In this article, I present a qualitative analysis of third graders' experiences with a unit from their district-mandated commercial reading curriculum in which the children made strong connections between a fictional account of a Depression-era farm family's economic hardships and their own 21st century lives in a city with one of the highest…

Purposefully selected collections of literature can extend, contrast or illuminate an experience or perspective to effectively exploit the potential of children's literature to shape curriculum and engage student learning. This paper offers a practical framework for creating purposeful collections of literature. As an illustration of this process,…

In this article, the author provides one solution for librarians on how to choose what books to share with primary students when there are more than 15,000 children's books published each year and only 185 days of school. At Mt. Lebanon School, they devote the month of March to sharing some of the best books ever printed for children: Caldecott…

This article addresses how Christians can read wisely and well as citizens of both God's kingdom and an increasingly secular society. I suggest that focussing on reading as a transaction between reader and text rather than on the morality of texts or the maturity of readers can provide a biblical approach for Christian educators seeking to invest…

In the spring of 2005, the author created a short, online questionnaire to capture data about middle schoolers and book covers, and after several pilot studies she posted it to SurveyMonkey.com. The study includes the fiction books for middle school from the 2005 Quick Picks list. Over the course of a week, participants reported to the school…

This study was done to see if readability levels printed on recreational reading books were as accurate as when the Fry formula and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level were applied to them. Three descriptive passages from each of 60 recreational reading books were analyzed using the Fry formula and the Flesch-Kincaid formula. The data was compared to…

Contends that school librarians, children's librarians in the public library, and the classroom teacher must cooperate if all children are to receive the best education that is possible and suggests ways of achieving this cooperation. (TO)

THE INITIATION OF A GRADUATE PROGRAM IN LINGUISTICS AT OHIO UNIVERSITY (ATHENS, OHIO), WHERE NO UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM EXISTED, NECESSITATED THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF A VALID RECOMMENDED READING LIST OF STANDARD WORKS FOR STUDENTS IN THE NEW PROGRAM. COMBINED TO PRODUCE A COMPOSITE GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR LINGUISTICS WERE THE ITEMS THAT APPEARED ON…

THE CHILD'S ABILITY TO PERCEIVE THE DIFFICULTY OF READING MATERIALS WAS ASSESSED. A STRATIFIED RANDOM SAMPLE OF 60 FIFTH GRADERS IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH A MEAN IQ OF 115 SERVED AS SUBJECTS. MATERIALS WERE 32 SHORT, GRADED READING SELECTIONS IN 8 INTEREST CATEGORIES AND A COMPREHENSION TEST. SELECTIONS WERE AT VARIOUS LEVELS OF READABILITY.…

This memorandum is a complete list of reading materials adopted for use in California schools during the fall of 1969. The materials are divided by grade level and listed in the following five categories: fast, average, slow, culturally disadvantaged, and English as a second language; each category is subdivided into basic and supplementary…

Because young children disregard writing on the spine of a book, researchers chose to run a test on color preferences in books. In a library situation young children see most books from a spine-out angle; thus when allowed to select a book by themselves, the first characteristics noticed are size and color. This study is based on the hypothesis…