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10.3 Criteria for Selecting Nonfiction

By this point in their schooling, children will have started to demonstrate distinct preferences and needs when it comes to multiliteracies. Some children will be highly visual, while others will require gestural and tactile experiences to facilitate their learning. Readers who are more pragmatic or hands-on in their approach will appreciate Walter Wick's A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder (1997). In this book, Wick recreates simple experiments with water that he read about in old science books, and photographed the results. The photographs themselves will motivate children to want to try the experiments, some of which are described in the back, but the text will likely require further explanations and research for students to fully understand the concepts. Students interested in further exploration and follow-up can be directed to the many leveled readers that focus on the water cycle. For children who are more attuned to linguistic literacy, however, poetic treatments of the water cycle are found in books like Thomas Locker's Water Dance (2002) and Cloud Dance (2003), and George Ella Lyon's All the Water in the World (2011).

The point here is that nonfiction comes in many varieties that engage readers in different multiliteracies, reading levels, and pedagogical goals. In fact, the sheer volume of possibilities can be overwhelming. In order to create a classroom collection or unit around a particular topic, think through what you have learned about Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and the New London Group's (NLG) multiliteracies, and then access your resources. You might start by doing a web search to compile a list of possibilities, remembering that you want a range of books that will appeal to children who like stories, poetry, artwork, and hands-on projects. You will also want books for a range of independent reading levels, as well as books that you can share that will stretch vocabulary and concept formation through dialogic read-alouds. Take your list to your school and public libraries, and consult with the librarians to see what resources they have and what other books they can recommend that you may have missed in your search.

The successful presentation of information for children depends on the effective interaction of four basic features, regardless of reading level and type of appeal:

accuracy,

organization,

visual design, and

style.

These four criteria are considered by the National Council of Teachers of English selection committee for the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction and, with some elaboration, by the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association (see Chapter 1 for more information on these awards). The one drawback to these awards is that the committees do not consider books according to their developmental level, so many of the award winners, honor books, and recommended books are not best suited for young children. It is worthwhile for teachers to keep up with the awards, however, and determine whether or not they would make appropriate read-alouds for the age group they are teaching.

Accuracy

In terms of the criteria, though, the four areas used to determine award winners are useful to consider as you choose books for classroom use and recommended reading for your students. Accuracy is sometimes difficult to determine if you are not an expert in the field. However, there are certain things to look for. Copyright date is one. New discoveries are made all the time. The work of paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, for instance, completely changed the way we think about dinosaurs. Although he began publishing his theories about dinosaurs being warm-blooded, intelligent, fast, and adaptable creatures in the late 1960s, it wasn't until the late 1980s that his theories really began to take hold and be disseminated as fact in schools. Now it is widely understood that dinosaurs are more closely related to modern-day birds than reptiles, and that is reflected in both nonfiction and fiction for children written since the 1990s. Generally speaking, then, the newer the book, the more likely it is to have the most up-to-date information.

Another way to judge the likely accuracy of a text is to check the credentials of the author. Usually an author's note explains the way the book was researched and who helped with the research. Authors who are scientists themselves, such as Nicola Davies, or who work with scientists, such as Sy Montgomery, can generally be trusted to provide accurate information, as can those who provide extensive source notes or detail their research process. Gail Gibbons, for instance, travels extensively when researching a book to ensure accuracy and authenticity in the presentation of her material. Accuracy can also be determined by writing style: Does the author clearly distinguish between fact (what is known to be true) and theory (what is assumed to be true based on the available facts)? If authors are clear and straightforward about what is not yet known for sure about a topic, then they are probably trustworthy in their presentation of what is known.

While you will be selecting a range of books by a range of authors, there are some current superstars in the world of children's nonfiction. These authors are Nic Bishop, Joanna Cole, Penny Colman, Russell Freedman, Gail Gibbons, Sy Montgomery, Jim Murphy, Seymour Simon, and Melissa Sweet. Their books are readily available, widely reviewed and trusted, critically acclaimed, and often honored with prestigious awards. Moreover, their books meet the approval of their intended audiences. Bishop, Gibbons, Montgomery, Murphy, Simon, and Sweet all have informative websites that children can visit to find out more information about their books and their research processes (see Websites to Save and Explore). As children find books that they especially like, encourage them to seek out other books by the same author, and do author studies.

Organization

Organizational strategies vary in nonfiction books, but the strategy should be clear and consistent. For instance, in the example of The Snowflake: A Story of the Water Cycle given earlier in the chapter, the organization pattern follows a chronology based on the months of the year in the Northern hemisphere. Temperature change causes the water to take different forms. This allows the writer to explain the various aspects of the water cycle in a logical progression that readers can understand. This sort of sequential organization works well for things that grow, decay, or otherwise change over time or move through cycles. Obviously, biographies and autobiographies work best when organized chronologically as well, although they may start with an important or well-known life event as a narrative hook and then go back and pick up the subject's childhood.

Other organizational strategies include comparison/contrast, cause/effect, problem/solution, and question/answer, and thematically organized formats. There are benefits to all of these strategies for helping children organize information as they read. As children encounter these strategies, draw attention to them as different ways to organize information that they might want to use as they compose their own texts. Have them record the name of the strategy and an example or two in their daybooks (see Teaching Ideas at the end of this chapter for an explanation of the student daybook) for future reference.

Design

Visual design features in children's nonfiction trade books assist in meaning making from a multiliteracies standpoint (Pappas, 2006; Unsworth, 2001). Images can depict actions (such as a butterfly extracting pollen with its proboscis), classify information, show relationships (such as through tree or Venn diagrams, graphs, tables, flow charts, or size comparisons), or indicate events on a timeline. These elements in trade books are a prelude to the kinds of reading that will be required of students using textbooks in later grades. For instance, in textbooks, nearly every important concept in a chapter is accompanied by a picture or a diagram that illustrates the concept. These visual elements and their captions focus attention, reinforce the learning, and provide a study aid when children go back through the information to study for a test. In trade books, the visual elements are even more important, because they need to entice the reader. Trade books are not required reading; they have no guaranteed market. The more vivid and appealing the pictures, the more likely potential readers (and buyers) will be attracted to the book.

Books such as Steve Jenkins's Actual Size offer irresistible invitations to children through the art alone. Children are drawn to compare the size of their hand with a gorilla's hand and the size of their morning egg with an ostrich egg. His other books are similarly inviting and guide children into explorations of how animals eat, sleep, bathe, and interact with each other in sibling relationships and other kinds of animal symbiosis. He has books on animal defense mechanisms, habitats, movement, and skeletal structures. He also has a book that helps children understand time and duration, as well as one that focuses on the life forms that live at various depths of the world's oceans. Follow-up activities are scaffolded by the very nature of the artwork itself: stunning collage art that invites close observation and imitation. Jenkins's books invite touch and facilitate a greater understanding of spatial relationships in the natural world. An in-depth author study is facilitated by an informative website (http://www.stevejenkinsbooks.com/) that includes information on Jenkins's many award-winning books, biographical information, a short video that shows his process of making books, and a gallery of images that children have made and sent in response to reading his books (see Teaching Ideas for more on author studies).

Placement of the pictures is as important as quality. As in storybooks, pictures in informational texts complement the words; unlike some storybook illustrations, however, the pictures should not be used for ironic intent in informational books. Instead, they should always reinforce and add clarity to the text. If the picture's placement or even inclusion makes its relationship to the text unclear, this is a design flaw because it interferes with the book's purpose to inform. Captions, labels, and highlights should also be spatially positioned so as to aid comprehension.

Clearly illustrated and numbered steps are crucial in books that feature processes or projects for young readers. Mollie Katzen's Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up (1994), Salad People and More Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up (2005) and Honest Pretzels: And 64 Other Amazing Recipes for Cooks Ages 8 and Up (2009) present healthy, delicious vegetarian recipes in both written and visual format using Katzen's own step-by-step drawings. A sample recipe can be found here. You'll notice that her approach facilitates visual and linguistic learning as well as producing a nice tactile payoff! DK Publishing also features cookbooks with step-by-step visuals of the more complicated steps. Other children's cookbooks on the market are less helpful precisely because they don't use visuals as effectively; instead of providing step-by-step drawings, they crowd the page with color and images that deter from the steps needed to accomplish the recipe. Science fair projects are found in the 507s of the Dewey Decimal System, and crafts can be found between 745 and 749. As you browse these sections for possible texts, pay attention to whether or not the steps and materials needed are pictured clearly enough for young readers to follow.

Explore and Reflect: Effective Organization of Visual Instructions

Test this for yourself. Go to a bookstore or library and look at cookbooks for children. Compare and contrast the format, considering how cooking from a recipe works: You read the instructions, turn away to complete a step, go back to the cookbook for the next set of instructions, turn away again, and so forth. What design features are most helpful in keeping the project on track? What design features interfere or may prove confusing?

Other design elements—or what Richard Kerper (2003) refers to as access features or "iconographic materials" (p. 54)—that help organize texts and aid readers in their ability to find information quickly include tables of contents, maps, glossaries, indexes, subheadings, bibliographies, and resource lists that direct students to further reading on the topic. Good nonfiction books highlight glossary terms and may even provide pronunciation guides. Textboxes separate out information that, while important and interesting, may impede the flow of the text. "Pull quotes" are sentences taken from the text itself and placed in a larger, distinctive font to draw attention to important points. All of these elements should be explicitly pointed out to students as they read and their purposes and potential uses discussed. Remember that this may be the first time they have encountered these elements, as they are not typically used in fiction. As structural features of most nonfiction, though, children need to understand their function and importance.

Writing Style

Finally, writing style matters in assessing the quality and age appropriateness of informational texts. Amy McClure (2003) argues that "well-written nonfiction goes beyond facts to present eloquent, informed and well-crafted discussion" (p. 79), and Russell Freedman (1992) is even more insistent on the importance of style:

Certainly the basic purpose of nonfiction is to inform, to instruct, hopefully to enlighten. But that's not enough. An effective nonfiction book must animate its subjects, infuse it with life. It must create a vivid and believable world that the reader will enter willingly and leave only with reluctance. A good nonfiction book should be a pleasure to read. (p. 3)

According to Barbara Lounsberry (1996), writers can set scenes through the use of vivid imagery, deploy humor and allusion, and use figurative language; but they must take care to "never invent or change facts or events" (p. 30). Writers should take care to involve the reader through rich sensual detail, and they should adopt a tone appropriate to their subject but still conversational enough for children to feel emotionally engaged. Vocabulary should never be dumbed down, but rather the technical terms necessary for genuine participation in the discourse of the subject should be explained in clear, child-friendly language. Children love to learn new words, and they especially enjoy showing off their knowledge of a subject by using the proper terminology.

Nic Bishop's single-subject books on frogs, lizards, spiders, butterflies and moths, and chameleons are a good example of nonfiction with a conversational style that engages young readers in such a way that they feel they are in the presence of a more knowledgeable friend who is excited about sharing his passion for his subject. His photographs reveal the artistry (and infinite patience!) of a master, and he describes his process in ways that make it accessible to the beginning reader. These are noisy books, meaning that children will gasp and exclaim over the incredibly close-up images with every page turn, and it may take several passes through before they settle in to read the text, but the pictures themselves provide the motivation for children to want to find out more through reading the words. Bishop also provides the photographs for some of the Scientists in the Field series, which make engaging read-alouds for this age group.

As the criteria for the Sibert Award notes, "Not every book relies equally on every element," and excellence in one or more elements can outweigh shortfalls in other areas, which may not be relevant to the subject matter. As you work with your students, you will discover which elements matter most to them, and to you, and you will add your own selection criteria to these four elements depending on your pedagogical goals. The following box contains a starting summary of selection criteria for quality nonfiction adapted from the Orbis Pictus Award and Sibert Award criteria:

Guidelines for Choosing Quality Nonfiction

Accuracy

Information is up to date.

Clear distinctions are made between facts, theories, and opinions.

Authors have appropriate credentials.

Organization

Organizational framework is clear and consistent.

Organizational framework makes logical sense given the subject matter.

Children are able to see how elements are related.

Visual Design and Access Features

Visual elements are appealing.

Illustrations reinforce text and assist in meaning-making.

Illustrations are appropriately positioned and adequately captioned or explained.

Access features are clearly identifiable and useful as comprehension aids.

Style

Writing is engaging, vivid, and inviting.

Rich, appropriate vocabulary is included and explained in child-friendly ways.

Facts are maintained even when figurative language and scene setting is used.

Children's Current and Potential Passions

We all have them. I much prefer to curl up with a good young adult novel than a book about photosynthesis or the history of WWII. My husband, on the other hand, prefers social science and political books, devotional texts, and art books for his leisure reading. My father-in-law is a war buff and prefers both fiction and nonfiction accounts of battles and weaponry. As adults, our interests have narrowed based on temperament and experiences. We have already learned the basics of biology, hydrology, geology, geography, and ecology. We have been introduced to historical figures and events, mathematical concepts, and principles of physics. Some of what we were exposed to in elementary school became temporary obsessions, and some subjects evolved into lifelong interests and affected our career choices.

Children, on the other hand, are at the beginning of their explorations. They don't yet know where they might find their next passion. As educators and parents, we have enormous influence on what they will find interesting because we control much of their access to information. In addition, our enthusiasms for particular subjects can have a significant effect on their attitudes toward them. A teacher who is passionate about insects will be eager to share that passion, and it will be contagious. On the other hand, a teacher who finds math concepts boring will communicate that feeling as well. While we can't manufacture passion for a subject, we need to be aware that we communicate attitudes that can positively or negatively affect our students' attitudes. Be willing to share your passions, but also be committed to sharing students' interests and helping them find books and information about things you aren't necessarily interested in. If you find that you really can't generate enthusiasm for a particular subject, consider an exchange with another teacher in your building or bring in a parent or community member who has an interest in that area. If you live near a university, call the various departments and ask if they have faculty members or student organizations who will give presentations. Poets are often willing to give free workshops; chemistry and physics clubs enjoy wowing kids with dramatic experiments.

Implicit Messages About Race and Gender

Remember that children are very sensitive to visual images when it comes to identity. Make sure that the books you choose represent gender and racial differences. For instance, even though DK Children's Cookbook (2004), by Katharine Ibbs, only shows hands preparing food, there is a nice balance between white and brown hands, and it is very difficult to tell whether the hands belong to males or females. Race and gender balance is less of a problem in newer books because publishers have become more sensitive to these issues, but be especially wary of books that seem to suggest that only White men (and therefore White boys) are interested in pursuing careers in science, math, or NASCAR racing, for instance. These visual choices don't call attention to themselves in nonfiction books, since the focus is more often on the subject than on the actors, but as we've noted in this book, children are very sensitive to pictorial detail. Moreover, gender and race dynamics are pervasive in other media, leading children to make assumptions about what career options are available to them, so one of our tasks as educators has to be to provide a counternarrative to certain stereotypes about gender, race, and interest. There are Black NASCAR drivers and have been since 1955, and women entered the races in 1949. If the books children choose do not include a mix of race and gender, challenge them to use their Internet skills to expand their knowledge.

9.1 Developmental Motivations for Fluency

As we have stressed throughout this text, the key to success in reading is engagement and motivation. Children are not very future-oriented; they need to feel as though reading is something that is both fun and useful for them now rather than seeing it as a means to an end they can't readily envision. Hence the engagement with interesting, meaningful literature that entertains them while it helps them solve problems and answer questions they have about the world is crucial for developing fluency.

Determining the contexts for "meaningful" and "interesting" at this age requires an understanding of development characteristics. Erikson claimed that the school-age years, from ages 6–11, are characterized by a conflict between industry and inferiority. Children at this age are immersed in social and academic environments that put new demands on their ability to perform tasks like everyone else.

Middle childhood is the time when children start developing distinct personality traits because their frontal lobes have developed to the point where this is possible. As they develop these traits, however, they are concerned for the first time about whether their personalities have social "uptake"; that is, their theory of mind, which we have discussed in Chapters 5 and 7, has developed to the point where what other children think of them actually matters. They are not yet as self-conscious about this as they will be as teenagers, but they are still interested in having friends and understanding social relationships. They work hard at keeping up with their friends, and even harder at keeping up with those they perceive as competitors. Classrooms and playgrounds alike can be sites where they succeed or fail to measure up to those around them. Because of their deep concern for how they compare with their peers at this age, books that are focused on characters in similar situations are very appealing and can help them learn strategies for solving everyday problems, especially the problems that arise when trying to manage relationships. Often, these books appear in series so that authors can explore a range of typical problems elementary children face, and readers can feel as though the characters are people that they know.

Motivation continues to be crucial as children work to become fluent readers. When children understand that reading is both pleasurable and useful, they will be motivated to do what it takes to get better at it, even if it's hard. For this reason, it is imperative that children have access to books they like and that they know how to find books on topics that interest them. Internationally known reading specialist Kathy G. Short (2011) argues that too often children are asked to use their reading to find answers to questions predetermined by a teacher or a specific curriculum. A better approach, she argues, is to encourage students to pose the questions that interest them and then assist them in finding the resources they need to help them find their own answers. Literature should be viewed as a site of inquiry into the nature of life and social relationships. In order to get students to conceive of literature in this way, however, they have to have choices as to what they read, and multiple ways to access reading material.

9.2 Achieving Fluency

Fluency grows best out of a solid background in multiliteracies, with audio and linguistic literacies playing the most prominent roles as children work with print text. If students have rich experiences with oral literature, a beginner's knowledge of the connection between written symbols and the sounds they stand for, an understanding of how pictures and gestures convey meaning, and a sure-footed grasp of how space is organized, they are more likely to be able to approach a reading situation with confidence. Why? Because most books for children use language in fairly predictable, conventional patterns. For instance, if young readers hear the words "the big, bad . . ." they will usually be able to fill in the missing word correctly with the noun "wolf." This guess flows from their experiences with oral literature. When they encounter such a phrase in print, then, their previous oral experience will lead them to try wolf as the word following big and bad, even if they have not consciously attended to that particular written word before.

If young readers encounter the unfamiliar word grimace, they can, with elaborative assistance from a teacher as well as a picture, learn that word along with its meaning from the facial expression the picture shows. If they are reading a picture book that includes the phrase, "a lion in his lair" accompanied by a picture of a lion lounging in the shade of a rock formation, they know that the unfamiliar word refers to a place that the lion is "in." Their spatial literacy can eliminate a word like house because they know that a lion doesn't live in a house, but they can use their linguistic literacy to also eliminate cave, because even if the lair looks something like a cave in the picture, cave does not start with the letter "l." In other words, reading for meaning, in a context of a strong multiliteracies background, will enable them to reduce the number of unlikely alternatives.

Reducing unlikely alternatives is one strategy that readers use when they approach an unfamiliar word. As we noted in Chapter 7, there is a long-standing controversy over which strategies are absolutely necessary for learning to read, which have resulted in the reading wars between phonics and whole language (McQuillan, 1998). The process described in the preceding paragraph reflects the whole language theory of literacy acquisition proposed by literacy researchers Ken and Yetta Goodman (1979) and Frank Smith (1973, 1994). Surely, another strategy for learning the word lair would simply be to isolate its phonemes and "sound it out." However, is this level of decoding the same thing as being able to read? Does knowing how to pronounce the phonemes /l/ /ee/ /r/ mean that you understand the word? Smith and the Goodmans do not believe that learning words in isolation and being able to decode unfamiliar words using only sound/letter combinations is equivalent to reading. Nor do they believe that testing reading by timing students as they read word lists is an accurate reflection of reading ability. From their perspective, reading is always about meaning-making: If children are not making meaning as they read, they are not reading.

That said, it is hard to make meaning if reading is not fluent. As mentioned in the opening to this chapter, the ability to read with automaticity makes it possible to direct attention from word recognition and decoding tasks and onto tracking the mental pictures the words are creating. This then feeds into fluency, because children can read with appropriate feeling and expression only if they genuinely understand what they read. The Common Core Standards indicate the same three standards for first through third grade with regard to fluency in its Reading: Foundational Skills strand:

Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.

Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression.

Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

So how do we use engaging literature to get children there? There are multiple proven strategies for improving fluency, and while not all children need explicit fluency training, the strategies that will improve fluency for those who do need such training are enjoyable and profitable for all students in middle childhood. Here are the strategies most often cited by reports such as that prepared by the National Reading Panel as useful to improving fluency:

modeled fluent reading

read, reread, repeat

echo, choral, and paired reading

phrased reading

reader's theater (National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, 2000)

Modeled Fluent Reading

As noted in previous chapters, teachers should read aloud with panache. This necessitates practicing what you read before you present it to children. Read picturebooks of high interest to you and your students, and then make sure the books you have read in class are available for students to choose during independent reading time. If you have practiced good dialogic reading skills, students will have been introduced to any unfamiliar vocabulary words in the books, so they will be reinforcing that learning as well as trying to imitate your expressive presentation as they read the book for themselves. It is also e useful to create a vocabulary pack to accompany the book (a set of index cards with the new words and their definitions). When children are confident with their reading of the book, encourage them to perform it for the class or a small group, and take it home to read to family members.

Eric Carle's books are perfect choices for this sort of activity. For instance, "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth (2007) begins with simple, repetitive sentences that emphasize the quiet days of a giant sloth in the Amazon rain forest. Vocabulary becomes more challenging with the introduction of other rain forest animals (a howler monkey, a caiman, an anteater, and a jaguar), each of whom asks the sloth about his habits, using a set of words that seem to go together: slow, quiet, boring, and lazy. After much thought, the sloth replies:

It is true that I am slow, quiet and boring. I am lackadaisical, I dawdle and I dillydally. I am also unflappable, languid, stoic, impassive, sluggish, lethargic, placid, calm, mellow, laid-back and, well, slothful! I am relaxed and tranquil, and I like to live in peace. But I am not lazy.

What a delightful vocabulary challenge! Students will relish each synonym, delighting in their ability to read such big words. Because of their meaning, slowly is the properly fluent way to read them, lingering over each luxurious syllable. This could also be done as a group activity, with each word printed on a sentence strip (available at school supply stores and online) and assigned to a particular student to read. With each repeated reading, the strips could be passed on to new students so that everyone has a chance to "own" several of the words while they listen to others reading the rest.

Another site of modeling fluent reading is through making a books-on-tape station in your classroom. Encourage students to listen to books on tape as they read along, and then to read out loud along with the tape. Follow up by having students create their own recordings of favorite books. Have them work in small groups, with students offering each other feedback and encouragement with regard to phrasing, expression, and voices for characters. When these "director's notes" have been considered, have the students practice the book at least three more times before recording it. Have group members listen to and critique the performance, and then have the reader decide whether to make the recording available or rerecord it. Each student should choose a book to read so that everyone gets practice in performing and critiquing the performances of others. This activity is included in the Speaking and Listening (SL) strand of the Common Core Standards for second and third grade. Third graders, according to SL 3.5, should be able to "Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace."

In addition to reading picturebooks aloud, you will want to start reading longer narratives or chapter books of high interest to this age group, such as books by Roald Dahl and some of Mildred D. Taylor's novellas, such as Song of the Trees (1975) and The Friendship (1987). A novella is longer than a short story or picturebook but shorter than a novel. Because these books have few or no pictures, other than the cover art, your dramatic reading must help students envision the story as they hear it. Encourage children to draw scenes from the stories so that they will develop their capacity to convert words into mental pictures, which increases understanding. It is also useful to have students listen to audiobook versions of these longer books as they follow along with a print text to develop a sense of proper pace and pronunciation of words they see in print. Generally speaking, a read-aloud or a professional audiobook used in this way should be slightly above a student's read-alone level to offer a challenge.

Recommended Books: Great Read-Aloud Chapter Books for Second and Third Graders

Note: A good read-aloud chapter book should have plenty of action, an easy-to-follow plot, and a lively narrative voice. There are thousands of titles that make for suitable and exciting read alouds for this age group: Simply Google "read alouds for second and third graders" for suggestions, and you'll find dozens of lists with many books in common. The following list, however, consists of a few gems that most lists overlook!

Atinuke. No. 1 Car Spotter. (2010). Set in a small African village, this book offers opportunities to compare not only British and American words, such as "bonnet" for hood of a car, but also lifestyles, customs, and common problems faced by kids. For a spirited short reading by the author, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwvi9MqjaLQ.

Couloumbis, Audrey. Jake. (2010). A sweet, sometimes funny story in believable first-person about a boy whose mother breaks her leg. His grandfather, an ex-Marine whom he doesn't know well, comes to stay with him, bringing an unlikable dog. Several scenes would make good adaptations for reader's theater.

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Mr. Chickee's Funny Money. (2007). Dust off your best James Brown imitation for this one. This zany, action-packed mystery features a young boy detective, a quadrillion dollar bill, an inept treasury agent, and a dictionary that constantly writes insults to its readers.

Davies, Nicola. What's Eating You? Parasites: The Inside Story. (2009). Gross but never crude, this nonfiction look at parasites and their hosts (including us!) will interest and entertain budding young scientists.

Finney, Patricia. I, Jack. (2004). This very funny story chronicles how Jack, a rather stupid yellow Labrador, sees the world, how he falls in love with the lovely Samoyed next door, and how he saves his owner. Children will enjoy the challenge of seeing themselves through the eyes of their pets. Features some British English.

Gaiman, Neil. Odd and the Frost Giants. (2009). In this tale inspired by Norse mythology, a young boy named Odd has to save Asgard from the Frost Giants who have invaded it. Exciting introduction to a study of Norse mythology.

Jurmain, Suzanne. The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students. (2005). In the early 1800s in Connecticut, Crandall turned her school for White girls into a school for African American girls. The consequences were vandalism, arson, and even a jail sentence.

Krull, Kathleen. Giants of Science: Isaac Newton. (2008). Newton invented calculus, built the first reflecting telescope, and changed the way we understand physics and optics. Krull explores who Newton was as a young boy and as a difficult adult, making him a fascinating character for students who will meet his work over and over again as they advance through school.

Lin, Grace. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. (2011). Minli takes her father's stories about the Old Man on the Moon seriously and sets off to find him so that she can help reverse her poor family's fortunes. This Newbery Honor Book has been compared to The Wizard of Oz, blending Chinese folklore and fantasy with everyday desires for a better life.

Miller, Norma. Stomping at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller. (2006). Miller knew she wanted to be a dancer from the age of 5, and by the time she was 15, she was dancing the Lindy Hop in Europe. Great for units on dance styles, black history, or following your dreams. See Miller dancing the Lindy Hop at http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=-pMDf4ciCRs.

Mills, Claudia. How Oliver Olson Changed the World. (2011). Oliver is excited when his teacher announces a space-themed sleepover at school. But Oliver's overprotective parents are reluctant to let him spend the night at school. Students will find lots to relate to in Oliver's struggles.

Murphy, Jim. Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting (2009). In 1914, during World War I, the soldiers on both sides of the Western Front defied orders and stopped firing on each other in order to celebrate Christmas together. Enough context on the war is given so that young readers can appreciate the Christmas miracle, and the narration makes for a lively read aloud.

Nelson, Kadir. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball. (2008). Stunning artwork illustrates the history of the Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1947, when Jackie Robinson became the first player to break the color line in baseball. Available through audible.com as an audiobook.

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Ninth Ward. (2010). Twelve-year-old Lanesha and her grandmother find themselves stranded as the waters rise during Hurricane Katrina. Lanesha has to depend on her special gift for science and math, her ability to see ghosts, and her own bravery in order to survive. Pair with Saint Louis Armstrong Beach (see below) to compare and contrast books that portray the same tragic event.

Taylor, Mildred D. The Friendship (1987); Song of the Trees (1975). Taylor is most famous for her middle-grade historical fiction books featuring the Logan family, including Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. The Friendship and Song of the Trees also feature the Logan family, especially young Cassie, who gives children a first-person account of what it might have felt like to be black in the South in the 1930s.

Umansky, Kaye. Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage. (2009). Clover Twig is a very capable 11-year-old, but she has her hands full when she takes a job as a housekeeper for a very untidy witch. When Mrs. Eckles goes on a trip, Clover must save the cottage from falling into the hands of Mrs. Eckles's evil sister. Lots of humor and clever wordplay make this an engaging read aloud.

Woods, Brenda. Saint Louis Armstrong Beach. (2011). Saint is a budding musician who plays his clarinet for tourists in New Orleans' French Quarter. During Hurricane Katrina, he gets separated from his family when he goes looking for Shadow, a stray dog he wishes was his. He must use all of his ingenuity to save himself, Shadow, and an elderly neighbor as the waters rise. Pair with Ninth Ward, above.

Read, Reread, and Repeat

Embedded in the practices of modeling fluent reading is the practice of rereading. Rereading a text that a teacher has read or that students have heard on tape lowers the risk of approaching a text cold. Students can anticipate what is going to happen and use the memory of having the text read aloud as an aid when they get into trouble. The familiarity of the story can stimulate their desire to want to read it for themselves, to hear it in their own voices. While it is important to move forward to increasingly difficult texts, it is also just as important to revisit old friends. The practice of rereading familiar texts can be thought of as a warm-up exercise and a practice drill for more difficult tasks, just as an accomplished pianist still plays scales or a basketball player runs through layup drills.

Rereading can also restore confidence after a reader has had some frustrating experiences with more difficult texts. Working at the peak of your ability is exhilarating but also mentally exhausting. It's restorative to remind yourself of where you've been and what you've already been able to accomplish even as you are working on pushing through to the next level.

Repeated oral readings will also increase fluency. Poems that rhyme are a good choice for oral readings that will enhance fluency. Because of their meter, rhythm, and end rhymes, poems create a structure of anticipation that makes them easy to read aloud. As noted earlier with the discussion of learning the word lair, there are fewer possible alternatives for pronunciation when the words have to fit into a particular pattern. Additionally, poems feature very carefully chosen words that create word pictures and express emotions, making them sometimes easier to read with expression. However, because many poems that rhyme fall into a sing-song rhythm, students will still require coaching to get the emotional pitch right. For this reason, encourage the oral reading of mildly scary, funny, or suspenseful readings as well so that students get practice modulating their volume and pace to fit the mood of the story.

In order to keep repeated oral reading from becoming a tedious exercise for students, help students find readings that they want to share with a small group or even the whole class. The best read alouds for young children to perform are the ones that will get strong reactions from their peers. For instance, Alvin Schwartz's In a Dark, Dark Room, a book of scary short stories based on traditional folklore, has been a consistent favorite with second graders since its publication in 1984. The stories mostly follow the traditional form of scary stories, building suspense and tension until the final explosive payoff that makes readers jump, and then dissolve into laughter. Funny stories can be equally compelling, such as Mo Willems's Pigeon books and his Elephant and Piggie series.

Echo, Choral, and Paired Reading

To begin an echo reading session, select a short poem with varied punctuation marks, such as John Ciardi's "About the Teeth of Sharks" (available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179965). Make a copy for each student, and project another copy onto the wall. Begin by discussing the various punctuation marks and what they mean. Also be sure to mention the use of italics to add stress to a word. Then, read the poem aloud, paying attention to what you have just talked about with regard to punctuation. Ask students to tell you what happens in the poem, who it happens to, and how the narrator responds. They may need help visualizing the action in this poem since it is implied rather than directly stated. Ask them if they think the poem is meant to be funny or serious. Then, talk to students about phrasing (where you took a breath and where you didn't), pace (how fast you read certain passages and where and why you paused), and intonation (how you indicated a question and how you changed your tone of voice as you read to coax the friend in the poem to do what you wanted, and then how you responded to what happened when he got too close to the shark's teeth). After you have concluded your discussion, read the poem again. Then, ask the students to echo the poem back to you line by line. Finally, engage in a full-on choral reading of the entire poem from start to finish. This type of explicit instruction in the use of punctuation marks to guide reading, coupled with modeling fluent reading and then asking students to engage in a low-risk choral reading actively engages readers without singling out anyone. Tell students that they should read the poem aloud to their parents when they get home.

In addition to echo and choral reading, students should regularly engage in paired or partner reading , either with an adult volunteer, an instructional assistant, an older student, or a peer. Choose a selection that you have already read in class for a repeated reading experience, or one that you will be using in a future lesson to give students a chance to become familiar with the material ahead of time. Paired reading sessions can consist of echo readings or the simultaneous reading of a passage. Partners should give each other positive feedback as well as elaborative assistance (questions, clues, coaching) when readers run into trouble, always ensuring that readers are making meaning through the text being read.

Mary Ann Hoberman has a series of books called "You Read to Me, I'll Read to You" that features different genres adapted for paired readings, including fairy tales, nursery rhymes, fables, and scary stories. She also has produced sing-along books; singing also increases fluency for the same reasons that rhymed poetry does, that is, by limiting the possibilities to fit particular patterns. Partners could work together to prepare a presentation for the class. For instance, they could do a reading of an Elephant and Piggie book, with one student reading the part of Elephant and the other reading Piggie's lines.

Phrased Reading

Fluent readers focus on phrases rather than individual words, because words take on their particular meaning only in relation to other words. Reading one word at a time will never move a reader to fluency, but learning to chunk text into phrases helps readers read more quickly as well as make meaning along the way. As with echo reading, phrased reading is best accomplished through the use of a poem. "Song of a Shell" by Violet L. Cuslidge is a good poem to practice with (available, with many other ocean poems, here), but any poem that you like will work. Read the poem aloud to yourself, separating it into meaningful phrases. For instance, the first line, "I held a sea shell to my ear" is a complete phrase. Write the phrases separately on sentence strips and have students read them aloud in order. Emphasize how each phrase creates a unit of meaning that relates to what came before it and what comes after. (And try to locate a large conch shell for children to hold up to their ears when the reading is finished.)

Reader's Theater

Reader's theater is probably the most effective of all of the tools in a teacher's arsenal for building reader fluency. Unlike other forms of classroom drama, which we will discuss in Chapter 10, reader's theater involves students reading a script adapted from a piece of literature aloud without acting it out. There is no staging or costuming, and the readers do not move their bodies. Instead, listeners picture the action in their minds. Thus it is an exercise in fluent reading rather than acting. During reader's theater performances, children must rely on their audio and linguistic literacies to bring the action to life.

To begin using reader's theater in your curriculum, it is best to start with already prepared scripts. Anthony D. Fredericks, a former elementary school teacher and reading specialist, has several books of scripts available that are suitable for different grade levels and introduce different genres, such as Mother Goose rhymes, fairy tales, fractured fairy tales, and nonfiction, and his books usually include some scripts in Spanish as well. Author and educational consultant Suzanne Barchers has also published a number of books on reader's theater. Most well-stocked libraries have books with prepared scripts, and many scripts are available for free download from the web (see Online Resources for Reader's Theater box). Search your library's catalog with the keyword "reader's theater" because the scripts may be shelved according to their subject. You will need to make photocopies for each student involved in the performance, and have a few extras available in case they get lost or forgotten in transit between home and school. You will also need some sort of "holder" for the scripts for use in the performance. Traditionally, scripts are placed in sturdy black folders to give a professional look to the performance. You can also show students models of both professionals and children their own age doing reader's theater.

Once students have selected or been assigned parts, you will need to show them how scripts work differently than books. For instance, scripts usually have a character list at the beginning, and some may have staging and props notes that are not part of the story. Once the story actually begins, speaking parts are indicated by the character's name followed by a colon. Stage directions are included in brackets and are not to be read aloud. Teach students how to mark their scripts using highlighters and underlining to indicate their parts and which words to emphasize. Students should work in small groups, offering suggestions for how to read certain lines. You could also enlist the help of older students and adult volunteers for initial help in working with their scripts, but once they have done a few short reader's theater performances, allow them to work without such outside assistance so that they learn to depend on each other and sharpen their critique skills. Send scripts home with instructions for parents on how they can help their children practice, and provide time in class for practice as well. Once the performances have been sufficiently practiced for the class, invite other classes and parents to the performances. Encourage students to prepare invitations for relatives, family friends, and favorite community members.

The next step in using reader's theater is to have students prepare their own scripts from favorite books. Look for literature (including nonfiction) that has an interesting storyline and uses or could use lots of dialogue. Start by modeling how to adapt a picturebook. This Is Your Life Cycle (2008) by Heather Lynn Miller is a great one to start with, or Toni Morrison's Remember: The Journey to School Integration (2004). After sharing the book with the class, decide together whether to use the whole book or just an excerpt. Have the children help think about how many characters will be needed and whether a narrator is called for. Break the text up into lines for each character and the narrator. If the narrator seems to have too many lines, consider having more than one narrator, and then divide the lines among the multiple narrators. Once you have produced a script, do a read through, and discuss how to make it better and more interesting. Tell students that this process is called revision, and it is important for all of the writing projects they will do. Once the final script has been created, assign parts and have students start practicing for their performance.

9.3 One More Strategy: Language Play

The research on developing fluency does not address the strategy of encouraging students to play with language. Children between the ages of 6 and 8 are increasingly interested in learning social rules, which include the rules of language use. And as any parent or former child knows, the best thing to do with a rule once you've learned it is to test its limits. As children learn to read, they become increasingly involved in a rule-bound, adult-sanctioned activity that seems to leave little scope for autonomy and freedom.

Think about it this way: When you read a book, you can't make up any words you want, and you can't make the words mean what you want them to. Instead, you submit your personal ideas about the world, at least temporarily, to someone else's perspective and view of the world. You even read the word "I" in a situation where it doesn't apply to you. Meaning-making often requires you to suspend your autonomy and sense of self so that you can understand what the character is thinking and feeling. This is part of developing a theory of mind, and while it is absolutely crucial to growing up that we consider other people's feelings and perspectives, it does entail giving up the idea that everyone thinks like you do. Not only do you have to realize that yours are not the only views on a topic, but you may even have to admit that your views aren't always the best ones. Ouch.

Some children move seamlessly into this new stage of limited freedom and opening vistas. Others are more resistant. Whether they can express their feelings or not, they understand at some level that reading involves a loss of personal power. They are like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass (Carroll, 1871):

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Becoming a master of language, rather than its enslaved and unhappy subject, is a live issue with many children, especially those who struggle with learning the rules of reading. Introducing language play into the mix can help, because it reminds children that language itself has rules and limits as well as great possibilities for freedom. As with other kinds of play, children can place themselves in positions of power, experience success and failure with lower stakes than in the real world, and bridge the gap between their ideal world where they are the masters and the world they find themselves in.

Playing with language can take many forms:

Traditional games such as word scrambles, word search puzzles, and simple crosswords are one form of play.

Another is riddles that ask children to consider the multiple meanings of a word or how it sounds similar to another word.

Getting the joke and then sharing it with someone who hasn't yet heard it is a way of asserting one's superior power.

Another technique that brings out what children already know is word webbing, where a single word with multiple meanings is opened up by children providing related words and phrases, as is demonstrated in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XkbCn5npq0.

Books that play with certain kinds of word relationships, such as antonyms and homophones, will likely have already been part of a child's early reading experiences, but some language play is more sophisticated and requires careful thought along with the fun of play, such as Gene Barretta's Dear Deer: A Book of Homophones (2010), Brian Cleary's Words Are Categorical series (humorous books on parts of speech and figurative language; interactive website at www.brianpcleary.com), and Laura Vaccarro Seeger's Black? White! Day? Night! (2006).

