Young Children’s Color Preferences in the Interior Environment

This study focuses on children’s color preferences in the interior environment. Previous studies highlight young children’s preferences for the colors red and blue. The methods of this study used a rank ordering technique and a semi-structured interview process with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Findings reveal that children prefer the color red in the interior environment. The color purple was preferred by girls. Cool colors were favored over warm colors. Recommendations are made for application of color in the child development environment.     

Tracking the environment in Australian children’s literature: the Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Awards 1955-2014

Popular and accessible before television and the internet, picture books capture the context of the time they were created and influence the generations of children who consume them. Depictions of the natural world have changed across several generations of picture books as seen in illustrations of all 249 books of an influential collection, the Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Awards shortlists from 1955 to 2014. This study found that natural environments became proportionally less present in picture books over time while depictions of built environments increased. The presence of wild animals and native Australian animals also decreased over time. Sustainability themes and more realistic depictions of wild animals and biodiversity increased over time which reflects a growing ecological or environmental awareness, and diversification of environmental themes in recent picture books of this prominent Collection.     

Reading and Reinterpreting Picture Books on Children’s Television: Implications for Young Children’s Narrative Literacy

Bookaboo is a television programme aiming to promote literacy and reading among young children. In each episode, a celebrity reads a book to Bookaboo, a dog who plays the drums in a rock band, in order to help him overcome stage fright. Using the episode featuring the picture book (Cowell and Layton in That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown, 2006) as a case study, this article explores how this type of adaptation of picture books transforms the original narrative, with implications for children’s developing narrative literacy. Taking a multimodal social semiotic perspective, this study investigates the changes in meaning which result from the employment of semiotic resources such as animation, sound, and camera movement in the representation of the book on the television show. We argue that the deployment of such resources can subtly reshape the meanings expressed through the modes of language and images in the original picture book, potentially affecting the child viewer’s engagement with the narrative. Examining the use of these resources in the picture book’s televisual representation is thus an important first step towards developing frameworks for evaluating the ability of television programmes that incorporate picture book reading to support children’s literacy.     

Bobby’s Story

~~Bobby’s Story@苏畅~~     

Bobby’s Story

~~Bobby’s Story@苏畅~~     

Bobby’s Story

~~Bobby’s Story@肖攀博 @苏畅     

Teachers’ and Children’s Perceptions of Creativity In High- and Low-Anxious Children

Abstract

Expectations of citizens for the role of the school board with respect to four educational concerns were examined with educational attainment and family income of citizens as independent variables. The population for the study was 1,794 citizens in twelve Wisconsin school districts. Citizens were placed in one of five education and one of five family income groups and mean expectation scores were treated statistically with analysis of variance and the Sheff6 post hoc means test. Expectation scares were obtained from responses to four sets of interview questions scaled from conservative to liberal. Generally, the higher the educational attainment and family income of citizens, the more liberal were their expectations for the role of the school board.     

Enhancing Children’s Comprehension of a Televised Story Through Previewing

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the effects of previewing on children's comprehension of a televised story. Using a variation of Ausubel’s advance organizers, a 1½-min edited video was constructed to provide children with a brief overview of the basic plot structure before seeing the televised story Soup and Me. Study 1 examined the effects of previewing with 48 second graders using a multiple-choke test of 20 items, which assessed their recall of central, incidental, and inferential story information. Our results indicated that viewing a preview before a televised story significantly increased students' comprehension of plot-essential information, but did not influence their learning of incidental information or their ability to draw inferences from the story. Study 2 examined previewing’s effects on free recall with 39 first graders. Those students in the preview group recalled the episodic structure of the story significantly better than the control group did. Previews appeared to act primarily as a cuing device, drawing children's attention to certain central aspects of the story. These results indicate that previewing may be an effective mediational technique for enhancing children's comprehension and retention of plot-essential information from a televised story.     

Correction to: Examining Agency in Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books

Children's Literature in Education - In the original publication of the article unfortunately contained a mistake in the name of co-author Vera Sotirvoska.The correct name should be Vera...     

Reading Poison: Science and Story in Nazi Children’s Propaganda

Children’s books of Nazi propaganda prove that a society can venerate science to the point of making biology the organizing principle of its educational system yet nevertheless produce children’s literature shot through with fabrication and falsehood. Three children’s books of Nazi propaganda that are frequently mentioned in accounts of anti-Semitism but seldom analyzed are discussed: Elvira Bauer’s Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid (1936), Ernst Hiemer’s Der Giftpilz (1938), and Hiemer’s Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (1940) illustrate the ways in which racist science and ideological narrative tautologically reinforce each other in an extreme version of how “narratives play a key role in communicating science” (Pauwels, 2019, p. 434) in children’s nonfiction. These texts of lurid racism, all issued by the book publishing arm of Julius Streicher’s virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, offer a monitory case study of how bad science and toxic narrative can coalesce into a literary poison intended to indoctrinate young readers. This analysis of Nazi nonfiction for children demonstrates how science and story can be exploited to promote a racist agenda.

     

The United Kingdom Children’s Laureate: The Story So Far

Britain’s Children’s Laureate Scheme has now been running for 14 years. This article asks Quentin Blake, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Anthony Browne, Michael Rosen and Julia Donaldson for their views on their own experience of taking up this post. It concludes with a discussion of the recurring issues raised by these Laureates along with a look at possible future developments.     

