Children's literature scholars, specifically picturebook theorist and researchers, need to better understand the complicated nature of the separation and coming together of textual matter (words) and visual matter (images) and the range of relations between these entities. Various scholars have conceptualized the relations between word and image…

In 2016, "Last Stop on Market Street," an American picturebook by Matt de la Pena, won the Newberry Medal, a Caldecott Honor, and a Coretta Scott King illustrator honor. In March 2021, Dr Seuss Enterprises, after working "with a panel of experts, including educators," decided to cease publishing "And to Think I Saw in on…

This paper examines literacy as a sociocultural, personal and human practice dependent on and derived through relationships between people, settings and culture. Drawing on a recent empirical research study that combines learner, teacher and author perspectives [Curtin (2023) "Reading and Writing Pathways Through Children's and Young Adult…

In this study, we examine preschool storybook apps to identify the types of characters represented in these stories and how they relate to design quality and opportunities for children to build their vocabularies -- a significant predictor of later success in learning to read. Specifically, we sought to understand (a) how storybook apps portray…

Oliver Jeffers' best-selling picturebook "How to Catch a Star" (2004) has been the subject of several recent theatre adaptations for children. This paper provides a detailed case study of the 2017 stage adaptation created by the Irish-language theatre-company, Branar Téatar do Pháistí; an adaptation that has been highly praised for the…

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

This article adds picturebooks to the rich landscape of middle grades readings. It begins with a vignette that inspired this article, followed by an introduction to the changing definitions picturebooks. Next, it provides a brief overview of the different relationships between text and illustrations. Then, it discusses the value of picturebooks…

COVID-19 e-books have emerged as means for communicating information about coronavirus and the resulting disease to children during the pandemic. This material is multimodal, with images forming the most prevalent and crucial semiotic mode. Except for representational and compositional meaning, an image realises interpersonal meanings. The degree…

This article draws on Philip Barnard's model of the interactions between theory and practice, between basic and applied research, to investigate the paradox of reading as an experience both private and public. It uses internal reader experience as a starting point for exploration, evoking the concept of a readerly sense of presence as a selection…

What can the affective turn mean for literacy educators who believe their work can lay the foundation for a life filled with meaningful reading pursuits, for students who "become" readers and "do" reading? Because reading occurs across and within an elaborate composite of time, space, relationships, histories, discourses, and…

In this study, it was tried to determine whether the works of children's literature containing violence are effective on the violent tendencies of 7th grade students. In the research, one of the mixed method designs, triangulation (diversification) design was used. In the quantitative dimension of the study, the pre-test and post-test control…

Fictional characters give literary works a sense of reality. The actions of fictional characters play a crucial role in children's personality development. Young readers who lack critical reading skills are more likely to incorporate fictional characters into their lives because they have a hard time telling reality from fiction. Therefore, we…

Reading mediation is a concept used in Latin America and Spain, referring to the nurturing role played by adults in forging relationships between children and books. In this article, we conceptualize reading mediation as a 'technology of affect'. We propose 'mediation-as-usual', a normative becoming of this technology, tasked with producing…

In this age of PDFs and free e-texts, literature gets separated from its initial context, perhaps even devoid of context all together. Taking Roald Dahl's most anthologized short story "Lamb to the Slaughter" as its object of study, this article proposes a pedagogy that embraces the return of paratextual material to the literature…

Lack of representation of children from nondominant cultural and linguistic backgrounds continues to be problematic in children's literature, and especially within early literacy texts for beginning readers. One remedy is for children to tell their own stories through the language experience approach, which can then be printed into culturally…