Then there are books that create puzzles, such as George Shannon's Tomorrow's Alphabet, Mary Elting and Michael Folsom's Q Is for Duck (2005), Ruth Krauss's classic kid-friendly dictionary of possibilities, A Hole Is to Dig (1952), and Amy Krouse Rosenthal's This Plus That: Life's Little Equations (2011) and Wumbers (2012). Each of these books requires students to play with what they already know by seeing their knowledge and categories in a fresh new light. They also offer curricular possibilities for students to create their own puzzles based on the models in the books.

Language play in the form of figurative language abounds of course in all poetry, but also in books, like Michael Hall's My Heart Is Like a Zoo (2009), which offer a multimodal approach to playful similes through the use of shapes. Finally, books that feature tongue twisters—such as John Agee's Orangutan Tongs (2009), Dr. Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say? (1979), and Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit (2005)—offer opportunities for readers to play on the edge of sense with words that don't behave themselves properly.

9.4 Developing Fluency Through Familiarity: Series Books

Series books are very popular choices for independent reading at this age. The opportunity to follow a character through multiple adventures allows students to hone their skills of prediction, description of character traits and motivations, and making inferences. Series books are thus useful for developing literary understanding of longer narratives. They are also quite appealing to developing readers, precisely because they offer familiarity in language use and plot structure; readers get to know a character, plot structure, or a fictional world, and thus feel more comfortable reentering that world rather than having to constantly start from scratch in constructing and getting to know someone new. In fact, the Common Core Standards for the Literature strand in third grade explicitly validate the reading of books in series. Standard Reading: Literature (RL) 3.9 requires that students be able to "Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)."

Explore and Reflect: The Pleasures of Series Fiction

Do you enjoy reading series books or watching serial narratives on television (such as soap operas, telenovellas, sitcoms, etc.)? Why do you like them? How does reading or watching these serial narratives make you feel? What can you conclude from your own experiences about why children might enjoy series fiction?

So what's good about books in series? First, as already noted, series books are popular. The popularity of a series quickly becomes playground currency; that is, students often become competitive about who has read an entire series. The language, characters, and plots of series books translate into playground games, and those who are "in the know" are best able to join in. So the popularity of a series, like the popularity of any trend, motivates children who are very invested in finding community among their peers to pick up on the trend and read the popular books as fast as they can. It gives them something to talk about and makes them feel emotionally validated for knowing and liking something that others like.

When children find something that they like, they usually want more of it. Series books answer that desire as well, as most series books for this age are open-ended; that is, the books in the series are not limited to a trilogy or a fixed endpoint but instead continue to appear on a regular basis.

Social connections in series books take place not only with other readers but also in a private association between text and reader. Because good authors can make characters seem so real and three-dimensional, children develop empathy and even a kind of friendship with a character, perceiving characters as real people whom they know and either like or dislike. They want to know what happens to characters after the book ends, which, when you think about it, is both silly and wondrous. Silly, because the characters don't really exist, so nothing happens to them after the book ends. But wondrous, because somehow children have made an imaginative connection and developed a real affection for a fictional character, created out of nothing other than words on a page, but brought to life with their multiliteracy skills. Building on their emotional attachment to such characters helps strengthen children's capacity for empathy and can offer wisdom in the successful negotiation of real social interactions.

In terms of developing linguistic literacy, children who read books in series are reinforcing their expectations for patterned language and plot structure. Children have a working knowledge of simple plot structure through the many traditional stories and picturebook narratives they have encountered. In chapter books, these basic structures are elaborated and extended. Because they unfold over a longer time with more detail, however, it may be hard for children to relate causes and effects and other relationships between events over the entire narrative. When young children (and even older ones) relate what happened in a movie or tell a story, they may relate the sequence of events in time order but not in terms of how one episode leads to another or why a character behaves the way she does. Series books, especially mysteries series such as Nate the Great, Cam Jansen, and Hank the Cowdog (available as audiobooks at http://www.hankthecowdog.com/), help children identify the relationships between cause and effect as the characters sort through clues and try to identify not only what has happened, but why.

The Ivy and Bean series is well known for its well-developed characters and its ability to draw children into the stories by creating scenarios and problems children can relate to. Bean does not want to play with Ivy because she thinks Ivy appears quiet and boring. Bean's character is developed first, as she squabbles with her sister and the author establishes her love of energetic play as well as her exasperation with her older sister's attitude. When a prank she tries to pull on her sister goes wrong, however, Ivy reaches out to save her, and Bean realizes that she might have been wrong about Ivy being boring. She sees that Ivy has a strong imagination that leads to the kind of dramatic play that Bean finds appealing. Because Bean has a strong personality, she brings her ideas to bear on Ivy's projects, and the two girls learn how each of their strengths complement the other. Part of their collaboration results in Bean's snooty older sister getting what she deserves. Readers are left wanting to know more about Ivy but also wondering what kinds of adventures the girls will be able to cook up together.

As the series progresses, each character becomes more developed, enabling readers to predict what they might say or do in response to situations but also offering enough new situations to keep the series fresh and interesting. The plots also become predictable in structure, but fresh in how that structure unfolds. The books alternate between each girl doing something that leads to trouble and then working together to solve the problem or escape the consequences. Because the plot details are so original, children may not consciously consider the similarity of structure at this level, but the fact that it underlies each book makes the books familiar and actually motivates the reader to continue reading: They know that the original plan is going to get messed up, but how? Then they know that the girls will figure out an escape plan, but how will it work? Along the way, they are actively considering what they would do in the situation, because Ivy and Bean are characters whose experiences with mean older siblings, cranky neighbors, horrible babysitters, and well-meaning but sometimes pushy parents are easy to relate to.

Explore and Reflect: Identifying With Characters in Series Books

Listen to the children as they discuss Ivy and Bean in this clip, especially around the 2-minute mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNndBM3l9A.

How are they talking about the characters? What does this suggest about why they like these books?

Now, consider how this dynamic plays out in social media. On Facebook you are asked to "like" what your friends like and to share what you find with others so that they can like it too. How does sharing what you like reflect or establish your social identity? How does it compare, for instance, to being the fan of a sports team or a music group? How might you use this tendency to identify with genres or characters to motivate children to read more?

Recurring plot patterns and well-developed, consistent characters aid in the development of fluency because they set expectations that they then fulfill, making the reading proceed smoothly. As in any situation, knowing what to expect breeds more confidence than entering a situation with uncertainty. Readers don't have to puzzle over why the characters behave as they do; they know that Ivy usually responds a certain way, and Bean's responses are very different. As long as the characters behave in ways consistent with their established personalities, readers can move forward with the plot without having to stop to figure out what's changed. The same mechanism of expectation and fulfillment applies to plot as well. Readers know that a problem will be introduced and then solved in a clever way, so they are motivated to read faster in order to see what happens.

Another of the more successful new series for second and third graders features an Asian American boy named Alvin Ho. Second-grader Alvin has a social anxiety disorder that prevents him from talking in school. He has a loving extended family that includes a mother and a father, an older brother and younger sister, and grandparents with whom he spends a lot of time. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts, a town just chock-full of history and ghosts that fire Alvin's already active imagination. In the first book in the series, he tries unsuccessfully to become a part of the boy group in his grade, but ultimately rejects part of the bullying initiation and ends up finding a true friend in a girl named Flea who wears an eye patch and has one leg that is shorter than the other. In later books, Flea helps Alvin in school by interpreting his looks for the teacher, since he cannot verbalize what he needs. The short, humorous novels thus engage issues of gender, disability, mental health, and sibling and intergenerational relationships in subtle, child-friendly ways that teachers can use as springboards for discussion. They also introduce the rich history of the Concord area and include aspects of Chinese culture as a matter of Alvin's everyday life, with a glossary of accessible explanations of both American history and Chinese references.

In terms of plot structure, the books in the series feature distinct episodes in each chapter, but each episode is linked to the theme of the book as a whole, enabling readers new to longer fiction to see how chapters work and how they contribute to a longer narrative, which is one of the expectations laid out in the Common Core Standards for reading literature in third grade. The artwork also helps scaffold the reading experience by showing pictures of concepts that might be difficult for young readers to visualize. For instance, in the first book, Alvin is hanging from a tree and is said to look like a duck in a Chinatown window. The picture shows Alvin but also has a picture of such a duck, done in a broken outline so readers will know it is not literal, to help readers who are unfamiliar with the cultural context.

As he tries to navigate the world, Alvin makes huge mistakes and often behaves unwisely, but the adults in his life are unfailingly sympathetic, even when they are legitimately angry with Alvin. His father is a particularly successful character in that he is strong, emotional, and fair-minded. Alvin recognizes and acknowledges his father's anger, which is perfectly appropriate given what Alvin sometimes does to provoke it, but he never has cause to actually fear that anger, because his father always manages to get control of himself before he talks to Alvin or delivers consequences. As a result, Alvin's father actually offers good parenting lessons for dealing with a sensitive child. Certain episodes of the Alvin Ho books, as would episodes from other early chapter books, would make great scripts for reader's theater.

Explore and Reflect: Controversy in Books for New Readers

The third book in the Alvin Ho series has stirred controversy over its stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans in Alvin's play. Here is the argument as it played out in a blog—first the critique, and then a response by Lenore Look, the author, followed by comments from others.

Read the discussion, and write a response that explains your opinion on the problem and how you would deal with it. Would you avoid teaching this book, or would you openly address the problem with your students? Which do you think would be the more appropriate response and why?

Some series books have come under scrutiny and even censorship because of their style and content. The Junie B. Jones series, for instance, is critiqued for its reinforcement of improper language use and for Junie's outspokenness. On the other hand, the series is very popular with children for its humor, which is mostly derived from Junie's bad behavior. From a literary standpoint, Junie's character is quite flat, which makes her antics seem unmotivated and doesn't encourage children to empathize or relate to her. From a developmental standpoint, however, children who are just beginning to think about the appropriateness of social rules will have much to talk about as they consider Junie's actions.

Even stronger critiques have arisen around Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series, which is wildly popular with second and third graders. The same things that make it popular with children, however, have made it unpopular with adults: The books feature two boys who indulge in outrageous pranks, disrespect any and all authority, and delight in transgressive, scatological humor. These traits keep it on the list of banned books reported to the American Library Association, usually somewhere in the top 10. And yet parents report over and over that these books are ones that their children will read when they are uninterested in anything else.

Even if they are not considered controversial, series books in general are not usually considered to be of high literary quality because many, such as Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series, rely on repetitive sentence structures, bland vocabulary, underdeveloped characters, and formulaic, predictable stories. As a result, they are like comfort food for new readers—easy and appealing, but not necessarily growth-oriented. But precisely because of their predictability, series books can function as reinforcement for skills already learned, and can increase readers' confidence and enjoyment in independent reading, which are important motivators as they move to more challenging fare.

When selecting series books for classroom use, it is important to weigh multiple factors that can only be determined in your particular contexts. For instance, if you have students who resist reading, then reader appeal may weigh more heavily in your decision making than literary quality. The kind of repetitive reinforcement children get from reading series books has some value in affirming their identities as readers, even if it isn't challenging them to move to the next level intellectually. But if you have students who already enjoy stories and are ready to think about the kinds of issues they raise, you can gravitate to more well-written series books and more sophisticated extended narratives.

You may decide to introduce the first book in a series through a read-aloud with discussion, and encourage interested students to pursue additional volumes in their independent reading, especially if the only thing that recommends the series is its humor. However, if a book has interesting, well-developed characters or other features, such as challenging vocabulary or plots that lend themselves to strong discussions of cause and effect, you may find it meets your pedagogical goals to read more than one book from a particular series so that you can encourage the kinds of discussions that will help your students grow in literary understanding as well as reading fluency.

Recommended Books: Early Chapter Book Fiction Series

Note: While most second graders will still enjoy high-quality leveled readers by authors such as Peggy Parrish (Amelia Bedelia), Cynthia Rylant (Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby), Russell Hoban (Frances), and Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad, Owl, Mouse Tales), the books in this list are not part of any leveled series. Instead, they are chapter books that have a bit more heft and challenge in terms of literary sophistication.

Alder, David A. Cam Jansen. A supersleuth who solves mysteries with the help of her photographic memory. Also available for new readers is the Young Cam Jansen series. http://www.camjansen.com/

Barnes, Derrick. Ruby and the Booker Boys. Sassy, lovable 8-year-old Ruby Booker has to live down the reputation of her mischievous older brothers. http://www.derrick barnes.com/RUBY_and_the_BOOKER_BOYS.html

Barrows, Annie. Ivy and Bean. An unlikely pair of friends get into and out of funny scrapes. http://www.anniebarrows.com/ivyandbean/

Byng, Georgia. Molly Moon. An orphan who doesn't quite fit in and uses her powers as a hypnotist, time traveler, and mind reader to solve her problems. http://www.meetmollymoon.com/

Cleary, Beverly. Ramona. An 8-year-old who experiences humorous and relatable problems with friends and family. http://www.beverlycleary.com/

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Mr. Chickee. The Flint Future Detectives, Steven and Russell, have comic adventures that are part mystery and part sci-fi. Only two books so far.

Danziger, Paula. Amber Brown. Realistic fiction series that starts with Amber in third grade. Her parents are divorced and her best friend moves away. Prequels are available in a leveled series. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/fun-classroom-amber-brown-1

Draper, Sharon. Sassy. Nine-year-old African American Sassy struggles to stand out in these funny, character-driven stories.

Greenburg, Dan. Zack Files. A 10-year-old solves humorous mysteries with a fantasy twist. The TV show spin-off ages Zack to high school, but the books are suitable for independent readers in third grade.

Howe, James. Bunnicula. The Moore family has some unusual pets, including a vegetarian vampire bunny, in this child-friendly "horror" series.

Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Longstocking. The strongest girl in the world dazzles children and adults alike when she challenges social rules. Pippi's adventures have been translated into over 70 languages. http://www.pippisworld.com/pippi-longstocking.php

Look, Lenore. Ruby Lu. Eight-year-old Ruby Lu gets in and out of mischief but always has the loving support of her close-knit Asian-American family.

Lowry, Lois. Gooney Bird Greene. A highly confident second grader with a knack for storytelling. http://www.loislowry.com/index.php?option=com_djcatalog2&view= items&cid=5:the-gooney-bird-books&cid=5:the-gooney-bird-books&Itemid=185

MacDonald, Betty. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Since she first appeared in 1947, this small lady has been helping children overcome their bad habits with zany and fantastic magical cures.

McDonald, Megan. Judy Moody. An outspoken third-grader who has lots of hilarious adventures. http://www.judymoody.com/

McDonald, Megan. Stink. Judy Moody's younger brother, who imagines his way through his problems by drawing comic strips where he is a superhero. http://www.stinkmoody.com/

O'Connor, Jane. Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth. New chapter book series featuring an older Fancy Nancy, who still loves dancing, dressing up, exploring, and using big words. http://www.fancynancyworld.com/

Sachar, Louis. Marvin Redpost. In this eight-book series, Marvin has humorous problems with school, family, and friends. http://www.louissachar.com/Marvin.htm

Sachar, Louis. Wayside School. A wacky school filled with quirky characters and accessible brain teasers and puzzles that stem from rules and expectations gone awry. http://www.louissachar.com/Wayside.htm

Sharmat, Marjorie Weinman. Nate the Great. A younger version of Sherlock Holmes who solves crimes with his dog, Sludge. http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/natethegreat/

Sobol, Donald J. Encyclopedia Brown. This series offers readers a chance to solve multiple mysteries alongside boy detective Leroy Brown and his sidekick Sally Kimball.

Van Draanen, Wendelin. Shredderman. Nerdy Nolan Byrd uses his secret weapon (his brain) to become a superhero who fights bullies. http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/vandraanen/shredderman/

Whether or not they appear in series, early chapter books often focus on relationships and fitting in at school and in peer groups. Classics like Beverly Cleary's Ramona series and newer books like those by Claudia Mills serve a dual function: They remind adult readers how children of this age think and feel about things with their closely observed realism, and they help children negotiate the wider world of school and peer relationships they have entered. For instance, while most children are emotionally ready and even eager to transfer their attachment needs from their parents to their peers, some have a difficult time making that transition. They may not have emerged from Erikson's stage of trust versus distrust with a firm sense of the world as responsive and caring. Alternately, they may have had difficulty when their attempts at initiating exploration of new situations were met with punishment, shame, or other adverse reactions—resulting in a reluctance to reach out to other children. Temperament also plays a role in how they approach new situations. Reading books that focus on common problems with school and peer relationships gives children a safe place to talk indirectly about their fears and aspirations because they are ascribing those fears and aspirations to characters rather than talking directly about themselves.

9.5 Music for the Young Reader

Music instruction for young children has demonstrable benefits that go far beyond learning to play an instrument. Engaging in musical activities is an aid to fluency. Singing promotes fluency, for instance, in ways similar to that of poetry, in that word choices must be limited to words that fit the rhyme pattern and melodic line of the tune. Proper pacing is managed by the music itself, as singers using song sheets must match their reading tempo to the song beat. Children who grow up in churches that use hymnals have a considerable reading advantage, then, if their parents have shown them how to follow the written words as they learned to sing the songs.

Folk Music

In second and third grade, children have developed to the point where they can sing traditional songs in chorus with others, matching pitch, tone, and tempo. They are also usually willing to do so, enjoying the singing of traditional songs such as "I've Been Working on the Railroad," "America the Beautiful," and "This Land is your Land" very much. But they are also ready for the cultural learning that surrounds folk songs. Ann Owen has edited a series for Picture Window Books that feature a traditional song, such as "The Ants Go Marching" and "Clementine," with notes on its history and origins. Other books that feature folk songs with information that sets the song in historical and cultural context include Woody Guthrie's Riding in My Car (2012), illustrated by Scott Menchin with Guthrie's song as the text, and a fully restored version of Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land (2008), featuring lush illustrations by Kathy Jakobsen that evoke the United States of the 1920s and 1930s and help children understand the social landscapes of the Depression and the Dust Bowl years. Both books expand the context of their songs so that children can see how the songs helped shape American culture through symbols and shared experiences.

Once students have been introduced to the American folk tradition, they can expand their understanding of how folk music gets handed down from generation to generation. In Gary Golio's When Bob Met Woody: The Story of the Young Bob Dylan (2011), for instance, children are introduced to two giants of the folk tradition, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, in a way that shows how music traditions are handed down across generations. The similarly themed Passing the Music Down (2011), by Sarah Sullivan, details the story of two lesser-known performers of folk music, Melvin Wine and Jake Krack (watch Melvin and Jake here). The importance of the story these two books tell is the through-line of musical traditions in America. They are stories of how generations influence one another, thus they can easily fit into multiple strands of the curriculum, including musical traditions, folk life, regional study, and intergenerational relationships. For more advanced readers, or for a read aloud, Bonnie Christensen's Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People (2009), rounds out a unit on the importance of Woody Guthrie to American music that can be supplemented with a fascinating interview Guthrie gave in 1944 to the BBC Children's Hour program (click here).

Learning About Music

Music instruction for second and third graders focuses on, among other things, learning about famous musicians, musical styles, different instruments, and different styles of dance. For an idea of the diversity of music-themed books suitable for young readers, browse through the lists in the websites recommended in the Online Resources box. You'll notice that they include fictional stories, biographies of classical composers and jazz musicians, introductions to various instruments in the orchestra, and dance styles and dancers from around the world. Students can learn about the history of music and how important it is to multicultural understanding. Daniel J. Levitin, author of The World in Six Songs (2008), argues that songs fall into one or more of six fundamental categories: knowledge, friendship, religion, love, joy, and comfort. You could introduce these categories to your students and encourage discussion and debate over whether and how songs can be classified in this way, how they think the categories can be expanded or elaborated, and how they use music in their daily lives.

Encouraging children to draw while listening to powerful music, or to find visual images that connect to songs encourages them to listen carefully and to increase their awareness of how music creates meaning. The Common Core Standards encourage both the interpretation of illustrations as well as the production of visual displays that complement the meaning of text. Careful observation and discussion of the interaction of art, music, and text hones young readers' interpretive skills and enables them to create more successful visuals themselves. An especially innovative book to work with both audio and visual literacies is William Lach's Can You Hear It? (2006). This book features 13 works of art with evocative images and an accompanying CD. The text encourages readers to listen for various instruments and motifs while viewing the art, making connections between music and the mental images it creates.