Robyn’s Birthing Story

This “Celebrate Birth!” column describes the experience of a long-time childbirth educator who attended the birth of her granddaughter Cora, her daughter Robyn’s second hospital birth. She discusses how Robyn’s instincts and confidence helped to overcome institutional issues to provide a good and safe birthing experience.     

Let’s Draw a Picture

In an undergraduate analysis course taught by one of the authors, three prompts are regularly given: (i) What do we know? (ii) What do we need to show? (iii) Let’s draw a picture. We focus on the third prompt and its role in helping students develop their confidence in learning how to construct proofs. Specific examples of visual models and their impact on student work are presented.     

Do Worlds Have Corners? When Children’s Picture Books Invite Philosophical Questions

In this article, we want to present and analyse the picture book The World has no Corners (2006/1999) by the Norwegian author and illustrator Svein Nyhus. The book represents a new trend in Norwegian picture books for children by inviting the readers into a world of thinking and wondering about existential topics such as life and death, growing up and getting old, God, children’s relationship to nature, etc. The picture book does not give clear answers to the questions that are raised, but has a potential for exploratory dialogues between child and adult readers. In our analyses of verbal text and images—and the relation between these—we build on social semiotic theory by Halliday, Kress and van Leeuwen, reception theory by Eco and Iser, and aesthetic theory represented by Dewey and Rorty. Through analyses of some selected spreads, we want to show both the framework keeping the readers inside the text, and the indeterminacies inviting the readers to wonder and speculate about the questions raised. We also want to draw attention towards a special way of co-reading of the spreads. Compared with the process of reading picture books where the adults often confirm or correct the child readers’ way of putting their interpretation into spoken language, the co-reading between children and adults in this picture book seems to be rather existential and poetic as well as democratic. We will shed light upon this reading process, as we consider it as a way of the readers fortifying themselves into the world.     

Elizabeth Belle’s Birth Story

In this article, Jessica and Samuel Boro share the story of the birth of their daughter, Elizabeth Belle. With the physical and emotional support of her husband and her doula, this mother was able to cope with a long labor and have the natural birth she wanted. Her husband describes how important the doula was for him.     

Culture or Disability? Examining Deaf Characters in Children’s Book Illustrations

Picture books can influence how children perceive those from backgrounds and cultures different from their own. Studies have been conducted examining how the text of children’s literature portrays multicultural characters or characters with disabilities. However, few have looked specifically at the portrayal of characters through illustrations, despite growing understanding of the importance that illustrations play in text comprehension. Fewer still have analyzed children’s literature for depictions of deaf characters and characteristics of Deaf culture. One recent study examined children’s picture books for portrayals of deaf individuals in the text; however, examining illustrations may provide additional information for both hearing and d/Deaf (For the purpose of this paper, capital “D” Deaf refers to people who are recognized part of the Deaf community; “d” deaf refers to the inability to hear or people unable to hear; d/D includes both populations.) readers about deafness and the Deaf population. In addition, while illustrations are important for all young readers, they may be particularly important for d/Deaf readers who are by nature visual learners. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of illustrations in 20 picture books targeted to ages 4 to 8?years for messages linked to pathological and cultural models of deafness. In addition, results were compared to previous analyses of the text in the picture books. Results indicated that the illustrations do not represent deaf characters from a cultural perspective. Instead, similar to the text, illustrations present deaf characters more frequently as having a pathological condition or disability, that should be fixed through medical interventions in order to fit into a hearing world.     

Pictures in Pictures: Art History and Art Museums in Children’s Picture Books

Children’s picture books that recreate, parody, or fictionalize famous artworks and introduce the art museum experience, a genre to which I will refer as “children’s art books,” have become increasingly popular over the past decade. This essay explores the pedagogical implications of this trend through the family program “Picture Books and Picture Looks” conducted at the Art Institute of Chicago. Program sessions were observed to learn the extent to which picture books featuring the painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 (Seurat) informed and impacted children’s experiences with the original artwork. The books Katie’s Sunday Afternoon (Mayhew, 2005), Babar’s Museum of Art (De Brunhoff, 2003), and Willy’s Pictures (Browne, 2000) provided the foundation for the program. In addition to these three books, The Dot (Reynolds, 2003), which does not include a reference to La Grande Jatte (Seurat, 1884–1886), acted as a “control” variable. This research demonstrates that while most picture books can be used to establish a level of comfort in an environment that is new to children, those that directly referenced the painting provided a base level of knowledge from which children could confidently draw upon encountering the original work. The research further indicated that, when used in conjunction with original artworks, children’s art books provide unique and distinct entry points for talking about art. The inclusion of artwork in children’s picture books elicits an enthusiasm and recognition that enhances the museum experience, and such books can be effective tools for enabling reflective, imaginative experiences with art.     

Happy Children’s Day

看下面这两幅图,你能从中找出五处不同吗?Look at these two pictures.Can you find fivedifferences between these two pictures?The girl’s_____are different.The_____is different.The_____are different.The colors of_____are different.The_____is different.本期IQ T     

Children’s Extracurricular Activities

Why do children learn in different ways: some are good students who show interest and zeal, while others are lazy and have to be taught against their will? Why do schools have over- and underachievers? Of course, there are a multitude of reasons. But almost 50 years ago it was shown using large data sets that families with high socioeconomic status are more likely to have children who are good students. Of course, there are many examples of successful students from poor families. However, they tend to be the exception to the rule. The certainty of success in school increases with rising socioeconomic status.