In this article, we argue that the goal of reading literary text is the creation of interpretation, and we advocate for a research-based disciplinary literacy heuristic that centers on reading and interpreting literary text. The heuristic serves as a guide for designing instruction that incorporates important instructional principles for…

Research in children's literature has undergone significant shifts over the past forty years that affect the field's current positioning, especially for those who engage in this research. The invitation to present a keynote at the Children's Literature Assembly's online conference of research in children's literature provided the author an…

This paper outlines the emergent findings and theoretical foundations of "Reading Climate: Indigenous literatures, English and Sustainable Futures," cross disciplinary research in Indigenous Studies, Education, and Literary Studies. Our team investigates epistemologies for the teaching of secondary subject English and tertiary courses…

This study explores how graphic novel adaptations of Jewish texts, read by Modern Orthodox young women, allow students to engage with "tzniut" (modest dress) and the balance between tradition and contemporary American life. Fifteen adolescents participated in the study, discussing "tzniut" during and after reading three…

Picturebooks play a vital role in the lives and learning of young children. These complex, multimodal texts offer unique opportunities for meaning-making as readers engage with the interplay between text and illustrations. Picturebooks offer children stepping stones into the literary arts, providing information and storylines that illuminate…

This article describes research on the Harbor Us Book Club. Critical analysis of the reading responses from preteen Black youth remains surprisingly rare in literacy studies. Our inquiry asks: How do readers develop literary and lived understandings of selfhood in response to the books? In what follows, we describe the theoretical frameworks and…

Readers assume that commonplace properties of the real world also hold in realistic fiction. They believe, for example, that the usual physical laws continue to apply. But controversy exists in theories of fiction about whether real "individuals" exist in the story's world. Does Queen Victoria exist in the world of "Jane Eyre,"…

Reading engagement is an essential component of children's reading achievement. This three-chapter dissertation considers a new approach to conceptualizing reading engagement through the lens of children's immersion, or absorption, in a text. Chapter 1 examines the theoretical underpinnings of story world absorption, sometimes known as…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates' response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character's body. This paper explores how readers' meaning making was…

This article presents findings from a qualitative content analysis of 531 Little Golden Books that contain early childhood marginalia--any physical alteration of a book, resulting from an exercise of reader agency by a child from birth through eight years old. The primary goals of the present study were to expand the reach of this methodology by…

This qualitative study examined the written responses of 58 undergraduate, preservice teachers in three online children's literature courses to the graphic novel, When stars are scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. Findings from a summative content analysis of participants' written responses showed five response themes: Connections…

The protection and regulation of religious expression present complex challenges. Blasphemy laws, which criminalize acts deemed disrespectful to religious beliefs, have been abolished in England, allowing for broader freedom of expression. However, concerns and discussions about blasphemy persist. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (2023), has…

The aim of this research is to examine the impact of reading storybooks and the presence of different characters such as humans, animals, and fantasy characters in storybooks on children's costly sharing behaviour. A total of 235 children participated in the study. The children were presented with 20 stickers and were asked to choose their 10…

Poetry spaces provide a place where young people can express themselves and develop skills like critical thinking, empathy, and creativity. They empower young people, particularly those at the margins of society. I organized an extracurricular poetry club, Yo Misma, with Latina adolescents in which we read the work of ten Latin American women…

In this paper, we draw upon Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading to frame six readings of a picture book. The picture book, "There's a Ghost in This House" by Oliver Jeffers, was selected for a children's literature reading group which brought together literacy researchers and teacher educators to share their encounters with the…