of third-grade children living in poverty and the middle-class assumptions of a district-mandated unit within a literacy curriculum. The analysis arose in the context of an ethnographic study of identity and classroom literacy practices; it was…

In U.S. schools, African American students are typically fed steady diets of stereotypical and culturally invasive literature and often do not see themselves positively and consistently represented in books. The crisis is fueled, in part, by teachers who (for various reasons) do not include and draw upon counter-narratives in their classrooms.…