Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Honoring Religious Diversity and Modeling Respect for Faiths Through Children’s Literature

Understanding and respecting young children’s religious background is an important way of respecting diversity. Due to the traditional separation of church and state, many professionals tend to ignore the significant influence of religious belief and training during the early childhood years. Sharing high-quality picture books simultaneously enables adults and peers to expand their understandings of different faiths and to communicate their respect for and interest in young children’s religious education. This editorial concludes with a selective list of picture book titles that focus on different faiths that are suitable for children in the primary grades.     

Dystopian Visions of Global Capitalism: Philip Reeve’s <Emphasis Type=\"Italic\">Mortal Engines</Emphasis> and M.T Anderson’s <Emphasis Type=\"Italic\">Feed</Emphasis>

This article examines Philip Reeve’s novel for children, Mortal Engines, and M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel, Feed, by assessing these dystopias as prototypical texts of what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Through their visions of a fictional future, the two narratives explore the hazards created by contemporary techno-economic progress, predatory global politics and capitalist excesses of consumption. They implicitly pose the question: “In the absence of a happy ending for western civilisation, what kind of children can survive in dystopia?”     

“Everything Comes from Seeing Things”: Narrative and Illustrative Play in <Emphasis Type=\"Italic\">Black and White</Emphasis>

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, Black and White (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee’s choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: “that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn’t necessary to think in a straight line to make sense; and finally that risk can be rewarded” (p. 419). This article focuses on how Macaulay uses play to engage readers—to arouse their curiosity, to make them think, and to incite them to ‘see things’ in Black and White. Excerpts from Grade 5 students’ written responses illustrate some of their responses to and interpretations of various kinds of narrative and illustrative play in Black and White.     

Linking Life and Literature in Early Childhood Settings

Using an example of a toddler’s developing understanding of an apple, this article illustrates how children integrate all elements in their interpersonal and built environments to support their emerging literacy skills. Otto (2007) and others provide evidence from emergent literacy research that documents observations and exploration by infants, toddlers, and young children and suggest that the ways in which children participate in early literature-related activities influence the knowledge they construct. Twenty-two children’s books—including five for apple discoverers—are recommended and reviewed.     

Do You Want to Know What I Learned? Using Informational Trade Books as Models to Teach Text Structure

Informational text is an important resource for classroom teachers that places unique comprehension demands on young students. Research on teaching expository text structure to young children shows that explicit instruction improves student comprehension. This practical article addresses how to use “well-structured” expository trade book titles to teach text structure. A lesson plan template and an extended example of an explicit lesson on order/sequence are provided.     

Fictionalized History in the Philippines: Five Narratives of Collective Amnesia

The paper analyzes five historical fictions for children in the Batang Historyador (Young Historian) series which detail five periods in Philippine history. The books discuss the issues of child labor in precolonial Philippines, child labor and the right to education regardless of gender during the Spanish colonial period, child labor during the American Occupation, children as witnesses of history in the Japanese Occupation and Martial Law periods. The narratives reveal (consciously or unconsciously) how distortedly and inaccurately the past is told from the perspective of a colonized mind. The struggles of historians to review and revision history from a pro-Filipino consciousness were totally unheeded. The works attempt to throw light on issues of class, gender and children’s rights but Filipino issues regarding culture, identity, politics and history were obliterated because the framework was tied to a “universal” notion of history.

Roger Osborne (1940–1985), University of Waikato, New Zealand

This short paper outlines the emergence and achievements of the Science Education Research Unit at the University of Waikato over the period 1979–1985 under the leadership of the late Dr. Roger Osborne. Following his attendance at the ASERA meeting in Wagga Wagga in 1977, Roger Osborne rapidly built up a very productive team, which he led until his death in 1985. His legacy is tentatively evaluated. In conclusion, the cultural context in which this work took place is sketched.

