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…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

Illustrates how poems engage readers in heightened experiences of the world and of language itself. Shows some of the strategies that adults and elementary students employed when reading and responding to poems: summarizing the poem, entering in and opening out, entering the world of the poem, opening to the outside world, finding rich…

Examines the author's daughter's spontaneous responses to information books, especially those responses that occurred outside book-sharing sessions. Investigates response episodes as: casual conversations, a reevaluation of facts, reflections of complex thinking, transactions between life and literature, and portraits of personal inquiry. (SR)

Follows the development, from fifth grade through eighth grade, of a student poet, who can teach educators what it means to "feel expressed." Offers new ways to think about who children are, what they need to say, and what they need to be taught. Discusses the possibilities of poetry for gaining access to children's deepest capacities for…

Looks critically at the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of the practice of story mapping. Discovers a deep contradiction between the author's definition of reading as a constructive process and the reductionist nature of story mapping, which inhibits students' potential to explore a diverse range of personal responses by promoting…