Discusses 61 books which all create a sense of time and place and can help young readers to experience the history of the world. Offers a 23-item bibliography on biographies, a 14-item bibliography on miscellaneous books for social studies, and a 53-item bibliography on sports books. (MG)

Gives responses of 11 practicing teachers to the question, "What novel published since 1987 do you recommend for high school readers?" Provides citations, summaries, and overviews of the works. (HB)

Investigates the effect of poem selection on therapeutic process and outcome. Examines the use of three different poems by three different therapists in a variety of contexts. Concludes that the "success" or "failure" of poems is based, in part, on what the therapist and poem ask of a client. (SR)

Presents brief annotations of five trade books published in 1998. Includes a picture book about an immigrant child starting school; a biography for beginning chapter-book readers; a board book for preschool children; a novel for adolescents; and a book of information and space photography about the planet Venus. (SR)

Offers brief annotations of 34 children's books published in 1998. Organizes them around themes of stories, a child's view, crossing borders, ways of words, memories, and challenges. (SR)

Explores how eighth-grade students choose books for recreational reading. Identifies and analyzes strategies used during a book selection process and information valued during the experiences. Describes how accurately and thoughtfully many students can predict whether they would like to read a particular book or not. Demonstrates the complexities…

Traces children's author Peggy Rathmann's search for what she wanted to do with her life. Provides the stories behind her award-winning picture books for children. (SR)

Suggests students can learn a great deal from experiences with literature that has powerful imagery. Discusses imagery in a wide variety of adolescent literature. Suggests choosing works of adolescent literature to use with students by asking: (1) if they offer wisdom; (2) if they are artfully written; (3) if they are successful aesthetically; and…

Offers brief descriptions of 38 illustrated children's books that embody the notion of summer days spent traveling, discovering, inquiring, adventuring, or having fun. (SR)

Discusses the factors involved in determining text difficulty. Discusses some of the reasons children choose to read certain materials, such as personal connections, culture and language, interest, and expertise. Illustrates these factors through descriptions of work with individual students, classroom observations, and research on students'…

Describes the controversy and eventual success of the use of "Heaven's Coast" by Mark Doty (an account of the author's mourning of the loss of his partner Wally to AIDS) as a common text for students at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. (EV)

Suggests guidelines for selecting African American children's literature of high literary and artistic qualities for grades K-3. Presents guidelines for all teachers, whether they have African American children in their classrooms or not. Provides a list of 27 selected recent books with an African American context that meet the same criteria for…

Investigates the nature and range of materials available through school book clubs in the United States. Finds that the clubs offered a wide range of books that extend beyond contemporary realistic fiction. (SR)

Teachers can teach about justice and caring across the curriculum without being didactic or moralistic. Multicultural literature can help students develop empathy and appreciation for others, think critically about society, and become motivated to change the status quo. This article outlines book selection criteria; provides a thematic, annotated…

Describes how published basal reading programs can be adapted to provide guided reading instruction in K-2 classrooms where large numbers of books are not available but basal stories are accessible. Describes and presents results from a project to assign levels of difficulty to stories in five nationally published basal reading programs. (SR)