8.1 The Alphabetic Principle

The most important visual literacy component of learning to read is what is known as the alphabetic principle. The alphabetic principle is the understanding that words consist of letters that correspond to sounds. Once children have learned to map their phonemic awareness onto specific letters, they can then use this knowledge to sound out simple, regular words by recombining the sounds in the word from left to right. As you share stories and dialogic readings of picturebooks, you are always reinforcing the sounds of words implicitly, but the alphabetic principle, like an understanding of reading itself, must be taught explicitly. Children’s literature is helpful here in two ways: through alphabet books and through books with limited vocabulary.

Alphabet Books

Alphabet books have come a long way since the New England Primer. Artists and authors use alphabet books to play with a seemingly unlimited array of concepts, so you can find an alphabet book to fit almost any interest or context that is relevant to your group of children. For instance, Stephen Johnson’s Alphabet City (1995) features photo-realistic paintings of common sights in a city that happen to resemble the capital letters of the alphabet. A capital A, for instance, can be seen in a side view of a sawhorse, while a C can be detected in the rose window of a church. Arthur Geisert’s Country Road ABC: An Illustrated Journey Through America’s Farmland (2010) uses the alphabet to organize a detailed portrait of modern farming in Iowa. Chock full of delicious big words, it may seem too sophisticated for children just learning the alphabet, but they will enjoy the pictures as well as the rich vocabulary. Just about every landscape and region boasts its own alphabet book, from Mary Azarian’s A Farmer’s Alphabet (1981), to Jo Bannatyne-Cugnut and Yvette Moore’s A Prairie Alphabet (2009), to Margret Ruur and Andrew Kiss’s Mountain Alphabet (2009). These help develop visual acuity, spatial literacy, and an enhanced vocabulary in addition to expanding cultural and alphabetic awareness.

Advanced Alphabet Books

The newer the child to the concept of the written alphabet, the simpler the book should be. For example, DK Publishing’s ABC board books for little hands, with photographs of familiar objects set against white backgrounds, are helpful for establishing the alphabetic principle for preschoolers. But any books for toddlers that introduce an object accompanied by a label can continue to be useful to kindergarteners as they learn sight words for familiar objects. Tana Hoban’s 26 Letters and 99 Cents (1987) is an example of a book that has applications across several age and ability levels. Preschoolers can name the objects and trace the upper- and lower-case letters with their fingers. Children in kindergarten and first grade can interact with more complex concepts, such as naming the various photographed objects based on their first letter, and adding and subtracting coins. The materials photographed in the book are no longer available for purchase, but the book is successful without them, and of course coins are readily available when sharing the number section of the book.

For children ages 2 and up, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989), by Bill Martin, Jr., John Archambault, and Lois Ehlert is simply a must because of its rollicking rhythms and bold colors. The popularity of the book has spawned versions for specially targeted audiences, such as a Spanish-language version, and numerous toys that engage multiple literacies. For instance, there is an alphabet block set, a board book version, a book with magnetic letters, and a fabric tree with letters that stick to it so children can enact the story as it’s being read. The audio version of the book is performed by the legendary soul musician Ray Charles.

Other rhyming alphabet books include Alphabears (1984), by Kathleen Hague, and K is for Kissing a Cool Kangaroo (2002), by Giles Andreae, and There’s a Zoo in Room 22 (2004), by Judy Sierra. Monsters ABC (2012), by Julie Richards, and Silly Monsters ABC (2011), by Gerald Hawksley, are rhyming alphabet e-books.

The goal of rhyming alphabet books is to make the text easy to memorize, but it is also important to have children focus on the shapes of the print letters as well. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom even introduces both upper- and lower-case letters and links them visually as the “grown-up” letters escort their “little” counterparts home. But all of these books demonstrate a recognition of the sequence of steps involved in learning to read, from rhyming awareness to phonological awareness to phonemic awareness to the alphabetic principle.

Once children have a basic understanding of the concept of the alphabet and what letters correspond to what sounds, there are plenty of books to expand their experiences. Rich, complex illustrations direct children’s attention to new words and develop visual discrimination and acuity. For instance, Graeme Base’s Animalia (1986) is a visual and verbal feast that children will want to linger over. The “L” page, for instance, features the text “Lazy Lions Lounging in the Local Library” accompanied by an illustration rich with objects and books whose names start with L. Finding and labeling the objects challenges children’s growing vocabulary skills as it reinforces the sound of /l/ as an initial consonant.

Many books use the alphabet as an organizing or sorting principle, which reinforces the order of the letters as well as their use in words. For instance, some poetry books, such as There’s a Zoo in Room 22 mentioned previously, and picturebooks, such as Allison Murray’s Apple Pie ABC (2011) and Audrey and Bruce Wood’s Alphabet Adventure (2001), take the alphabet as a frame for their story. While the poems and stories are what matter most to younger children, children who understand the alphabetic principle can take delight in relating the alphabet to its storied context and making predictions based on what they know about how the alphabet works.

Other books reinforce and expand children’s knowledge of the alphabetic principle by calling on that knowledge to solve puzzles and play with words and pictures. Jan Garten’s The Alphabet Tale (1994) and several books in Jean Marzollo’s I Spy series offer visual mysteries to solve by finding either the letters themselves or objects or animals that start with the letters. Kelly Bingham’s and Paul O. Zelinsky’s Z is for Moose (2012) is a hilarious play on the order of the alphabet for children who already know which letter comes next and where Moose should be in the line-up.

Explore and Reflect: Alphabet Book Variety

Search the catalog of your local library for alphabet books. Locate and read at least one example of each of the following types of alphabet book:

· a simple, straightforward book that matches letters to the names of objects that start with them;

· an alphabet book for learning sight words;

· a rhyming alphabet book;

· an alphabet book that builds vocabulary; and

· an alphabet book that features a puzzle or a mystery.

Ask a librarian to share his or her favorites. Keep an annotated record of your finds.

Leveled Books for Early Readers

Once children have a basic understanding of how the letters on the page relate to the sounds they hear, they are ready to start putting those skills to use in independent reading. As we noted in Chapter 1, most major publishers who have children’s divisions have book series known as leveled books or easy readers that are designed to help children move from an understanding of the alphabetic principle to the decoding of words. These leveled books feature a few words on each page with oversized, easy-to-read type and lots of white space so that new readers gain the confidence of moving quickly through the book. The vocabulary in the books is limited to high-frequency words and words that follow tradition rules of phonics so that they can be sounded out. The sentences are short, simple, and repetitive and do not extend beyond a single page. The books are also illustrated, so the multiliteracy skills that children have acquired will all be put to good use as they strive to decode print.

Particularly for children who struggle with learning print, motivation is key. One way to motivate students to want to read is to present them with characters they are already familiar with. Publishers contract with authors and franchises that have proven popular with children, and merchandise those characters across their products. The Random House Beginning Reader series, for instance, uses Barbie, Sesame Street characters, Disney characters, Arthur, the Berenstain Bears, Thomas the Tank Engine, DC Comics superheroes, and the Cat in the Hat as characters in their books. HarperCollins features Amelia Bedelia, Little Bear, Harold and his purple crayon, and the charming characters created by Syd Hoff. Simon and Schuster’s list of popular characters and authors includes Dora the Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants, Olivia, and Eric Carle.

Historically and oftentimes even today, the genre of early readers has been dominated by White, middle-class, suburban characters. To address this lack of early readers featuring realistic multicultural characters, independent publisher Lee and Low and education publishers Scholastic and Pacific Learning have developed early reader series with a focus on children of color.

Books for new readers use limited vocabulary and are often leveled according to various readability formulas, such as those by Fountas and Pinnell or Lexile Measures. As we noted in Chapter 1, books earn their level according to objectively measurable factors such as word count, the number of different words used, the prevalence of high-frequency words, the number of low-frequency words, and sentence length. These types of books are convenient for teachers in that they allow relatively easy assessment of children’s progress through standard grade level development. However, they can be limiting for the same reasons they are useful: The short, choppy sentences, repetition, and limited vocabulary sound very different from the smooth flow of language that children are used to hearing through quality picturebook readings and storytelling, so be sure to continue reading aloud a variety of quality stories with rich, challenging vocabulary to inspire them to become proficient enough to approach more challenging texts on their own.

An important consideration in evaluating leveled readers for use in your classroom is the richness of pictorial support, which is crucial from a multiliteracies perspective. The artwork in books that feature characters from popular culture will certainly be appealing to children in its familiarity, but you need to evaluate whether it helps children understand unfamiliar words or concepts through the appropriate use of gesture and space to illustrate those concepts.

Additionally, the quality of the storytelling is important. Stories should be internally consistent and have a solid structure, which can make them predictable, but there should also be some occasional surprises to satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. Leveled readers are often divided into short episodes or chapters. This helps children follow the narrative while they are working on their decoding skills and gives them convenient stopping points when they tire. It also readies them for early chapter books, which we will discuss in Chapter 9.

While many of the leveled books published in series are bland, some authors manage the format and requirements of early reader books quite successfully. Dr. Seuss, as we noted, pioneered the contemporary genre of beginner books, and his works remain popular. P. D. Eastman is another successful author of early readers that have stood the test of time, such as Go, Dog, Go! (1961), Are You My Mother? (1960), and The Best Nest (1968). Else Holmelund Minarik’s Little Bear books, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, were made into a TV series in 1995 after having been enjoyed by children since 1957. Arnold Lobel has created timeless characters through his Frog and Toad series, as well as his Mouse books and others. Contemporary series by Newbery Medal and Theodore Geisel Award winning author Cynthia Rylant include Henry and Mudge, Annie and Snowball, and Mr. Putter and Tabby, all of which focus on people and their beloved pets. And of course, Mo Willems’s Elephant and Piggie series now has nearly 20 books chronicling the friendship dilemmas of that unlikely but charming pair. These early reader books are sure to please because of their superior attention to quality storytelling and supportive illustrations.

For quality books for beginning readers that include these elements but are not usually included in leveled series, consult the list of the annual Theodore Geisel Award (http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/geiselaward) and the Gryphon Award (http://ccb.lis.illinois.edu/gryphon.html). Additionally, encourage children to read picturebooks on their own. Generally speaking, picturebooks that children can read independently have many of the same qualities that quality leveled readers have: large print, few words per page, rich pictorial support, and motivating storylines.

Recommended Books: Picturebooks for New Readers

Aardema, Verna. Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears. 1975. A retelling of a traditional West African tale that reveals how the mosquito developed its annoying habit. Illus. by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Arnold, Tedd. Hi! Fly Guy. 2005. When Buzz captures a fly to enter in The Amazing Pet Show, his parents and the judges tell him that a fly cannot be a pet, but Fly Guy proves them wrong.

Carle, Eric. Have You Seen My Cat? 1987. A young boy encounters all sorts of cats while searching for the one he lost.

Carle, Eric. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 1969. Follows the progress of a hungry little caterpillar as he eats his way through a varied and very large quantity of food until, full at last, he forms a cocoon around himself and goes to sleep.

Carle, Eric. The Very Quiet Cricket. 1990. A very quiet cricket who wants to rub his wings together and make a sound as do so many other animals finally achieves his wish.

Johnson, Crockett. Harold and the Purple Crayon. 1955. Harold goes for an adventurous walk in the moonlight with his purple crayon.

Keats, Ezra Jack. The Snowy Day. 1962. The adventures of a little boy in the city on a very snowy day.

Klassen, Jon. I Want My Hat Back. 2011. A bear almost gives up his search for his missing hat until he remembers something important.

Klassen, Jon. This is Not My Hat. 2012. A tiny minnow wearing a pale blue bowler hat has a thing or two up his fins in this underwater light-on-dark chase scene.

Krauss, Ruth and Johnson, Crockett. The Carrot Seed. 1945. Despite everyone’s dire predictions, a little boy has faith in the carrot seed he plants.

Martin, Jr., Bill, and Carle, Eric. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? 1983. Children see a variety of animals, each one a different color, and a mother looking at them.

Martin, Jr., Bill, and Carle, Eric. Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? 1991. Zoo animals from polar bear to walrus make their distinctive sounds for each other, while children imitate the sounds for the zookeeper.

Soto, Gary. My Little Car. 2006. Teresa loves to show off her shiny, new, pedal-powered lowrider car from Grandpa, but the toy soon looks old when she neglects it.

Tafuri, Nancy. Have You Seen My Duckling? 1984. A mother duck leads her brood around the pond as she searches for one missing duckling.

Viorst, Judith. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 1972. On a day when everything goes wrong for him, Alexander is consoled by the thought that other people have bad days too.

Waddell, Martin. Owl Babies. 1992. Three owl babies whose mother has gone out in the night try to stay calm while she is gone.

Wood, Audrey, and Wood, Don. The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. 1984. A little mouse is determined to keep the big hungry bear from eating the strawberry he picked with much effort.

Seek out early reading books that address some of the criteria Bruno Bettelheim suggests for stories that enrich children’s lives:

Does the book or poem stimulate children’s imagination?

Does the book or poem help children develop their intellect?

Does the book or poem help children clarify their emotions?

Is the story or poem attuned to children’s anxieties and aspirations?

Does the story give full recognition to children’s difficulties?

Does the book or poem suggest solutions to the problems that perturb the character, and, by extension, the readers?

(For the detailed list, see the box “Characteristics of Quality Children’s Literature” at the end of Chapter 4.)

Arnold Lobel’s early readers remain popular because they address common problems in child-friendly ways through the use of entertaining characters. Frog and Toad, Mouse, Uncle Elephant, and Owl deepen children’s understanding of the concepts of friendship, bravery, loss, and family. The Teaching Children Philosophy website (http://www.teachingchildrenphilosophy.org/), recommended as a Website to Save and Explore in Chapter 7, features discussion guides for many of Lobel’s books as well as other books that new readers can read on their own, such as Morris the Moose (Wiseman, 1991) and The Giving Tree (Silverstein, 1964). The discussion questions are specifically designed to get children thinking about the deeper issues the books address in ways that they can understand.

Most importantly, the concepts presented in the book should be relevant to the concerns of children who are newly learning to read, which requires a knowledge of what’s happening, developmentally speaking, in terms of the anxieties of children entering school, and two of their most important coping mechanisms: imagination and humor.

7.2 The Importance of Storytelling

While we can take in information in multiple ways through our senses and process that information through behaviors, graphic representations and logical arguments, stories are how we learn naturally and best. Stories show us how the pieces of the world fit together. As we listen to stories, we learn that actions have consequences and that there are reasons for the way things are. We learn about emotions—what they are, what can cause them, and how they affect behavior. We learn about the moral codes and conventions of our cultures—what's considered right and wrong, and when it's okay to break societal rules in the service of a higher order of morality. We learn about people—strange people, scary people, silly people, ordinary people. We learn about ourselves as we relate to characters and understand our own fears and aspirations in new ways. We learn about other cultures and other ways of doing things. We learn what is meaningful in life and how we can make our lives meaningful.

We learn about good and evil and what role we play in the pull between the two. Through stories, the events of our lives take a shape and point to something beyond the randomness of just stuff that happens. Stories enable life to make sense.

The process of telling stories shows our listeners that we care about them. We are sharing ourselves with them, opening up our lives to them, inviting them to know us. We are taking time with them, giving them the gift of our attention and our words. Through stories, we can offer guidance without preaching. We release the power of interpretation of our stories to the listeners, granting to them the dignity of response and of being able to think for themselves.

Explore and Reflect: The Importance of Stories in Everyday Life

See how many stories you tell, hear, or encounter throughout your day. When you wake up tomorrow, be prepared to keep a log of all the stories that you hear or tell throughout the day. Your child might tell you about something that happened at school, your mom might have a tale to tell about her friend, you might relate an experience you had at the drive-through to a colleague. Count the stories you hear on television (the news, a sitcom, the stories within the sitcom) as well as ones you read. Looking over your log, consider and write down the purpose(s) of each of the stories. What can you conclude about the many reasons we tell stories to each other and what purposes they serve in our daily lives?

Learning the Characteristics of a Story

As we noted in Chapter 5, listening to stories helps children develop their audio and linguistic literacies. Storytelling is different from conversation in that stories use sensory details to create a world that is usually different from the space and time the storyteller is immediately sharing with the audience. However, stories report conversations, so the teller might use different voices or direct speech tags to indicate who is speaking and how they sound. Oral storytelling is closer than ordinary conversation to mimicking the kinds of language children will find in written texts. As they listen to stories, then, they are learning by sound the special ways written language is used to create meaning.

In addition to the content and style of stories, and the process of telling them, storytelling also teaches children the structure of stories. As we noted in Chapter 4, stories have plot structures. They start with exposition or a narrative hook, introduce a conflict, build through complications of that conflict to a climactic moment where the outcome is assured, and then resolve themselves in some way. Stories have characters who fill the roles of good guy and bad guy, of helper or henchman, of background chorus who reflect the reader's or listener's role inside the story. Stories have settings—landscapes that direct the flow of the movement or present obstacles to be overcome—and time periods that indicate and limit what is possible. Stories have themes—ideas to communicate, lessons to learn. As children listen to stories, they internalize these structures to use in shaping their own stories.

Which bring us to the next benefit of storytelling: Storytelling creates storytellers. As children listen to stories, they begin to tell their own. As with most of their speech acts, form precedes meaning. Their first attempts at stories may make no sense at all, but you know they are stories by the way they sound: They may have a conventional beginning (such as "Once upon a time" or "This one time"), incorporate dialogue (which you can recognize by the way they change their tone of voice for characters or through the use of speech tags), have connectors (like "and then" or "so"), and eventually, they end (again with a conventional ending of some sort). When my daughter, Blair, began telling her own stories at the age of 4, she had two stock endings: Happy stories ended with a wedding, and unhappy stories ended with everyone getting eaten by dinosaurs.

This structure begins fairly early with children who are familiar with stories, but a genuine understanding of narrative emerges more slowly, beginning at around age 3 or 4. Children at this age are in the stage that Piaget called preoperational; they believe that all objects have motivations and intentions, and they use fantasy play and storytelling to make sense of both everyday and unusual things that happen to them. For instance, they might play house by imitating their own home environments, or they might respond to a fire in their neighborhood by playing out a story about the fire with their toys. By the time most children hit kindergarten, though, they can tell a simple story on their own.

Because children in the preoperational stage are not yet logical thinkers, they need stories to help them understand abstract concepts. To take another example from my own experience, my storytelling daughter Blair told me an outrageous tale on her first day of kindergarten about how she had gotten sent out of the room for being disruptive. First, she said, she had talked when the teacher was talking and was given a "green card." Then, she complained about getting the green card and got a yellow card and was asked to go to time out. She refused, and instead stood in the doorway and stomped her feet. The teacher then gave her a red card and made her stand outside until the morning break. I was mortified! When I apologized to the teacher the next morning, she looked at me curiously and said that the incident had never happened and that Blair was quiet and attentive all morning. The teacher told me that she had described her discipline system to the children—a first offense earned a green card, a second one earned a yellow card, and a third resulted in a red card. We reasoned that Blair needed a story to understand how such a sequence of events would be possible, so she made one up!

Blair's story shows how Kohlberg's theory of moral development works with Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Preoperational children cannot understand abstract moral principles or sequences of cause and effect unless they can be shown in concrete terms that relate to the children themselves. They can, however, engage in fantasy play and understand and tell simple stories. Stories with characters they can relate to can thus fill the gaps in their understanding of how actions can result in either punishment or reward.

