Motor Impairment in Children’s Literature: Asking the Children

How do schoolchildren respond when they encounter a wheelchair user in a fictional text? This article describes a doctoral project where groups of children were presented with excerpts from books by Hilary McKay and Jacqueline Wilson in which wheelchair users play a significant role. The pupils were asked to discuss issues arising from these readings. The views pupils expressed were relevant, imaginative and positive. Only on two rare occasions did the pupils respond in ways that could be categorised as prejudicial towards disabled people. The article describes the methodology adopted for the study, directly quotes from and explores the views of the pupils. The teaching of children about disability and disabled people currently in the English curriculum for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) is alleged to be inadequate; a weakness which could be addressed in the manner described, using literature for sensitive educational debate. This study is unusual in that the research subjects include a group of children who are motor impaired. The Doctor of Education who conducted the research for her thesis and authored this article is also herself a fulltime wheelchair user.     

“But The Soldier’s Remains Were Gone”: Thought Experiments in Children’s Literature

In this article thought experiments are uncovered as key stimuli of philosophical potential in children’s literature and their presentation and function is examined in a selection of focal texts, including: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871); Even the Parrot by Dorothy Sayers (1944); Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War (1974); and A Game of Soldiers (1985) by Jan Needle. The thought experiment is a device common to science and philosophy and has been recognised as an heuristic tool in literature generally, but here children’s literature is drawn into the conversation, revealing that—as a dynamic mechanism of children’s narrative—thought experiments have a long-standing and particular role to play in books for young people. This paper connects with a recent turn in children’s literature discourse toward the conditions of power in books for young readers; it moves on the debate by demonstrating that the apparatus of thought experimentation places the implied child reader in a position of philosophical responsibility and forward thinking. Presenting thought experiments in different ways, formal properties of the thought experiment—such as conversational mode, double engagement and modal positioning—are identified and shown to open up a philosophical space of subsequence in children’s texts.     

Using Children’s Literature in the Middle School Science Class to Teach Nature of Science

Science & Education - In this study, we report the results of the content analysis of preservice middle school science teachers’ own written science storybooks and middle school female...     

Introduction to the Issue: Exploring Affect in Children’s Literature

Children's Literature in Education -     

Representations of Dictatorship in Contemporary Chilean Children’s Literature

This article addresses the disturbing fact that few contemporary Chilean children’s books deal with Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990). It explores why dictatorship has such an elusive presence in contemporary Chilean children’s literature, how it has been represented in general, and how children are portrayed in books that do address Pinochet’s oppressive regime. Four Chilean children’s books are examined in detail: two that represent the dictatorship from an outsider perspective, produced by authors in exile, and two written from an insider perspective by authors that grew up under Pinochet’s dictatorship. While the former represent children as superheroes whose actions transcend the dictatorship’s repression, the latter depict children who are politically aware, but do not make the adults’ political fight their own. This key difference is problematized in terms of the implications for narratives of dictatorship produced for a young audience.     

Beyond Borders: Reading “Other” Places in Children’s Literature

The author analyzes two texts, Gloria Whelan’s Homeless Bird and Deborah Ellis’s Parvana’s Journey, in an attempt to explain some of the problems and difficulties associated with those texts. The author examines Whelan’s representations of India and finds troubling binaries associated with that text. In comparison, the author finds Ellis’s depictions of Afghanistan more nuanced and complex. The author also discusses student reception of both texts and offers ways to problematize some of their reactions.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Challenging the Mythology of Home in Children’s Literature

The myth of home is what distinguishes children??s literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer (The Pleasures of Children??s Literature, 2003) write that while ??the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children??s literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends with the child choosing to stay away?? (pp. 197?C198). In a critical content analysis of recent award-winning middle reader novels from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, a new pattern was observed. This pattern, called a postmodern metaplot, begins with the child being abandoned, rather than the child leaving the home. The child??s journey is to construct a home within a postmodern milieu complete with competing truths and failed adults. Ultimately, the child??s postmodern journey ends with very modern ideal of the child leading the adults to a hopeful ending, a home. The article explores the changing roles of childhood and adulthood in children??s literature and questions if the mythology of home can be undone.     

