This article, based on a presentation made by the author at the 2003 California Library Association conference, provides examples of how librarians and teachers can use Science Fiction to provide catalysts for discussion in a variety of subjects; teach students how to question intelligently; and stimulate their imaginations, thus motivating them…

At the simplest level, cyberspace is a sea of information that functions as a huge, generally disorganized, database. At a more complex level, cyberspace functions as a communication medium. In the most complex sense, cyberspace may be conceived as a parallel world where people can conduct ordinary activities without engaging in the physical acts…

Exciting stories about African Americans in recently published historical fiction books for children concern Pea Island Life-Station, a private school for African American girls, a biracial slave, a black woman who homesteads for land in 1889, and an orphan who travels on his own to Flint, Michigan, during the Depression. Much of this history…

This action research project was developed in order to increase student literacy, particularly in the area of reading, for students who were considered at-risk. The targeted student population was 2nd grade students who were served within a primary cross-categorical special education program. The classroom was housed in an elementary (K-2) school,…

This document describes a series of activities to teach 30 fifth grade students about history through fiction. Activities began with a prereading brainstorming session in which students came up with topics that they studied during the school year. Next, the school librarian introduced the children to the genre of historical fiction and instructed…

This book is designed to be a how-to-write-fiction guide that is long on specifics and short on theoretical material. Each section of the book deals with a separate element of fiction--characterization, dialogue, point of view, plot, etc. Every exercise in the book is introduced in an opening paragraph, followed by instructions for completing the…

The likelihood that books can shape children's gender role attitudes and transmit gender role stereotypes increases the need for non-sexist children's literature. This paper explores the appearance of gender in Caldecott Award winning children's books. Picture books, trade books, content books and basal readers were inspected in the 1970s for the…

Introducing students to the magic of theater and helping them develop dramatic skills, this book presents nine reproducible scripts for short plays (15 to 25 minutes) with characters and story lines that will appeal to young people. The scripts in the book encompass a variety of story types, from adaptations of well-known fairy tales to original…

This paper compares three supernatural vampire novels geared for adolescents with Freud's discussion of "The Uncanny." Freud's 1919 essay is probably the most important early essay to influence Gothic criticism. To evaluate the adolescent vampire novels, adults must view the books as if they were peer texts, on behalf of a child, and…

This paper compares and contrasts two articles in which Dickens constructs an adult identity through his childhood reading, "A Christmas Tree" (1850) and "Nurse's Stories" (1860), with one in which Dickens constructs the identity of a child in his work for children, "A Child's History of England" (1851-53). Infused…

This collection of lectures and articles was occasioned by the author's 70th birthday and his many decades of teaching in the English departments at the University of Montana and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he is the self-proclaimed "apostle to the gentiles." The book explores the often conflicting paradox of…

This 32-item annotated bibliography details picture books, realistic fiction, poetry, and biographies (most of which were published in 1994) that deal with intergenerational relationships. Each entry in the bibliography indicates the literary genre and recommended age level of the book. The bibliography begins with a brief introductory section…

This collection of essays and short stories is designed to provide a glimpse of life in the factory for the women who worked in the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1840s. The book, which contains two primary sources (i.e., materials written by contemporaries), and three secondary sources, begins with a brief introduction to the…

Selected children's and young adult books with multicultural themes and topics which were published in the United States and Canada between 1980 and 1990 are represented in this annotated bibliography. The term multicultural is used to refer to people of color, including African-Americans, American Indians, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans.…

Students and teachers need to discuss authorial intent to understand some literary works on their own terms--this is particularly true in the case of Carson McCullers. McCullers' works can be understood as having a rich foundation of authorial intent based on the writer's central experience, as a Southern woman, of gender. The central importance…