First Graders’ Understanding of Measurement

This study focused on the meaning of measurement to a group of 16 first grade students. A university professor and the teacher of the students partnered together using qualitative analysis of field notes, student interviews, and student work samples gathered from September through May of a school year. Findings indicate students’ knowledge of measurement including transitivity, unit iteration, conservation of number and length, and social knowledge of measurement terms and tools increased over the year. Researchers identified six themes of students’ measurement understanding including that children’s literature played a motivating role in student-initiated measurement activities. Recommendations call for first grade measurement activities focused on what it means to measure rather than on how to measure. Researchers caution that educators using mathematics curriculum and assessment should not assume that primary grade students understand conservation and unit iteration.     

“Are There Other Kids Like Me?” Children With a Parent in Prison

The number of children who experience parental incarceration continues to rise with the United States. In 1999, an estimated 1.5 million minor children had a parent in a United States prison. One-fifth of these children are under 5 years of age (Mumola, Incarcerated parents and their children, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, 2000). A brief overview of some of the issues associated with parental incarceration is presented. The inclusion of books about having a parent in prison in the classroom is discussed as one method of supporting children and families.     

Asian North-American Children’s Literature About the Internment: Visualizing and Verbalizing the Traumatic Thing

Examining six texts about the traumatic experience of the internment either in Canada or the United States during World War II, we focus not only on their stylistic shift from visualization to verbalization as targeted ages of readers increase, but also on the effects, both historical and personal, social and domestic, on children of their perception of the traumatic Thing. We propose an answer to essential questions: How can we deal with the dark page in human history and overcome its haunting memories? How can we most effectively share the tales of terror with younger generations? These questions will be approached in the light of a Lacanian reading of the six texts. Instead of using these texts as a surrogate for a Lacanian psychoanalysis or demonstrating how therapeutic reading these stories can be, we explicate the concept of trauma and the meaning of the successful “healing” according to Lacan’s assumption regarding the end and the aim of psychoanalytic treatment.     

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.     

Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man : A Tossed Salad of Parodic Re-versions

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (1992) by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith was awarded a Randolph Caldecott Honor Medal in 1993. Scieszka and Smith subvert textual authority through playing “with literary and cultural codes and conventions” (McCallum 1996, p. 400) in their metafictive text. In this article, I discuss the intertextual and parodic nature of The Stinky Cheese Man and explore Grade 5 students’ responses to this postmodern picturebook. Excerpts from students’ written responses and small group peer-led discussions illustrate some of their responses to and interpretations of the re-versions of the tales, the interactive nature of the characters and the obtrusive narrator, and the design of the book. Sylvia Pantaleo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in children’s literature and all areas of the language arts.     

Gardening as a learning environment: A study of children’s perceptions and understanding of school gardens as part of an international project

This article considers the impact of the early stages of an international project, Gardens for Life (GfL), on children’s perceptions of school gardening and on their learning. The project involved 67 schools in England, Kenya and India and focused on the growing of crops, recognising the importance of both the process and product of this activity in the different countries. The theoretical framework was derived from consideration of informal learning, and more specifically experiential learning, drawing on prior research undertaken in the context of school gardening. The research approach is characterised by the use of concept maps to uncover the characteristically different ways in which children discerned school gardening and to help to provide insight into their understanding of this activity. It was supported by contextual observation, interviews and children’s drawings to aid the interpretation and understanding. The study showed a positive impact on learning and on the perceptions of children towards school gardening in all three countries. It also highlighted the different perceptions, interpretations and understanding of school gardening in the different cultures and environments, as well as the various aspects of it which the children themselves highlighted.     

Responding to the Special Needs of Refugee Children: Practical Ideas for Teachers

Increasing numbers of refugee children are entering our public schools. In addition to carrying with them memories of untold trauma, they bring with them many special needs. This article explores these needs and ideas for assisting teachers in making our classrooms more responsive to our refugee children.     

Selecting Books for Children Birth Through Four: A Developmental Approach

The selection of books to read to young children matters enormously in the role books play for enriching children’s lives. This paper reviews the scientific evidence for the appropriate selection of books, and argues that care in selecting books targeted to children’s developing skills will enhance the power and the pleasures of reading to young children.