The Development of Memory

The ability to track a series of linked events over time and ultimately create such a narrative depends on the development of memory. In turn, the development of memory depends on the ability to construct a narrative. This type of memory is crucial for intellectual development, as Lise Eliot (1999) notes,

. . . because the brain's enormous capacity to store information is what makes every kind of learning possible. Whether it's bonding with Mother, recognizing Aunt Betsy, mastering crawling, associating words with objects, or figuring out that water is wet, every mental advance depends on the brain's ability to file away experience and then use this stored information to act with greater wisdom and efficiency. (p. 330)

Memory takes different forms, of course, such as short- and long-term memory; procedural, or implicit, memory, which is the memory of how to do things; and conscious, or explicit, memory, which is the memory of life events. Every part of the brain is involved in the development of memory.

The relative immaturity of babies' brains means that memory develops slowly. The first sorts of memories that babies develop are implicit ones and act more like conditioned responses than actual memories. Babies can recognize familiar sensory input almost immediately; we know this because they pay more attention to new sensory inputs than they do to ones they are familiar with. Recall memory, which is the ability to remember things that aren't visible or present, emerges at around eight months, when babies first start showing signs of object permanence, separation anxiety, and word-thing correspondence as we discussed in Chapter 5. These early experiences create neural pathways that are crucial to brain development, habits, and later intelligence, but babies still suffer from what is called infantile amnesia, which means that they don't develop conscious memories until the areas of the brain responsible for long-term storage are sufficiently mature.

However, what they do develop prior to conscious memories are habits of behavior, so it is very important that we pay attention to our own actions and speech patterns from the start. Toddlers, for instance, can perform what researchers call "deferred imitation." Deferred imitation refers to the ability to repeat an action that they have been shown in a laboratory setting. While 8-month-olds can repeat the action up to 24 hours later, 14-month-olds, with no intermediate exposure to the action, can return to the lab up to four months later and repeat what they saw the researcher do with the props they are given (Eliot, 1999, p. 346). This is a rather stunning warning to parents and caregivers; as Eliot notes, "If toddlers repeat, even several months later, actions they've seen only once or twice, just imagine how watching their parents' daily activities must affect them. Everything they see and hear over time—work, play, fighting, smoking, drinking, reading, hitting, laughing, words, phrases, and gestures—is stored in ways that shape their later actions, and the more they see of a particular behavior, the likelier it is to reappear in their own conduct" (p. 347). Deferred imitation research also corrected the erroneous assumption that children can't remember what they can't talk about. Eighteen- and nineteen-month-old children participating in these experiments were able to ask about things they remembered from their prior visits at thirteen and fourteen months old when they could not talk, so researchers now believe that children under the age of six can remember more than they can talk about (Eliot, p. 348).

Despite this early development of recall memory, however, children's ability to remember events in their lives grows only in conjunction with their ability to tell stories. Stories put events and people together in settings and relationships of cause and effect. Studies have shown that when parents and caregivers ask 3-year-olds to remember things, such as what they did, who they were with, and what happened, children's memories improve (Eliot, 1999, p. 350). This sort of reinforcement is very helpful for children since they need to learn to build narratives of events in order to store them as memories, and the interaction helps confirm and elaborate what they think they remember. You'll recall that age 3 is also the beginning of the development of fantasy play, so it is sometimes difficult for children to distinguish between something they actually did and something they played at or pretended they did; while they can distinguish between reality and fantasy, they may become so engrossed in their play that they lose track of whether it was real or not.

Memory, the ability to use language, and a child's sense of story grow in conjunction with one another; together, they are absolutely necessary skills for learning print literacy. Storytelling is the single best way to help children develop all three of these competencies.

The Development of a Theory of Mind

Another competence that storytelling both requires and helps develop is a theory of mind (ToM). As we noted briefly in Chapter 5, theory of mind is the ability to imagine that other people have intentions, beliefs, desires, and knowledge that may be different from your own. It's called a theory because the mind's processes are not visible. A person could be plotting world domination or wondering what sort of pie she wants for dessert, but if she doesn't verbalize or make some gesture or facial expression that reveals her intentions, no one knows what she's thinking.

Developmentally speaking, a theory of mind arrives upon the scene when children are around 4 years old, but as with most skills, it requires a scaffolding to build on. The scaffolding of theory of mind has three parts:

One of the first components is joint attention, which we discussed in Chapter 1. Very young children can point to things and can understand that the gesture of pointing is meant to direct their attention to something. What they learn from this is that people pointing have the intention to refer to something. This is foundational for a theory of mind—children need to understand that, just as they themselves do, other people have intentions, plans, and purposes.

Another crucial competence, one related to audio literacy, is understanding the use of language to make things happen or change people's behavior. For instance, parents use a distinct tone of voice to soothe children. They may perhaps have a bedtime ritual that includes a particular song. Over time, that song or tone of voice becomes so associated with sleep that a child who does not want to go to sleep may react with creative forms of resistance when he hears it. This shows that the child understands the functional use of language and the intentions behind it; he knows what his parents want, even if they haven't actually said it. Children learn what people's intentions are from their tone of voice.

A third component necessary for the development of a theory of mind is understanding the connection between others' emotions and their actions. Visual and gestural literacy is key in the development of this understanding, as children learn to interpret cues such as slumped shoulders, frowns, skipping, and so forth, as external expressions of various internal states. Even children whose theory of mind is compromised, such as children on the autism spectrum, can be taught to read these sorts of visual and gestural cues. For neurotypical children, these cues are a precursor to understanding how a person is feeling, but for children on the autism spectrum, they may serve as a substitute for that understanding.

Storytelling engages all of these components of a theory of mind. Storytellers direct joint attention and use their voices and gestures in functional ways to display emotions and actions and in direct ways to express what characters are feeling and what those feelings cause them to do.

As children listen to stories, and later tell stories themselves, they must develop empathy in order to understand why the characters behave as they do. They may start by projecting their ideas about the world onto the characters, but soon they will encounter characters who do not respond as they would have. By puzzling through these different responses, they begin to sense that different people think differently. They will also encounter stories where they know things the character doesn't know. This helps them figure out that other people might have different perspectives or knowledge from what they know. This developmental achievement is critical to social interaction, because it helps us understand why people do things. In real life, it's sometimes difficult to see what motivates people or how things will ultimately turn out. Stories, on the other hand, by presenting whole patterns of cause and effect, motivation and behavior, actions and consequences, enable us to reflect on possibilities and think about other people.

Because of their ability to assist in the development of language, memory, narrative structure, and theory of mind, stories are critically important as children enter preschool and kindergarten where shared attention, memory, linguistic competence, and social interaction need to come together for the purpose of acquiring print literacy. Thus, it is clear that children who have not been adequately prepared for school need to listen to stories, but it is also clear that children who have been reared in literacy-rich environments also need to listen to stories. A child's sense of narrative isn't really fully developed until they are 8 or 9 years old, and indeed, stories—telling them and listening to them—remain one of the most important factors of our experience throughout our lives.

6.1 Visual Literacy in the Prereading Stage: Seeing the World and the Self

Unlike hearing, the sense of vision does not develop before birth. In fact, it takes an entire year for babies to acquire a mature sense of vision, which means that the right experiences at the right time can make a real difference. Fortunately, most of these experiences rely on biological processes that occur naturally and don't require specific types of stimuli, but it is important to be aware of these normal processes in order to detect problems early. In terms of developing visual literacy, however, it is also important to understand the psychoanalytic importance of vision as well as the biological sense so that we have a complex understanding of the importance of image in a developing child's life.

At birth, babies don't see well at all. In fact, their focal length is only about 8 inches, which is typically how close a mother or other caregiver holds them while feeding or cuddling. You can see how elegant this design is if you consider the wealth of visual information that surrounds us on a daily basis. Imagine how chaotic and over stimulating the world would be to new babies if they could see it all! By only being able to really see the faces and things closest to them, they can shut out extraneous stimuli until their brains are sufficiently developed to cope with and categorize the vast amount of visual content in a single environment.

The blurriness of their vision may also help us understand what psychoanalysts believe is characteristic of early experience. Freud and his followers theorized that infants experience the world as an extension of themselves. Chapter 5 referred to the dual relation between the mother and the child in the fourth trimester; if babies can't clearly see the distinctions between themselves and other people and things, they probably don't have a clear sense of boundaries between themselves and the objects that touch them. This sense that they are not separate and alone but part of the world at large lays the foundation for a sense of trust and belonging.

Books like Mem Fox's Time for Bed (1993) and Denise Fleming's Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy (2010) visually reinforce this sense of belonging by featuring baby animals snuggled close to their parents in environments especially suited for them. While these books are deeply invested in Erikson's initial stage of trust vs. distrust for children under 2 years old, older preschool children benefit from the reminder of their connectedness to loved ones and the world, especially at night or before a nap, when they will be alone. A book that features a similar visual message for older children (4 and up) is Joyce Carol Thomas's Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea (1995). Floyd Cooper's illustrations in this book emphasize the family's connections to each other and to their natural environment. Even though children's vision after about 4 months old is no longer blurry, unconscious memories of that time created by illustrations where characters blend in with their pictorial worlds provide strength and comfort by evoking a sense of belonging.

Visual Development in the First 6 Months

Babies also literally cannot see what's in front of them, especially for the first two months. Rather, because of the immature development of the physical features of the eye, they can see only what is on the edges of their visual field. We call this peripheral vision. Again, consider the way a baby is held while being fed. The bottle or breast is right in front of their nose, but the mother's or caregiver's face is off to the side, so they are able to see it better there than if the mother was holding them face to face.

Babies can recognize their mother's face from a few hours after birth, and they do prefer it over other faces, but they are also generally better at seeing a slowly moving face (a face that's talking or singing to them) than a stationary one. They can track slow movement of an object, especially if it starts in their peripheral vision, though they tend to lose it when it passes directly in front of their eyes. Babies also have trouble seeing things unless they contrast highly with their background. Researchers speculate that this is why babies can see faces—the parts of the face such as eyes, brows, hairlines, and mouths contrast with the skin around them and are more often than not in motion (Eliot, 1999).

What all this means for visual literacy is that, for the first two months anyway, babies are listening to people reading to them, but they are not looking at the book unless that book is full of things they can see, such as high contrast, patterned blocks of color or black and white, held off to the side but still close to the baby's eyes. Babies at this age also become bored with visual stimuli fairly quickly and are attracted to new stimuli rather than things they have seen before, with the exception, of course, of family faces.

Right at 2 months, however, babies' eye apparatuses have developed to the point where they can stare straight ahead and for a brief time can't do anything else. This phenomenon is called "obligatory looking" because the baby appears to be unable to exercise any control over her eye movements (Eliot, 1999, p. 215). This compulsion to stare fixedly at whatever is in front of the baby's sight line is great for bonding with a parent or sibling who is gazing back at the baby, but not so great if the stimuli is painful, like a bright light, so it's something to take advantage of but also to be on the lookout for.

Between the ages of 3 and 6 months, babies regain the ability to control their eye movement, and now it's even better than before. Now they can not only track objects but they start to be able to anticipate the path of the object, looking a little ahead of it as it moves. This is a significant development, because it indicates that babies can now choose where they want to look. From this point forward, visual acuity develops rapidly; the blurriness recedes, and babies are able to focus on things that are farther away.

Growth in acuity continues until a child is 5 years old, but the most marked development occurs during the first six months if there are no problems such as congenital cataracts, a clouding that can obstruct the passage of light, or strabismus, which is a condition in which the eyes are not aligned with each other, preventing them from focusing on the same point in space. By 3 months old, normally developing babies can see all of the basic color distinctions that adults can, and with the growth in acuity comes a higher degree of contrast sensitivity, which means that babies can begin to see less saturated shades of color such as pastels, though they still prefer highly saturated colors until they are 8 or 9 years old (Winner, 1982, p. 139). Interestingly, 4-month-olds actually begin developing what's known as hyperacuity, which is an ability to notice detail at a level that should not be possible given the physical properties of the eye but helps explain why young children are so sensitive to small details in pictures that adults usually screen out as unimportant. While 4 months old is probably too early to bring on the Where's Waldo? books, it is certainly time to share board books with high-contrast, high-interest illustrations, such as Vicky Ceelen's captivating photo books of baby/animal doubles (Baby! Baby!, 2008; Baby Nose to Baby Toes, 2009) or The Global Fund for Children's colorful Global Babies (2006).

The ability to see in 3-D also develops in the first four months of life. In a baby's first few months, input from each eye is channeled separately and competes for space within the baby's brain. If the competition is fair, that is, if both eyes are capable of seeing equally well, then the visual cortex develops an equal amount of space for processing the input for each eye, and then it recombines the input to produce a binocular, or three-dimensional, effect. If something goes wrong during the critical period of development, however, due to strabismus or some other interference, then binocular vision is permanently disabled. In some ways, however, this helps explain a child's ability to recognize two-dimensional drawings, such as icons, as representations of three-dimensional objects. The path of development indicates that parts of our brains are prewired for two-dimensional viewing and that while we develop the capacity for three-dimensional vision, the new system doesn't entirely replace the old.

In terms of sharing books with infants, then, the principles that we discussed in Chapter 3 are relevant here: Babies respond best to high-contrast, brightly colored images that are either two-dimensional or photographic in their representation. They crave patterns early, because their brains are developing their visual centers and patterns help establish neural pathways that are relevant to their cultural experience. For instance, studies have shown that children who lived in "carpentered" environments—that is, houses or apartments—are more sensitive to horizontal and vertical angles, while children reared in a traditional Canadian Indian village where the families live in teepees have a greater visual awareness of diagonal lines (Annis & Frost, 1973). This demonstrates how experience with visual culture makes a difference in how we see, and argues for enrichment of the visual space in order to develop an expansive visual literacy.

Vision and the Development of a Sense of Self

Vision is also vitally important in terms of developing a sense of self. Indeed, Freudian psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan proposed that our understanding of self is predominantly a result of interaction with visual images (2006). Somewhere between the ages of 6 and 18 months, babies recognize themselves in a mirror. This marks an important time in a baby's life that Lacan called the "mirror stage." As we've discussed, babies don't quite have a sense that the various parts of their bodies are wholly theirs, and they don't quite understand where their body stops and the rest of the world starts. Thus they experience the mother's body or their blanket as an extension of their own bodies. When they recognize themselves in the mirror, a significant change takes place in their self-understanding. The image they see in the mirror does in fact seem whole and complete, and, because of their visual development, it's no longer blurry. It has complete boundaries and is a separate being.

Most importantly, though, the baby in the mirror seems competent and independent. Whereas, for instance, a baby might hit herself in the head accidentally because she lacks fully competent motor control, the baby in the mirror appears to be moving its parts intentionally, more like the others the baby has been observing for the past several months. So the baby is very excited to discover herself in the mirror, because that baby in the mirror is much more like the others the baby sees than she is like the self she feels herself to be. Of course there is a great deal of speculation involved in this theoretical model because babies can't tell us what they feel or think, but Lacan's speculations about infants are borne out by the way we continue to use mirror images for the rest of our lives. We often use mirrors to check what we look like, how we appear, regardless of how we actually feel.

Lacan also stresses that the recognition of the baby in the mirror as the self requires an identification with the image; that baby over there is somehow the same as "me" over here. Books with mirrors in them most often reinforce this identification through the use of identifying words; they will show a series of objects before they show a mirror and indicate to the baby (through the person reading to him or her) that the mirror image is the baby. This is, of course, both true and not true; the baby in the mirror is an image of the baby. But the baby is fascinated by that image, and, like adult dancers or fitness trainers, he uses that mirror image to self-correct, to organize movements, to see if what the facial expression or gesture feels like is in fact what it looks like. Physical and occupational therapy environments for special needs children often make full use of this fascination by lining the lower walls with mirrors so that children get visual reinforcement for their actions; this technique would be useful for classroom design for neurotypical children as well. Once children recognize the image, they come to rely on it even more than they rely on what their bodies are telling them. Mirror images help them feel stable and continuous even if their bodies aren't cooperating. They use their mirror images as models for what they feel and how they see themselves and others. According to Lacan, this sets a mental structure in place; from then on, babies (and adults) use images more than sensual experience to organize their world and their sense of self.

We can synthesize this way of thinking about development with Erik Erikson's stage model. As discussed in earlier chapters, Erikson identified the first stage of psychosocial development as one of developing trust in the environment and the caregivers. This sense of trust is reinforced through consistent care, touch, and vocal reassurances. Once trust has been established, however, the baby experiences a growing need for autonomy and independence according to Erikson's stage model. This corresponds to Lacan's idea that the baby is attracted to the seeming independence and self-control of the baby in the mirror. It also corresponds to what we have discussed about the physical ability of the baby to move away from the mother, separation anxiety, and the ability to represent an absent object with a mental image and a word. In Lacan's articulation of the mirror stage, the baby's first sense of autonomy is found in the visual image.

Erikson places this stage at around 2–3 years, and contrasts autonomy with shame—that is, the project of children in this developmental stage is to get control over their bodies and achieve an early sense of independence, and if they can't, they experience shame and self-doubt. The problem, of course, is that bodies are hard to get control of, and hence the image, which appears to be in control, is much more attractive than the body the child is struggling to master.

The result, according to Lacan, is that we start to develop our identity by relying more on images than on our own feelings. This has huge implications for visual literacy. Children's literature researchers have emphasized for years that children need to "see themselves in books," because if they don't, they feel devalued by mainstream culture and invisible (Chall, Radwin, French, & Hall, 1979; Larrick, 1965; Sims, 1982). Underlying this assumption is the psychic structure that we have just described; it isn't just in the mirror that we look for images to identify or disidentify with, but everywhere. Babies love to look at books that feature other babies because those babies are models for imitation, and they help shore up a baby's developing sense of self. But their visual acuity means that they are sensitive to skin color and facial features, so it is important to use books that feature a diverse set of baby models. These babies will also provide models for action and the expression of emotions. They expand the realm of possibility for actions and emotions as well. As adults point out facial expressions and gestures to the baby and code them with words that represent them, they reinforce the structure of personal identification with representations in books, an important literacy skill to develop.

As children grow older, their developmental needs evolve to include images of children engaging in activities that they can imitate, as well as stories that excite their imaginations and expand their possibilities for pretend play and personal identification. As they move into Erikson's third stage of initiative vs. guilt (around 3–5 years old), they engage in the kinds of imaginative play that makes them feel powerful. They might play "house," for instance, so that they get the chance to decide what's for dinner and when it's time for bed, or they might go further afield and play at occupations or fantasy quests.

The books they need and prefer at this stage show child characters behaving more independently and playing with power. For instance, Mini Grey's Traction Man character, who is featured in three books so far (Traction Man Is Here, 2005; Traction Man Meets Turbo Dog, 2008; and Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey, 2012), shows the kind of imaginative play a child can engage in with an action figure and ordinary household objects. Picturebook presentations of folk tales, such as Julius Lester's and Jerry Pinkney's Sam and the Tigers: A Retelling of Little Black Sambo (1996) are also popular at this age as they often show less-powerful characters overcoming obstacles. Finally, domestic stories of common problems, such as those confronted by Russell Hoban's Frances (Bedtime for Frances, 1960; A Birthday for Frances, 1968; Bread and Jam for Frances, 1964) and Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola (I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato, 2000; I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed, 2001; I Am Absolutely Too Small for School, 2003) are appealing because they help children see that their situations, such as not wanting to go to bed, coping with jealous or anxious feelings, establishing food preferences, and so forth, are not unique.

Goals, Methods, and Materials for Promoting Visual Literacy

As young children become more experienced with visual representations of people, places, and things, different elements of a picture will take on meaning. This is where conversation with adults is key. Using the knowledge of how pictures work, adults can talk with children about how they read the pictures—what they see, how they feel about what they see, and why they feel that way.