The Necessity of an Anthropomorphic Approach to Children’s Literature

The study focuses on the necessity of an anthropomorphic approach in deconstructing the symbolic understandings of animals in children’s literature, and considers how such an approach can be used to draw ethical attention to the unnatural history of animals in the Anthropocene. The paper analyses three children’s novels that depict animals without representing their subjectivity in characteristically human terms. These novels are Eva Hornung’s ferality tale Dog Boy (2009), Sonya Hartnett’s fable The Midnight Zoo (2011) and Kate Applegate’s animal autobiography The One and Only Ivan (2012). Informed by Jacques Derrida’s anti-anthropocentric views and the ethical discourse of creaturely vulnerability, this essay argues that the world’s present state of cascading environmental impoverishment demands an anthropomorphic approach that is not inherently anthropocentric, along with an emerging kind of creaturely consciousness.

     

Connecting Teacher Beliefs to the Use of Children’s Literature in the Teaching of Mathematics

This article presents examples that illustrate how teachers use childrens literature in the teaching of mathematics. The examples are related to four curriculum ideologies that have influenced mathematics education in the USA for the last 75 years. It discusses why it is relevant to help teachers understand the ideological positions that influence their use of childrens literature during mathematics instruction, summarizes the four ideological positions, and presents results of a study of how teachers ideological positions relate to their use of childrens literature in the teaching of mathematics. The study examines two research questionsCan an instructional tool be developed that will highlight for teachers the different ways in which they and others use childrens literature to teach mathematics? and Can that instructional tool stimulate teacher discussion and reflection about their own beliefs and the ideological nature of the instructional environment in which they learned (as students) and teach (as teachers)? Study results indicate that both questions can be answered in the affirmative.     

Wayward Warriors: The Viking Motif in Swedish and English Children’s Literature

In this article the Viking motif in children’s literature is explored—from its roots in (adult) nationalist and antiquarian discourse, over pedagogical and historical texts for children, to the eventual diversification (or dissolution) of the motif into different genres and forms. The focus is on Swedish Viking narratives, but points of comparison are established with Viking children’s literature in the English-speaking world. Differences and similarities are pointed out, but more importantly, patterns of reciprocity and influence are examined. Finally, it is shown how international representations of Vikings to a growing extent have replaced the ones that are nationally and regionally determined. The Viking has ultimately become a deracinated and commodified symbol: a free-floating signifier and a wayward warrior.     

Transcending the Nationalist Conception of Modernity: Poetic Children’s Literature in Early Twentieth-Century China

Modern children’s literature in China has largely been dominated by narratives of the nation and nationalism. The present article sets out to question the dominance of that nationalist stance as the country transitioned into the modern era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining poetic children’s literature, the author unravels distinct non-nationalist intellectual sentiments in competition with the mainstream nationalist discourse that point to an imaginative envisioning of modernity. The article starts with a discussion of children’s poems and school songs imbued with a strong patriotic zeal in the late Qing and early Republican periods, and then moves on to the May Fourth period when lyricism and romanticism drew the attention of children’s literature advocates. Romantic-minded translators and writers, such as Bing Xin, embraced love as a humanist cosmopolitan vision while others, such as Zhou Zuoren and Liu Bannong, turned to local literary heritage, giving rise to a form of children’s songs with strong local consciousness. The article concludes by addressing the relevance of the insights derived from the historical case studies for contemporary children’s literature in China and beyond. It highlights the possibilities of envisaging modernity in non-nationalist terms and stresses the importance of cultivating in children alternative sentiments in the age of rising nationalism, both past and present.     