As we noted in Chapter 5, it is important to pay attention to what and how children like to play. You will want to then find books that represent those activities so that children understand that books are places where they can find things they like. Concept books are especially important at this stage, because children are not only learning about themselves, but they are also amassing a huge amount of visual information about the world, and they are discerning enough to detect even small differences, which will help them with the abstract skill of categorizing as well as the important visual literacy skill of differentiation among details.

Hand in hand with viewing visual materials is creating them. Provide children with a range of artistic materials and the support they need to use them, paying attention to developmental abilities. Very young children, for instance, can work with edible "paints" such as chocolate or butterscotch pudding, although all materials should be nontoxic. Encourage children to imitate their favorite pictures—don't worry that this will stifle their creativity. Imitation, after all, is the first way we learn anything, with innovation coming after. As children grow older, expand the kinds of art materials they have access to so that they can experiment with collage art, colored pencils, chalk, and paints in imitation of their favorite picturebook artists.

As adults share books with very young children, then, there are certain goals to keep in mind with regard to visual literacy in the prereading stage. As with audio and linguistic literacy at this stage, the goal is not so much to push children into early recognition of print, although distinguishing between the symbols that carry writing and the pictures will likely happen along the way. Instead, the goals have to do with helping children develop visual acuity, that is, strengthening their attention to pictorial detail (although it will likely be far better than yours, so it's unclear who will be teaching whom!), pattern recognition, and culturally informed color meanings.

You are also sensitizing them to the visual codes and values of their culture, so it is important to include a range of diverse images. This does not mean you reject a book that includes characters of only one race or ethnicity or that features mothers in aprons. Instead, the important thing is the range and aggregate of visual literacy experiences, so pay close attention to the images across the range of books you share, making sure you include books with characters of all ethnicities and genders, as well as positive portrayals of children with disabilities. Different artistic styles are also important to introduce at this stage, as this is when young children are absorbing and storing the visual images they will work with as they engage with texts that paint word pictures rather than illustrated texts.

Teaching Ideas: Visual Literacy

Classroom Design

Create zones in your space that are organized by color.

Minimize visual clutter.

Introduce a shape and then have children find examples of that shape throughout the environment.

Have a class mascot—a small, colorful figure that is cut out and laminated. Put the figure in a different place each day, and give a small prize to the child who finds it first.

Place interesting visual materials at different eye levels around the space. For instance, place the panels for a sequential story on the wall at crawling height.

Play the DVDs of BBC's Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, without sound, in a corner of the room. The stunning visuals will captivate young viewers who are interested in the natural world.

Look at a few of the books from Joseph Slate's and Ashley Wolff's Miss Bindergarten series. Look closely at the classroom design and the types of activities that are depicted, and draw ideas from these illustrations.

Visual Activities

Play visual discrimination games, such as those found here:

http://www.eyecanlearn.com/

http://barbarasmithoccupationaltherapist.com/visualperceptual.html

http://www.ehow.com/video_4403215_teaching-visual-discrimination -montessori.html

Use simple patterns at snack time—an apple slice, a piece of cheese, an apple slice, a piece of cheese on a plate. Have children create the pattern and position the food.

Encourage sorting tasks—small objects, types of toys.

Provide lots of books with differing artistic styles. Talk about the illustrations as you share the story. Never rush through a reading; instead, invite lingering over illustrations and attention to detail. Listen to the children and practice shared attention.

Encourage imitation of artwork. Provide a range of art supplies and encourage experimentation.

Lead children through visualization exercises to develop their "inner eye." Have them close their eyes and remember their bedrooms from that morning. What did they see when they woke up? What color are their pajamas? Their sheets? What toys do they have in their room? This activity can also be done after you have read the children a story—have them close their eyes and lead them through remembering details from the book.

6.2 Gestural Literacy in the Prereading Stage: Physical Expressions of Meaning

For children who are reared by deaf parents or those who have a disability that will interfere with oral language development, gesture is essential to literacy acquisition. The features of American Sign Language (ASL)—that is, its vocabulary and grammar—develop in much the same way as oral language does for hearing children. That is, children absorb the language used in their environment, and, given rich interaction with adults and siblings, develop a natural facility with the structure and use of the language that is then somewhat compromised by the introduction of metalinguistic awareness, as we noted in Chapter 5.

It is a good thing for all children to learn a few signs as early as possible, for two reasons. First, young children understand more than they can say. Their receptive vocabulary (words they understand) is more advanced than their expressive vocabulary (words they can say), and motor development and gestural control precede the ability to produce verbal language, so sign language can serve as a bridge to prevent the frustration of not being understood. I remember when a friend called one day and asked me to teach her daughter the sign for "finished," because she had taken to clearing her high chair tray with a dramatic swoop when she didn't want any more food; mom was tired of cleaning cereal off the walls and ready for her daughter to have a more controlled communication option!

A second reason for learning signs is that it adds to children's understanding that concepts, ideas, and emotions can be symbolized and expressed in multiple ways. Just as children learn that words and pictures can represent objects, activities, and emotions, they need to understand that gestures not only perform actions but also represent them. Several years later, then, they might read independently a passage like this from Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things:

Then my dad opened the box.

His whistling stopped.

His breathing stopped.

His feet stopped.

Then he staggered backward.

"WHAAAAAAAAAAT IS THIS?" he wailed. "Johnny Astro, what happened to you?" he cried.

Then he really cried. He put his head in his hands, and his shoulders went up and down. (Look, 2008, pp. 90–91)

With a strong sense of gestural literacy, children can get a true sense of just how upset Alvin's father is by the way he uses his body. When you stop whistling, you might be sort of upset. When your breathing stops and you stagger backward, it's much worse. But when you cry and your shoulders move up and down, you are not just a little upset; you are sobbing. Understanding that gestures communicate feelings and actions enables children to picture scenes as they read them and feel the emotions of the characters along with them. In fact, being able to read and understand the language of gestures is one of the strongest ways to create empathy, which is a crucial skill for building relationships and developing personal character as well as becoming a strong reader (Keen, 2010).

There are many books on sign language for babies readily available in the child care section of the bookstore, but the most useful signs to begin with are the ones for "eat," "more," and "finished." Useful, everyday signs can be found at this website by clicking on the dictionary and typing in the word you want: http://lifeprint.com/. Teaching sign language to babies is accomplished simply by accompanying the activity itself and your verbal expression of the word with the sign every time you use it. Interestingly, studies have shown that early signing actually improves verbal fluency when children do begin to speak, possibly because they have been using an accessible form of expressive communication all along.

Learning the Meanings of Facial Expressions and Body Movements

Gestural literacy is not limited to signing. In fact, we all use gestures as a natural part of our communication; facial expression, hand gestures, eye movements, nods and head shaking or tilting are all gestures that are integral to communicating our meaning. As children grow in their social environment, they learn to read and reproduce these gestures. They also have to learn what gestures and body movements are socially appropriate in various settings. As with language development, adults and siblings provide models, direct instruction, and feedback during the learning process, and children test their gestures and adapt them according to the responses they receive.

Gestural literacy is important when it comes to understanding visual information and making inferences from print texts. For instance, in Anthony Browne's How Do You Feel? (2011), the character demonstrates a range of feelings. In each picture, Browne changes the colors, body postures, and size of the character to provide a visual representation of a feeling. For instance, when the character is happy, the colors are bright with high contrast, and the character is shown in a wide-legged, open-armed stance. The pocket on his overalls is even shaped into a smile with buttons for eyes. By contrast, when the character is scared, his pant legs are outlined with jiggly lines, and his arms are pulled close to his body. These body postures and colors, accompanied by a word that describes the feeling, produce a montage that forms an association and creates meaning. When I am happy, I feel expansive, wide open, and big; but when I am scared, I feel small, closed in, and shaky.

Learning these codes of visual and gestural style is both a biological and a social achievement. It's biological because our bodies respond to situations in physical ways. For instance, when we have to give a performance, many of us experience stage fright. We literally shake with fear. This is because our muscles want to contract—to regress into a fetal position that protects our body from perceived outside threats. When we force them not to do this, the muscles contract involuntarily with the effort, and we shake as a result. When children are extremely happy, they are likely to express it physically by jumping up and down, which is another way to release nervous energy.

Learning these visual and gestural codes is also a social and cultural achievement because we mirror postures that we see as expressing meaning. Two-year-olds mug for the camera in specific ways because they have learned the codes of picture-taking from watching others and looking at pictures. Children pretending to be monsters do so in very stylized and remarkably similar ways, considering that monsters are imaginary and thus could take on any number of postures. So gestural style is a combination of innate and learned behaviors, and these behaviors assist literacy development in two ways: (a) by being an expression of meaning all by themselves, and (b) by enabling children to infer meaning from the suggestion of gestures in print and visual representations.

Gesture's Role in Establishing Rituals

Another crucial aspect of gestural literacy is its role in creating a sense of ritual. So much of human activity takes place in a ritual format—domestic habits of dining together and preparing for bed, waiting in line, communal gathering and listening, playing on teams, going to church—that much of parenting and schooling involves teaching children to participate in and adjust to the patterns of ritual behavior. In ritual, we must attune our bodies to others participating in the ritual activity. This creates a sense of community and helps soothe anxiety, because our own emotional states are regulated, mirrored, and affirmed by the presence of others sharing those emotional states.

Parents, caregivers, and educators facilitate participation in rituals by teaching young children songs, chants, and action rhymes; by establishing a time and place for reading; and by adopting a reading voice (which is noticeably different from a getting-ready voice or a playing voice or a I've-just-about-had-it voice). These special uses of gesture and language require that children adjust their movements, rhythms, and volume so that they are in step with others, or in the case of personal rituals, in step with a preestablished pattern. Researchers believe that this attunement is one of the reasons why we engage in ritual in the first place, because it relieves stress by regulating our bodies and hearkening back to the sense of communicative musicality and connectedness we felt with our early caregivers (Dissanayake, 2009; Eckerdal&Merker, 2009).

One of the most important aspects of the ritual of reading together is the development of joint attention, as we discussed in Chapter 1. Joint attention is facilitated by pointing, which, surprisingly enough, is a gesture most babies can do very early, although parents don't likely recognize it until they are looking for it. But pointing is essential for the development of language as well as other aspects of literacy development, such as learning that things can be represented in different ways. For instance, pointing to a picture of a baby's nose while saying "nose" and touching the baby's nose, encodes three registers— the image, the sound, and the touch—for the concept of nose. Soon enough, the baby will come to realize that the sound "nose" refers to a picture of noses and the baby's own nose, and this will set the stage for understanding that the letters n-o-s-e are yet another way of referring to the same concept.

Goals, Methods, and Materials for Promoting Gestural Literacy

Because children are natural mimics, gestural literacy can be modeled, pointed out, and discussed, rather than taught through direct instruction. Most well-illustrated storybooks that feature characters offer an opportunity to discuss gestures and what they look like. The most explicit instruction for the children's own gestural literacy will likely come through negative feedback, where children are told not to behave in a certain way in a certain place or time. In most settings, though, children will take on the behaviors of those around them. For instance, if children sit with their parents in church, they will eventually learn to sit and stand at the appropriate times, sing when others sing, and remain quiet when others are quiet. A similar pattern of routines develops in classrooms as well.

It is important, though, that gestural literacy be intentionally used to enhance communication and ritual behavior. This is where dramatic play comes in. Acting out stories is not only great fun but it helps develop cooperative behaviors and planning skills; and it encourages literacy skills such as fluency, character understanding, and story arcs.

Teaching Ideas: Gestural Literacy

Reading Aloud

Overemphasize your own gestures when reading or telling a story—be a ham!

When reading, point to objects and encourage children to point so that they can develop the skill of shared attention.

Talk about pictures of characters in books. Ask how the character is feeling and how the children know how he is feeling from the picture.

Have children imitate the gesture of a character in a book, and ask how they feel while they are doing it. Remind them that this is how the character must feel as well.

Games, Action Rhymes, and Finger Plays

Increase your repertoire of action rhymes and finger plays to teach to children. The upcoming list "Recommended Books: Professional Resources for Storytimes and Action Rhymes" suggests a few sources.

Play Feelings Charades: Whisper a feeling to a child and have that child act out that feeling while the other children guess what the feeling is. Alternately, have them act out an action, such as eating an apple or swimming. Later in the year, once you have shared many books with them, have them act out a character from a book you have read.

Play the Pass-It-On game: Arrange children in a circle. Have them pass an imaginary object from one person to another, imagining how it would feel—a hot potato, a baby, a porcupine, a heavy object. When each child has had a turn passing the object, call out, or have the children call out, a new object to pass.

Play the Mirror game: Divide children up in pairs. One of each pair is the mirror. The mirror has to imitate the actions and expressions of the partner. After a few minutes, have children switch roles.

Dance and Drama

Have free dance time every day. Use different types of music, and make sure you join in the dancing. Don't worry about looking silly.

Invite community dancers in to demonstrate and teach their skills. Alternately, call a dance school and ask if you can visit the studio. Dance schools will often offer a free class for a day care since they are usually not busy during the day.

Stage a play. This may seem ambitious, but it's really quite doable for preschoolers. Have the children choose a story, and then decide what characters, costumes, and props they will need. Ask for volunteers for parts. Since they are not yet readers, you may choose to narrate, or the children could provide their own dialogue. Practice, practice, practice, and encourage them to reflect on and critique their performance, thinking about how they could make it better. Then invite parents in for the performance!

Photo Book of Facial Expressions

Have children make a list of emotions: surprise, anger, happiness, sadness, confusion, etc. Then have them experiment with making faces to show these emotions. Take digital photos of their faces making the expressions, and put them in a book.

6.3 Tactile Literacy in the Prereading Stage: Expanding the Sensual Field

Tactile literacy encompasses the senses of touch, taste, and smell, all of which have both biological and cultural components. As with gestural literacy, babies and young children need experiences in each of these areas in order to produce mental representations that enable them to establish their perception of their own bodies and a full understanding of the world that surrounds them. Rich sensory experience creates mental models that children can then re-imagine through words alone, a process essential to being a strong reader.

The sense of touch is not only crucial to young children's well-being, it's also one of their most well-developed senses at birth (Eliot, 1999). Touch refers to four distinct sensations: (a) the feeling that something is in contact with your skin, (b) temperature, (c) pain, and (d) proprioception, which is the ability to feel your body in space, both in terms of position and movement. Interestingly, for babies, touch is closely related to vision; in the first few months of life, vision alone isn't well-developed enough for babies to fully understand three-dimensional objects or images of them, so they touch them in order to see them. Additionally, it's important to know that infants' touch sensitivity is sharper in their mouths than in their hands. This is why everything they can access, including books, goes straight to babies' mouths, and why special books, such as board books, cloth books, and books made of waterproof vinyl are created to accommodate this sort of soggy exploration.

By 9 months of age, most children have successfully mastered the pincer grasp, which will enable them to turn pages successfully. However, their control of their large and small muscle groups is not that precise, so board books are best for infants' independent exploration. As noted previously, they will point to things that are interesting to them, and the reward of various textures in touch-and-feel books, such as Kunhardt's Pat the Bunny (1940) will encourage them to linger and explore. This exploration is extremely important to brain development. Studies conducted with rats show that when rats are given new toys to explore through touch, their cerebral cortexes thicken, with the result that these rats reared in enriched environments were demonstrably cleverer than rats reared in ordinary environments (Diamond, 1990). As the rats become accustomed to their toys, they grow disinterested and their cortexes begin to shrink. The lesson for developing tactile literacy to be drawn from this experiment is that children need novel sensory experiences to encourage brain development. Going to the library once a week to get a new selection of board books, and introducing books that have interesting features for children to explore, such as textures to touch, pull-tabs, and lift-the-flap features will help stimulate not only an interest in books but also encourage growth in the cerebral cortex.

Book apps for tablets and other devices also offer opportunities for tactile stimulation since the kinds of touch children use create different effects. Pop Out! The Tale of Peter Rabbit, an app by Loud Crow Interactive, Inc., for instance, requires a child to swipe a finger along a simulated tab at the bottom of the screen to move the bunny in the picture or touch various pictures on the screen to create different effects. Other apps for very young children activate features by having the child shake or tilt the device. In an ironic reversal, the children's book Press Here (2011) by Hervé Tullet imitates an app by directing children to press on dots on the page, which then change with the page turn, simulating the interactivity of an electronic device. Children enjoy this book enormously until they learn the secret—that the dots will change whether they follow the directions or not. This realization represents a growth in intelligence—and indicates that it's time to move on to more stimulating fare.

Taste and smell are represented in books rather than directly stimulated by them, although children who spend a lot of time in bookstores and libraries do develop a strong associative response to the smell of books. Although infants react to smells by turning away from unpleasant ones and turning toward familiar or pleasant ones, this sense of discrimination is not fully developed until they are 3 years old and is closely linked to familiarity and culture. Thus, what one child learns to experience as a good smell may be "yucky" to another child. Strong smells in a book, whether good or bad, are often indicated visually through the use of a tornado-shaped swirl emanating from the source of the smell. This helps children understand the way smells, which are invisible, start from a particular source and travel through the air.

Books for young children often feature food, because food is central to human experience. Through nonfiction, children can learn about what foods different animals eat, cultural differences in foodways, and the kinds of foods that are associated with celebrations, such as cake and ice cream. Thematically, food is often associated with either love or power, as when Stellaluna must learn to eat bugs rather than the luscious fruit her mother used to give her, or when Max is sent to his room without supper and then returns after his wild rumpus to find that his mother has left warm food for him. Picky eaters like Russell Hoban's Frances and Lauren Child's Lola, as well as Sam-I-Am's companion in Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham (1960), must all learn to try new foods.

Goals, Methods, and Materials for Promoting Tactile Literacy

As with all of the literacies in the prereading stage, the important thing is to enrich the preschoolers' range of sensory experiences so that they will be able to use their mental models to imagine the worlds that words create. Your goal in developing tactile literacies at this stage is to create strong links between the stories you read to children and the senses these stories depend on and evoke.

Teaching Ideas: Tactile Literacy

Classroom Activities

Regularly introduce new textured and movable books to children. Infants to 2-year-olds will enjoy board books and touch-and-feel books; 2–3-year-olds should be introduced to books with simple mechanisms such as pull-tabs, wheels, and lift-the-flap features. Older preschoolers will appreciate pop-up books.

When a book includes food as part of the story, have samples available for the children to taste (check with the parents for allergies first, of course). For instance, share strawberries after reading Don Wood's The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (1984), or have available various foods from Lois Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables From A to Z (1996). Encourage the children to describe the tastes of the food, and introduce strong vocabulary words from the books to help them develop their taste words.

Create a smell center. Dip Q-tips in essential oils (available at cake decorating and health food stores) and place them in labeled zip-top baggies. When a book mentions a smell, such as cinnamon, peppermint, or vanilla, have the appropriate scented Q-tip available for the children. Teach them the technique of holding the Q-tip a hand-width away from their nose and waving the smell toward their nose rather than smelling the Q-tip directly.

Introduce nontraditional foods at snack time (again, check for allergies). If they can be persuaded to try them, children often enjoy frozen peas, kale chips, seaweed, banana chips, dried fruits and vegetables, and so forth. Have them describe the tastes using strong vocabulary words. Take pictures of their test faces and put them in a book with appropriate labels.

Each day, register the temperature and use a visual aid to indicate what sort of outerwear children should wear for that temperature.

Field Trips

Take preschoolers to various restaurants for tours and tastings. Explain to the owner that you want to introduce the children to new tastes and smells, and ask for his or her help in creating such experiences.

Visit an orchard or a market with lots of fruits and vegetables. Explain to the owner beforehand that you want each child to taste a fruit or vegetable that they have never had before. Take pictures of the various vegetables; and create a book that includes color words, taste words, touch words, and smell words to describe each fruit or vegetable.

6.4 Spatial Literacy in the Prereading Stage: Understanding the Environment

Of all the literacy types, spatial literacy may be the one most compromised by the digital revolution. Children learning to read 30 or 40 years ago brought with them a wealth of embodied knowledge about their environment that today's children are less likely to have. That is, with only three network TV channels, no personal computers or gaming devices, and more personal freedom and encouragement to play outside, children mapped their environment into the fantasy spaces that have now been replicated for them on the screen. Now, instead of walking the neighborhood, finding and claiming secret spaces, and making up elaborate role-playing games with the kids in the community, children are more likely to have their avatars do their walking on a screen while the only thing their bodies are doing is moving their fingers. Their activities and games are more likely to be scripted and organized by adults and confined to areas designed for specific purposes and safety, leaving them less opportunity to self-regulate and figure out how to negotiate potentially dangerous landscapes for themselves. However, the structures of our imaginations don't change as quickly as our culture does, so the need for spatial literacy is still pertinent.

But how much does embodied knowledge matter to the development of spatial literacy in a digital age? That's a good question, and all of its answers are embedded in personal ideologies and belief systems. For instance, a prevalent concern today is the environment. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (2005), makes a strong argument, richly supported by lots of research, that our children's education must include more open access to unstructured natural environments not only for their cognitive and emotional development but also for the development of an attitude of healthy stewardship for nature. For children who do not have easy access to natural environments, the lush visual presentations of the natural world in the BBC Life and Planet Earth series offer an opportunity to explore places, at least visually. Their sense of wonder with regard to the natural world may be activated virtually, rather than through time spent in the woods.

Another argument for enabling children to learn to navigate the physical world is that this kind of exploration teaches children the affordances (the quality of an object that allows or requires a person to perform an action, like twisting a knob or pulling on a door) of a space as well as the affordances of their own changing body. Once a child is mobile, the best thing parents can do is child-proof the house as well as they can and let the child explore. The mix of freedom and safety applies to the outside environment as well: Knowing which spaces are safe and which should be avoided, and how to get from one place to another in their own neighborhood are important for children no matter whether that neighborhood is rural, urban, or suburban.

Children are naturally attracted to environmental spaces that have been designed specifically for them. Architects and landscape designers pay attention to children's size, needs, and preferences when they design playspaces, classrooms, and other environments, and educators and parents should too. For instance, putting safe things, such as plastic containers and pots and pans, in low cupboards that babies and toddlers can open is great for their sense of discovery and empowerment. These become like real-life "lift-the-flap" books, and help instill a sense of curiosity in children. The notion that looking deeper into something pays off is what drives scientific discovery after all, and this curiosity, which Freud called the "drive to know," can be encouraged or discouraged in childhood depending on the way adults respond to children's desire to explore. On the other hand, barriers should be used to cordon off spaces that may be dangerous for children.

If we consider that the purpose of playgrounds is to help children learn to negotiate a world that was not designed for them by learning to perform in a world that is, we can analyze what sorts of spatial knowledge we currently think children benefit from. For instance, there are always climbing structures. These structures require balance, bilateral coordination, decision making based on a conception of distance and weight distribution, and strength. Swings involve coordinated movement and produce a pleasant feeling of rhythm and weightlessness. Swaying bridges encourage balance while walking on unsteady ground.

In terms of literacy skills, knowing with your body what these things feel like enables the imaginative reproduction of those feelings when they are described or depicted in books. It is much more difficult to have a rich literary experience when you are unable to relate to what it feels like to be in the same physical state as the character. But the play space also demonstrates that these activities needn't be exactly the same in order to appreciate the expansion provided by the book. For instance, the swaying feeling you remember from being on the playground bridge will get you started toward understanding the tension a character feels trying to get across a raging waterfall on a rope bridge, while the carefully chosen words take you the rest of the way in your imagination. So while spatial literacy helps you negotiate your actual landscape, it can enrich your imaginative one as well.

Another aspect of spatial literacy is the ability to conceptualize objects in space. This is closely related to visual and gestural literacy, and it can be supported through looking at picturebooks that play with design. The reciprocal benefit is that such looking trains the eye to see more accurately.

While interaction with digital media, especially the augmented reality books referred to in Chapter 2, will likely facilitate this development of spatial abilities, we are still left with more questions than answers concerning the effect of an increasingly digital environment on our spatial understanding. For instance, can we understand descriptions of characters traversing difficult landscapes if we ourselves have encountered only digital approximations of those landscapes? How will children's increased screen time affect their understanding of distance and time when they are simultaneously in their chairs in front of their computers and in a virtual world and can put the experience on pause whenever they want? Does turning a box on a screen with a mouse activate the same neural connections as turning that same box in their hands, or only in their imaginations? Research has yet to be done in these areas, so we just don't know.

Goals, Methods, and Materials for Promoting Spatial Literacy

For now, then, the goals for developing spatial literacy depend on a balance between embodied experience and virtual experience, whether that comes through screens or pages. Activities such as working with modeling clay and other three-dimensional media should continue to be a part of the curriculum. But more emphasis will likely need to be placed on getting children outdoors and exploring their environment. Drawing maps of walks and the insides of houses and other buildings and plotting paths through museums and amusement parks using their maps will bridge the physical with its representation. Encouraging children to re-imagine the structured spaces of their environments into the secret spaces of their imaginations will also improve their spatial literacy (see the first teaching idea under Classroom Activities in the following section).

Teaching Ideas: Spatial Literacy

Field Trips

After sharing and talking about a book like Satoshi Kitamura's Lily Takes a Walk (1998), D. B. Johnson's Henry Hikes to Fitchburg (2000), or Kenneth Cole's No Bad News (2001), take a walk around your neighborhood. Point out significant landmarks, such as houses, stores, or trees. Emphasize the path, pointing out the turns and the basic shape of your walk. When you get back, make a map of the walk. Encourage the children to visualize what they saw, and make the map as detailed as possible.

Share a concept book like Joanne Schwartz's City Alphabet (2011) or Stephen T. Johnson's Alphabet City (1999) or City by Numbers (2003). Take a walk, and encourage children to find environmental print like that used in Schwartz's book, or shapes that resemble letters of the alphabet or numbers as in Johnson's books.

Compose a collaborative "walk" poem. A walk poem doesn't have a particular form; it is composed of observations, emotions, and experiences from the walk. Have each child contribute a line that shares their feelings or observations during the walk.

Visit a grocery store and show children the different sections.

Visit children's museums, arboretums, and parks. Make sure you set aside time to talk about the experience with the children before and after your visit.

Classroom Activities

Turn the classroom or playroom into a castle-for-a-day (or a spaceship, a pirate ship, a pyramid, a city block, or an island). Have children list the features of the imaginary space and then decide where they should be and why. Use David Macauley's books for a visual reference. Once the setting has been established, have a relevant book or two to read, and tailor activities and snacks to the space.

Provide art supplies for making three-dimensional objects—clay, pipe cleaners, buttons, beads, nuts and bolts, etc.

Provide constructions supplies—blocks, Legos and Duplos, K'Nex, marble runs, Lincoln Logs, Wedgits, Magnatiles. Encourage children to tell stories when they have finished their creations.

6.5 Multimodal Literacy: Putting It All Together

As noted at the beginning of Chapter 5, it's artificial to separate the various multiliteracies into distinct categories—they all develop together, and they all work together. But knowing how each area works and what to look for developmentally will help you make the best decisions about activities, methods, and materials to choose for the children with whom you work.

As children explore their world through multiliteracies, they become aware that the world can be represented in multiple ways. Piaget (1977) called this the symbolic function, and it emerges when children are around 2 years old. At this age, emotions, for instance, are expressed multimodally—through words, songs, and other sounds, through visual markers such as color, and through gestures and body posture. Children need stories to help them figure out what is socially acceptable and to give them possible ways to cope with the emotions that threaten to overwhelm them.

The symbolic function evolves during the preschool years to enable children to explore their world through fantasy play. Here again, they use language, visual representations, their own bodies, and their spaces to act out their wishes and fears. Those children fortunate enough to have a rich experience with story will have better vocabularies and more expansive image banks from which to draw as they construct their own stories; more input leads to greater and more fluent output. Their ability to tell stories emerges around the third year with support from adults, such as providing storytelling props like puppets, costumes, and playhouses that offer opportunities for embodying story. Often, though, such support means leaving them alone, so they can talk to themselves without being censored or interrupted.

Children between the ages of 1 and 4 are also slowly developing a sense of who they are apart from their mothers. Their fears of separation are addressed in multiple books about babies being separated from their mothers, as we have discussed, and turning out okay. They are learning how to express emotions and name the things in their world. They are separating things into categories so that they can manage a complex world, which is where early concept books and more advanced nonfiction books, such as those we discuss in Chapter 10, can be a great help.

Interestingly, they begin to place themselves in categories as well. Recent research shows that children begin to notice the visual aspects of racial difference as early as 6 months old (Kelly et al, 2007). Starting at age 2, they have an emerging sense of gender. Certainly by the time they enter preschool, they understand the visual and verbal differences between ethnicities and visible disabilities like Down syndrome or other physical differences. It is extremely important, then, that early childhood educators talk about differences among people in ways children can understand.

Often, parents and educators make the mistake of thinking that if children are reared in a multicultural neighborhood or attend a multicultural, inclusive school, their response to skin color and ability differences will take care of themselves as a matter of course. But research shows that this is not the case: Children are attentive to differences among people, and their attitudes about them are formed between the ages of 4 and 7 (Katz, 2003; Paley, 1979; Vittrup, 2007).

During this critical period, then, children need concrete, clear conversation and materials, such as multicultural books, about what these differences mean and don't mean (Bigler, 1999). For instance, parents can highlight the beautiful dark brown skin of a baby or simply comment on the fact that some babies have brown eyes and brown skin, and some babies have blue eyes and pink skin. Likewise, they can point out that mommies can be plumbers or doctors or they can stay at home to take care of their children, and so can daddies. Dentists and teachers can have brown skin or white skin. Vague statements like "all people are equal" don't work because they rely on an abstract idea that children do not understand yet (Bronson & Merryman, 2009). Even worse, though, children can assume that silence about differences in race, gender, or abilities means that these differences are possibly shameful because mommies and daddies won't talk about them.

6.6 Visual Media for Prereaders: Using Screen Time Wisely and Effectively

In 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued the following recommendation:

Pediatricians should urge parents to avoid television viewing for children under the age of 2 years. Although certain television programs may be promoted to this age group, research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers (e.g., child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged.

However, electronic media, including television, is becoming more and more ubiquitous in our lives, and most children are exposed to media long before they are 2 years old. Despite the concerns of the AAP, relatively little research has been conducted to test the effects of media on very young children. In 2003 the Kaiser Family Foundation interviewed 1,000 parents of children aged 6 months to 6 years regarding children's access to and use of electronic and print media in the home. (For the full report, see here.) Their findings indicate that preschool children are spending at least as much time watching television per day as they do playing outside and that they are active in selecting, requesting, and manipulating their own media (turning on the TV and using the remote to change channels, putting DVDs in the machine and playing them, and using the computer). Clearly, a new form of literacy and competence is emergent among today's preschoolers that it behooves educators to pay attention to, especially since the tide is not about to turn back to a premediated environment.

For educators, then, one of the benefits of watching children's TV is that it can help us learn how to gain and hold our children's attention. Media programmers have to compete for the attention of children, so they have become experts at it. Designers of children's programming pay a lot of attention to creating visually stimulating sets that help organize children's viewing, directing attention to important detail with contrast, placement, and movement. They pay a good deal of attention to space, creating separate zones that are associated with certain activities.

As noted in Chapter 5, music plays a key role in children's lives as well as their media. Having theme songs and using music to announce transitions is a common tactic in children's programming and can be usefully copied in structuring a classroom day.

In addition to picking up tips and techniques from children's media to aid our teaching this new media-literate generation, it is also important for parents and educators to use television and other media as a springboard for conversation and interaction. The concerns of most media critics stem from the fact that television is often viewed passively.

That is, the TV is on most of the time, but as background, not for intentional viewing. This constant flow of noise punctuated by the occasional distraction of something interesting happening does not promote meaningful interaction and can in fact detract from it, as our attention is always split. It is better for preschoolers to watch only programs specifically designed for them and to watch them in the company of an adult who treats the program like any other story-sharing session, by practicing joint attention, asking and answering questions, interacting with the children at their direction, and encouraging active viewing practices such as singing or dancing along with the characters on the screen.

Coats, K. (2013).  Children’s literature & the developing reader  [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

5.1 Audio and Linguistic Literacies: Setting the Stage

The word “infant” comes from the Latin adjective infans, which literally means “not able to speak.” As we noted in Chapter 1, children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development begins through attunement with a caregiver. This attunement starts with equal parts body-to-body contact and what researchers call communicative musicality (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2009). Psychoanalytic theory proposes that infants enter life in a dual relation—that is, they see the mother as an extension of the self—and their primary trauma is the sense that they are separate from the world around them in a fundamental way (Lacan, 2006; Winnicott, 1965). In fact, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists often refer to the first three months of life as the “fourth trimester,” a concept formalized by Dr. Harvey Karp (2003) in his book, The Happiest Baby on the Block.

According to Karp, human infants are born with only three basic survival skills—sucking, swallowing, and breathing; and even breathing can sometimes be irregular. The most significant task of a caregiver in those first three months, then, is to “hold” the child, that is, to ensure that the world of the child is safe, structured, and sufficiently full of white noise so that the infant feels enveloped in an environment that closely approximates the womb. Karp emphasizes what he calls the five S’s—swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging, and sucking—as ways to replicate the womb experience in the fourth trimester. I would add to Karp’s list singing and talking to the baby, since we know that human voices are also part of that womb environment. Singing and talking, especially rhythmic vocalizations, like the physical analogue of swinging, have an influence on regulating sucking, swallowing, and breathing. Indeed, researchers have discovered that rhythmic oral language regulates heart rate and coordinates breathing and heart rate (Bettermann, von Bonin, Fruhwirth, Cysarz, & Moser, 2002; Cysarz et al., 2004).

In addition to helping the baby adjust to life outside the womb, these early experiences are the seedbeds of language and literacy learning. As they grow, babies need to become less dependent on their one-on-one bodily connection to a single caregiver and orient themselves to the world outside the dual relation. In order to participate in human society, they need to develop their communicative abilities, especially their ability to use language, as compensation for the loss of feeling part of someone who meets all of their needs. They need to learn to use words in situations where touch isn’t possible or appropriate to communicate what they need or desire.

The feel of skin on skin breaks down into a twofold concept: When you touch someone’s hand, you feel both the limits of your own body and the contact of another. Hence you know that you are a separate person but that you are connected with someone else. Language works in a similar way. When babies’ cries elicit a response, they know that they are both alone and not alone. Babies must make a conceptual transformation from having their needs for social connection met solely through touch to communicating through oral expression; they must develop what infant researcher Daniel N. Stern calls “a verbal self” (1985, p. 11). Ultimately, babies have to learn to use sound consciously and effectively to elicit the responses they want, as well as to express what they feel and need.

Three-month-old babies are just beginning to make this transformation, and a multiliteracies approach can help them do that. Just as adults learn to “read” the baby’s signals, babies are learning to read gesture, facial expression, space and place, and visual and aural information. But, as neuroscience professor Lise Eliot notes,

Speech is without doubt the most important form of stimulation a baby receives. When parents talk to their babies, they are activating hearing, social, emotional, and linguistic centers of the brain all at once, but their influence on language development is especially profound. (Eliot, 1999, p. 367)

Audio literacy is thus one of the most important skills for babies to acquire.

The Benefits of Prenatal Reading

While it is quickly usurped by vision after birth, hearing is the first sense we make use of because it develops in the womb. Ideally, then, the best time to start reading to babies is before they are born. Babies develop the apparatus needed for hearing, including the bones of the inner ear and the nerve endings that send the signals to the brain, by about 18 weeks of gestation, at which time they can sense the sounds of the mother’s body such as her heartbeat and those weird digestive noises that we all emit. By 24 weeks, the ears are fully formed, and the baby has become habituated to internal noises, and can now hear environmental sounds such as a dog barking or a vacuum cleaner, but also and more importantly, the parents’ and siblings’ voices. This is when reading to babies can become an effective habit for multiple reasons.

Before we think through those reasons, however, I want to encourage a healthy skepticism for some of the claims that various products will boost an unborn or new baby’s intelligence. For instance, much has been made of the “Mozart effect,” which claims that listening to Mozart in the womb and during the first three years of life makes babies smarter and calmer. The evidence for these claims is anecdotal, and no one has been able to reliably prove benefits through credible, repeatable experiments. While there is certainly nothing wrong with listening to Mozart, there is simply no evidence that it makes a measurable, long-term difference in intelligence. The most that can be said about such practices is that they can’t hurt, and classical music can, for some children, prove soothing but so can any type of music with a smooth melodic or rhythmical tune.

Such claims perpetuate the myth that there is a small window for enrichment of children’s brains, and if that window is missed, there is no possibility for remediation. To the contrary, human brains are remarkably plastic, and as a result, humans have the capacity to be lifelong learners (Bruer, 1999). That said, research does support the idea that there are certain “critical periods” in the growth of the brain when its ability to make neural connections that lead to integrated learning is more active (Eliot, 1999). The first several years of life are one such period, and in the following pages and Chapter 6 we will be exploring the best possible activities and supports for emergent literacy in that period. However, bear in mind that if children do not emerge from a supportive environment, they are not doomed to a life of subpar intelligence; they simply need more experience with the principles discussed here, modified in age-appropriate ways.

So what then are the advantages of prenatal reading? First and foremost, reading to an unborn child helps a parent and older siblings imagine that child in their mind. Caregivers need to hold their children not only physically but also emotionally (Winnicott, 1965). A new life needs a new space to inhabit, and just as parents plan for that space within their homes, they also need to prepare for that space within their minds and hearts. By reading to their unborn child, parents begin to open up that space, to see their child as a person with whom they can communicate. This is especially true for the nonpregnant partner and the older siblings, who haven’t had to make a space for the baby in their bodies.

For new parents, talking to an unborn child may feel weird or unnatural, but reading provides a safe, nonthreatening way to introduce the idea of a baby as someone who will require time and a special sort of attention and communication. It also helps parents feel they are competent to teach the baby. New parents in particular often worry that they may not have the abilities to be a good parent, but the act of reading helps them feel that here is at least one thing they can do that is important to development.

An additional benefit for parents is that reading to an unborn child stops the busyness of preparing for the baby for a moment. Setting aside time to read a children’s book out loud to an unborn member of the family brings the emotional, rather than the practical, needs of that baby to the forefront of parental attention. Another advantage to prenatal reading is that it reintroduces parents to children’s books. Many new parents haven’t visited the children’s section of a bookstore or library for a long time. If they do not have other children, they have also likely forgotten the rich lore of memorized nursery rhymes and songs from their own childhoods. Oftentimes, a simple reminder of the first line of a rhyme or song is enough to spark the auditory memory, but sometimes the memory loss is deeper, such as what is the third line to “Frère Jacques,” anyway? Fortunately, there are many splendid collections of nursery rhymes and children’s songs available at libraries and bookstores. A commitment to reading to a baby before it is born encourages parents to consider the need for a home collection of books as well.

Spending time in the children’s section of a library or bookstore gives new parents a preview of the cultural world in which they will be at least partially immersed for the next several years, inviting them to be selective and critical as well as introducing them to what is new and exciting. Most public libraries have infant and toddler programs and storytimes specially designed for various ages through preschool. These outings can also help make expectant siblings feel involved in the welcoming of the new baby. Parents can ask their children which books they think the baby would like, and allow them to pick books that they can “read” to the baby during a family reading time. As an early childhood educator or daycare provider, when you learn of a new sibling on the way, you can share books and songs with the older child so that the child feels like an expert recommending favorite texts to share. This will not only reinforce the importance of reading and older children’s budding multiliteracy skills but it will help them adjust to their new roles as big brothers and sisters and help them create a positive emotional space for the baby in their hearts and minds as well.