The Problem of ‘Power’: Metacritical Implications of Aetonormativity for Children’s Literature Research

This article takes as its starting point the concept of aetonormativity (the adult normativity germane to the discourse of children’s literature), coined by Maria Nikolajeva (2010) in an attempt to unify the increasingly power-oriented theories of children’s literature criticism within the past few decades. Acknowledging the usefulness of this concept, but wary of the fact that it could imply an easy transference of “adult” power theory to the study of children’s literature, I argue that an aetonormativity-centred system of children’s literature criticism crucially needs to reconceptualise the notion of “power” which lies at its heart. Any automatic connection between adult normativity and adult “power” would thus be questioned and critiqued. I propose a first conceptual split of “power” into “authority” and “might”, and a consequent redistribution of these two concepts to the adult and child parties in the children’s book. I then investigate the critical and metacritical implications, within the framework of an aetonormativity-centred criticism of children’s literature, of an increased subtlety in the use and handling of the concept of power when referring to the complex medium of the children’s text.     

Conveying a Stance of Religious Pluralism in Children’s Literature

Religious discrimination is a global concern, as social dissonance and devastating violence result from religious intolerance. In order to develop socially competent, global citizens and create a peaceful society, religious diversity must be explored in public school classrooms; yet it remains a controversial and seldom addressed topic. Children’s literature that conveys religious pluralism can help teachers start this crucial conversation. A content analysis of 14 religiously pluralistic texts was conducted to understand how children’s authors enact a pluralistic stance. Findings indicate that fiction authors employ five main archetypes to express messages of religious pluralism: the questioner, one truth believer, counterpoint character, atheist, and coach. Both fiction and nonfiction authors confront issues of religiously disguised violence, provide educational information about religious beliefs and practices, emphasize commonalities between religions, maintain an assertive and respectful voice when describing religious beliefs, and highlight the existence of multiple spiritual paths. Implications of these findings for classroom practice are discussed.     

“One Day We Had to Run”: The Development of the Refugee Identity in Children’s Literature and its Function in Education

In the last two decades there have been significant numbers of children’s books written about various aspects of the refugee experience. Previously authors had tended to approach this sensitive area principally through an historical perspective. However as the number of refugees in British schools increases, books dealing with contemporary conflicts are published in greater numbers. How do children view this growing body of literature? A short ethnographic study attempts to interrogate the importance of autobiography and personal testimony in the construction of refugee identities in children’s books, and the article discusses the validating role of these texts and their purpose as educative tools in our classrooms. I conclude by considering potential areas within the current curriculum for using story to highlight the situation of those for whom “One day we had to run!”(Wilkes, One Day We Had to Run! London: Evans Bros Ltd., 1994).     

The Effects of Play Tutoring on Young Children’s Cognitive Performance

Abstract

Seventeen preschoolers were divided into a play tutoring group and a skills tutoring group. Subjects in the first group received nine 20-minute sessions in which an adult attempted to enhance their make-believe play. The other group received an equal number of skills tutoring sessions. Both groups received a comparable amount of adult contact. The subjects were assessed on measures of play quality, verbal intelligence, and creativity , on three occasions: prior to training, immediately after training, and three months later. Results showed that the play tutoring and skills tutoring treatments both resulted in stable gains in verbal intelligence and ideational fluency. Neither treatment resulted in significant increases in play quality. It was concluded that the play tutoring gains were caused by adult contact rather than by enhanced levels of play.     

Using Animals to Teach Children Biology: Exploring the Use of Biological Explanations in Children’s Anthropomorphic Storybooks

Research Findings: Anthropomorphism—the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities—has long been a staple of children’s media. However, children’s experiences with anthropomorphic media may interfere with biological reasoning instead encouraging an anthropocentric view of the natural world. To date, little research has addressed the typical content of children’s storybooks about animals: Do these storybooks present factual information that may support early developing biological reasoning, or do they instead focus on human-centered, psychological information that may encourage anthropocentrism? We analyzed the types of causal explanatory information that commercial storybooks about animals provide to children about 2 biological concepts that have been extensively studied in the experimental literature: biological inheritance and the transmission of illness. Using coding schemes similar to those used in prior experimental literature to assess preschool-age children’s biological reasoning, we found that none of the anthropomorphized books presented children with scientifically accurate causal mechanisms. These books focused almost exclusively on social-emotional experiences as opposed to biological explanations, which may inadvertently encourage anthropocentric reasoning. Practice or Policy: Understanding more about the content of informal sources of early learning can help inform educators on how to best support developing knowledge about the natural world and biological properties.