If there are older siblings in the house, this is a marvelous time to share books about what to expect from a new baby so that they are prepared for the baby’s arrival (see the list of “Recommended Books: For Siblings of New Babies”). This way, what they might otherwise experience as a disruption to beloved family rituals can be viewed instead as an expansion of them. When a new baby is on the way, older siblings sometimes regress to an earlier developmental stage in terms of emotional development, where they need reassurance of their parents’ continuing care for them. Reading and singing together provides that reassurance while helping the older child move into a new role in the family.

Recommended Books: For Siblings of New Babies

Alborough, Jez. Ssssh! Duck, Don’t Wake the Baby. 2008. Clumsy Duck tries not to wake Baby Goat—with a pop-up surprise.

Aliki. Welcome, Little Baby. 1987. A mother welcomes her newborn infant and tells what life will be like as the child grows older.

Anholt, Laurence. Sophie and the New Baby. Illus. by Catherine Anholt. 2000. Sophie waits through the seasons for the birth of her sibling and then has mixed feelings.

Ballard, Robin. I Used to Be the Baby. 2002. A 3-year-old helps his mother take care of his baby brother.

Clifton, Lucille. Everett Anderson’s Nine Month Long. 1989. A young African American boy has to learn to accept a new stepfather and a new baby.

Cole, Joanna. I’m a Big Brother. 1997. From a child’s point of view, a young boy welcomes home his new baby brother.

Cole, Joanna. I’m a Big Sister. 1997. A young girl welcomes home her new baby sister and lists the advantages of being “big.”

Cole, Joanna. The New Baby at Your House. 1985. Illustrated with photographs, a description of the changes involved in having a new baby in the home and the feelings older siblings experience.

Fujikawa, Gyo. Babies. 1963. A board book with a multiethnic mix of babies playing together.

Gay, Marie-Louise. Good Morning Sam. 2003. Stella tries to help her little brother Sam get dressed, but Sam has ideas of his own.

George, Kristine O’Connell. Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems. 2011. Jessica celebrates all the fun she has with her little sister, Emma, but also describes the ways in which Emma’s behavior can be frustrating.

Graham, Bob. Oscar’s Half Birthday. 2005. An interracial family celebrates Oscar’s 6-month birthday at a city park.

Henkes, Kevin. Julius, the Baby of the World. 1990. Lilly is convinced that the arrival of her new baby brother is the worst thing that has happened in their house, but she has a change of heart when Cousin Garland dares to criticize Julius.

Joosse, Barbara M. I Love You the Purplest. 1996. Two boys discover that their mother loves them equally but in different ways

Kubler, Annie. My New Baby. 2000. Color illustrations, with no text, of a family welcoming and caring for a new baby.

Lawrence, Michael. Baby Loves Hugs and Kisses. 2000. After receiving wonderful hugs and kisses from his parents and grandparents, Baby tries to hug and kiss the family pets.

Lobel, Gillian. Too Small for Honey Cake. 2006. In this reassuring introduction to change, when Baby Fox is born and all of Daddy’s attention is focused on the new addition to the family, Little Fox is not happy.

Mayer, Mercer. The New Baby. 2001. His new baby sister doesn’t pay attention when Little Critter reads to her, and she can’t understand his jokes. But Little Critter finally figures out what you can do with a new baby—and becomes a very good brother.

Murphy, Mary. I Kissed the Baby! 2003. Various animals tell how they saw, fed, sang to, tickled, and kissed the new duckling.

Nichols, Grace and Taylor, Eleanor. Whoa, Baby, Whoa! 2012. A multiethnic family worries that the baby will get himself into situations he can’t handle.

Ormerod, Jan. 101 Things to Do with a Baby. 1984. A six-year-old girl tells 101 things she can do with her baby brother.

Rockwell, Lizzy. Hello Baby! 1999. A young boy describes how a new baby is growing inside his mommy and tells what it is like when his new sister comes home from the hospital.

Rosenberry, Vera. Vera’s Baby Sister. 2005. The arrival of Vera’s new baby sister makes her feel displaced, so her grandfather helps create a special spot, just for her.

Scott, Ann Herbert. On Mother’s Lap. Illus. by Glo Coalson. 1992. A small Eskimo boy discovers that Mother’s lap is a very special place with room for everyone.

Weeks, Sarah. Sophie Peterman Tells the Truth. Illus. by Robert Neubecker. 2009. As seen, smelled, and experienced by older sister Sophie Peterman, the cold truth about babies and their not-so-adorable characteristics is presented in amusing detail.

Ziefert, Harriet. Talk, Baby! 1999. Max is glad when his mother brings home a baby sister, but he begins to get impatient as he spends a whole year trying to teach her to talk.

So what sorts of books should we read to babies in the womb? Because one of the purposes of prenatal reading is simply to acclimate the baby to his or her particular audio environment, including the sounds of family voices, the choice of reading material doesn’t really matter at this point. If you want to encourage, say, a 3-year-old to “read” to his or her baby sibling, you can choose any book that the older child is familiar with so that he or she can share in the experience. Singing favorite songs together is also appropriate.

However, to support the development of audio literacy, it would be better to take some care with selecting the books that you read. Children’s poetry and adult poetry with strong rhythms is a good choice. Nursery rhymes are often short and can be sung as well as spoken. It is important to incorporate singing into these sessions, because studies have shown that infants respond to the musicality of language (Mazokopaki & Kugiumutzakis, 2009; PapouŠek, 1996). A reviewer of this book reported that his wife sang often to her unborn children. Upon their births three years apart, one in a hospital and one at home, they each cried as newborns do, but when the mother starting singing to them the same song she had been singing to them before they were born, they immediately calmed. The doctors and midwives were amazed, but this anecdote clearly bears out what infant researchers have discovered: Babies can and do hear and take comfort in parental voices engaged in rhythmic, musical utterances even before they are born. Since the parent is reading or singing to a child who still has a vernix covering over the ears, exaggeration in intonation and strong rhythm are more important than exact pronunciation or narrative flow.

Dr. Seuss can be the parents’ best friend here. His rhythmic, rhyming texts create a sing-song pattern that helps parents develop their read-aloud prowess and fluency and hone their own audio literacy. Psychologists (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Kolata, 1984) performed experiments where mothers read The Cat in the Hat to their unborn children twice a day for six and a half weeks prior to birth. Then, when the babies were born, they tested their sucking responses as they heard The Cat in the Hat read by their mothers and then another poem with a very different rhythm. The babies’ increased sucking response with the Dr. Seuss text and not the unfamiliar poem convinced the researchers that they recognized the book that they had heard prior to birth.

Of course, there are multiple variables at play in this experiment. One would be the rhythm of the Dr. Seuss—ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum, which tends to read very quickly. This in itself may cause the baby to suck more quickly, as babies adjust their body rhythms to auditory stimuli. Another, related variable would be the mother’s familiarity with the stories, which would influence her level of comfort in reading them, especially in a laboratory setting. If we know a story well, we tend to be more confident in our reading and will introduce performance elements, such as varied intonation, dramatic pauses, and pitch and volume modulations. Infants tend to be so attuned to a mother’s body that they feel even the most subtle nuances of tension and excitation; all of these things would be then communicated in changes of the rate of sucking. Consideration of these other variables does not negate the validity of the research findings, but it helps us understand the role that rhythmic oral language plays in children’s literacy development.

Rhythmic Oral Language: The Body-to-Literacy Bridge

Rhythmic oral language such as poetry and music function as a body-to-literacy bridge for young children. Long before children know what words mean, they are attentive to how they sound. Oral language has expressive components such as tone, rhythm, and stress—what linguists call prosody—that help convey meaning. Children think, feel, and communicate with their whole bodies, but as they grow older and enter more complex social relationships, they must learn to live in a world of language and image rather than simply relying on physical experiences and expressions to communicate their needs. That is, they must learn to translate what their bodies feel and want into words that communicate those feelings and desires to other people.

Children’s poetry encodes the rhythms of the human body into its speech patterns. Donald Hall (1978) identifies three elements of poetry that correspond to different kinds of sensual pleasures that infants and toddlers experience. He names these elements Twinbird, Goatfoot, and Milktongue. Twinbird refers to a baby’s enjoyment of balance and opposition; as babies discover that their bodies are symmetrical, with two hands and two feet that are alike and not alike at the same time, their brains are also developing bilaterally. The rhymes of a poem are likewise balanced—similar in sound but not exactly alike, producing a balanced form. Goatfoot corresponds to the rhythms and motion in poetic language that replicate the constant movement of babies’ legs, which push against the air in a bicycling motion. Milktongue refers to the pleasurable sounds of poetic language that resemble the babies’ own babbles and other playful sounds they find they can make with their mouths.

These elements of children’s poetry help children negotiate the transition from exploring the world with their bodies to representing that world in language; thus poetry acts as an important body-to-literacy bridge. By combining movement with rhythmic language, by talking to children about their emotional and physical states in ways that emphasize prosody, by getting into the habit of linking up words with feelings, adult caregivers are teaching them the audio structure that undergirds the connection between experiences and language, a connection that we continue to use for our entire lives. But prosody also has an effect on the development of an important literacy skill: phonological awareness.

Phonological awareness is the ability to distinguish the sound structures of spoken language. While it doesn’t typically develop until age three, early experience with children’s poetry and songs strengthens the ability to play with and manipulate the individual pieces of words—initial consonant sounds, for instance, or vowels sounds that rhyme. When you are talking to children face-to-face, they are also watching how your mouth moves when you make sounds, and their inborn talent for imitation enables them to attempt to mimic your muscle movements as they attempt to make sounds. All of this activity is feeding directly into their neural wiring, expanding their multiliteracy skill bank so that they are better able to approach the task of linking sound with print text. But knowledge of the alphabet is not necessary for the development of phonological awareness; phonological awareness is related to sound alone, so this is where your energies as an educator of prereaders should focus.

Helping Babies and Young Children Use Language

By 2 months of age, babies start intentionally making and delighting in their own sounds. At this point, babies are able to distinguish the phonemes of every language in the world, even phonemic distinctions that their parents cannot. By the time they are 6 months old, however, they have begun a process of what linguist Roman Jakobson calls linguistic “deflation” (1968, p. 25), where they can make only the sounds that they hear spoken around them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because eliminating all of the possible phonemes of all the languages in the world enables them to focus on the relative few that are used in their native language. But it does argue for exposing a child to a rich and varied language environment that includes lots of infant-directed speech (IDS), read alouds, music, and recitations of nursery rhymes.

Infant-Directed Speech

Also known as baby talk or parentese, IDS refers to the specific kind of talk adults use when they engage with infants or small children. Gwen Dewar, who holds a PhD in biological anthropology, reviews the scientific studies of the effects of IDS on children’s speech acquisition here. The research findings clearly support the importance of this seemingly natural form of speech in helping babies develop phonological awareness of the sounds of their native language, learn to isolate the spaces between spoken words, and learn to distinguish phrases and clauses in sentence streams. She also cites studies where the heightened emotional content of IDS causes babies and toddlers to pay attention more, which leads to better learning (see here). On the other hand, regularly speaking to children in a monotone voice may delay their speech acquisition (Kaplan, Bachorowski, Smoski, & Hudenko, 2002).

The features of IDS can be easily and naturally employed in reading aloud to infants, toddlers, and older preschoolers. The qualities identified by Dissanayake (2009) and discussed in Chapter 1—simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration—are the defining characteristics of IDS. Fortunately, these qualities are regularly found in the words of picturebooks for young children. Your job as a parent, a daycare provider, or a preschool teacher is to bring energy, enthusiasm, and expressiveness to your reading.

Imitation and Conversation

Besides the effective use of IDS in conversations and reading aloud, adults and siblings can encourage language development simply by responding to babies’ attempts to use language. The more adults and older siblings respond to a baby’s babbling with imitation and delight, the more the baby will babble, which gives practice in forming the muscle movements of speech but also introduces the structure of back-and-forth conversations and the upward intonation of questions.

By as early as 12 weeks old, babies are adjusting their vocalizations in response to the sounds they hear around them—they are matching pitch, intonation, and some phonemes that they hear regularly in their environment. Thus, language development starts with the imitation of models. Most studies focus on the interaction of children and adults, but children are often in the presence of other children, which also has an effect on their speech development. In my own experience, we were surprised to hear our neurotypical daughter, Blair, imitating the speech patterns of her elder sister, Emily, who has severe articulation difficulties resulting from Down syndrome. It wasn’t until Blair entered preschool at age three that her speech became intelligible to people outside the family, as she learned to model other neurotypical children.

By the end of their first year, babies may be able to say only a handful of words, but they can hear and understand upwards of 70. Most undergo an explosion of vocabulary during their second year and have acquired an astonishing vocabulary of around 13,000 words by the time they are six. They are also absorbing knowledge of the syntax and grammar of their native language. But it is important to note that the richness of their vocabulary, syntax, and grammar is largely dependent on their early experiences. That is, children who have adults in their lives who pay attention to them, respond to their attempts to speak, regularly practice IDS, read aloud, and sing to them enter preschool and kindergarten ready and able to take the next step toward print literacy.

Parents and daycare providers can facilitate language acquisition in other ways. Object-labeling is one such way, according to Drs. Michael Goldstein and Jennifer Schwade, experts on language development in the early years of life. The trick here is to allow children to take the lead by choosing the object they want labeled. By paying attention to what the child is holding, pointing to, or looking at, and then giving the appropriate word for it, adults encourage vocabulary development. On the other hand, when adults make an erroneous assumption based on what they think a child is trying to say rather than what she is pointing to or looking at, they confuse the child’s ability to produce the correct label. Schwade labels such mistakes crisscrossing, and the results are shocking: In the study, at 15 months old, the child whose mother was most adept at following her cues for object-labeling understood 246 words and could articulate 64, while the child whose mother most often crisscrossed her attempts could understand only 61 words and pronounce only 5 (Goldstein & Schwade, under submission; Bronson & Merryman, 2009).

Another method that Schwade and fellow researchers have found effective in helping children under the age of 15 months acquire new words is through the use of motionese, which involves shaking or moving the object in rhythm with the patterns of IDS as you label it (Schwade, Goldstein, Stone, & Wachterhauser, 2004). By using motion to attract attention and stretching out the sounds (m-m-m—m-m-m-uf-f-f-f-in-n-n-n) to help the child see how the word is formed, adults create a multimodal scenario for the learning of a new word.

One more tactic that has proven essential for language learning is for children to hear the same words in the voices of different speakers. Researchers speculate that the value of hearing the same word from different sources comes from children being able to isolate what is the same (the phonemes) even when the word sounds different in terms of pitch, speed, tone, or volume (Rost & McMurray, 2008). This argues for not only talking and reading aloud to your child but encouraging other family members and friends to do the same, as well as listening to stories on tape read by other speakers.

Unfortunately, researchers have found that there has been a significant drop in the amount of parent-child verbal interaction in the past 10 years (Heath, 2012). The ubiquity of personal mobile technologies is certainly one reason for this decline. A trip to the grocery store will easily confirm these findings. Parents are often talking on their cell phones instead of using that time for the mundane chatter and shared attention crucial to their babies’ or toddlers’ language and social development. Likewise, babies have DVD players in the cars on the way to and from the store, and parents listen to iPods as they walk their babies in strollers instead of singing and pointing out environmental noises and features along the way.

At home, there are TVs or computers in most rooms, which distract attention away from social interaction. Dr. Patricia Kuhl, a leading expert on language acquisition, found conclusive evidence that children do not learn verbal language from screens (Kuhl, 2004). Her study involved 9-month-old American babies learning Mandarin Chinese from a live native speaker. After 12 sessions, the babies were able to discern Mandarin language sounds. Another group of babies was exposed to the same speaker for the same amount of time via televised sessions. This group showed no difference in the ability to discern Mandarin language sounds than children who had no exposure. Kuhl concluded from her study that babies need a responsive social tutor in order to learn language.

While television watching on its own does not cause language delays, a lack of interactive communication between a live adult and a baby does. Even reading aloud to child is not as effective as one-on-one conversational interaction in improving a child’s language skills (Christakis et al., 2009). So as a result of the increase in screen time and a decrease in live social interaction between parents and their children, teachers and daycare providers may notice that children are experiencing language delays and deficits that must be addressed when they enter preschool environments as they will inhibit audio and linguistic literacy development.

Fortunately, the fix is relatively simple, if somewhat time consuming: Children need adults to talk and read with them, to look them in the eye and draw them into conversation with questions, expansion, modeling, and feedback. This is a great way to involve community members as volunteers in your classroom, especially older members of the community; beyond an explanation of the goals of the interaction, volunteers will need little training in the art of simply conversing with a young child.

Caregivers and other adults do more than simply model correct speech patterns for their children, however. Linguistic anthropologists have noted that Western caregivers treat their babies as conversational partners even before the babies can speak, asking questions, waiting for answers, and looking the babies in the eye as they “converse” with them (Ochs, 1988). They provide a kind of natural instruction for their babies that includes

expansion and fine-tuning of their utterances,

direct instruction, and

positive and negative feedback.

For instance, a baby’s single word “bankie” might garner the response, “Oh, do you want your blanket?” which is an example of expansion and fine-tuning (just make sure, as noted earlier, that you aren’t crisscrossing by focusing only on what the baby is trying to say rather than what he or she is focusing on). Direct instruction is very common, as parents will explicitly tell their children to “Say bye-bye to Grandma.” Siblings are especially liable to provide fine-tuning and direct instruction, as it gives them an opportunity to show off their advanced skills—“It’s not da, it’s doggie. Say doggie.” Rosemary Wells’ delightful book, Max’s First Word (1979), highlights a big sister’s attempts to help her baby brother learn words other than his favorite and only word, “BANG!” A more recent book, Baby Says Moo! (2011), by JoAnn Early Macken, adopts a similar theme. Positive and negative feedback occurs as babies make attempts at speaking that are met with either delight and understanding or confusion and frustration; simply not being understood is experienced as negative feedback and will encourage children to keep trying, at least until they reach an unacceptable level of frustration.

As children develop their vocabulary and conversation skills, they are highly dependent on the responses of those around them. Language use is mostly functional in the early stages; that is, children are learning to use language to get what they want, so feedback is essential. They test out new words and consider whether the responses they get, both verbal and nonverbal, accord with their hypothesis of what the word means or what it was meant to do. Computers and even “interactive” TV shows simply cannot provide the finely tuned feedback they need.

Specific feedback is especially important as children begin developing metalinguistic awareness, which is the conscious understanding of how language works. For instance, verbal toddlers will typically use the word “went” for the past tense of “go,” until they start to notice that past tense verbs are usually formed by adding –ed. As a result, they may replace “went” with “goed” in their speech. This isn’t a cognitive regression; instead, they have developed a metalinguistic awareness of the rule for forming past tense verbs, which they apply to every situation in a process linguists call overgeneralization.

Because toddlers simply absorb the words they hear used in their contexts, they usually are able to generate utterances that make grammatical and meaningful sense. But beginning around age 3 or 4, children also start to question whether they really know what a word means. For instance, once, when my daughter, Blair, was 4 years old, she strenuously objected to a rather rude noise her father made. “Daddy!” she said. “That’s not dignified!” This was, of course, a completely appropriate response, but then she stopped and asked, “What does dignified mean?” She was beginning to develop the metalinguistic awareness that individual words have meanings as well as social uses.

This natural absorption of language is another argument for reading to children early and often. As Jim Trelease, a strong advocate for reading aloud, notes, “If the child has never heard the word, the child will never say the word; and if you have neither heard it nor said it, it’s pretty tough to read it and to write it” (Prelutsky, 1986, p. 1).

5.2 Developmental Stages and Emergent Literacy

The first connections between the sound of a word and its meaning take place late in the first year, at around 9 or 10 months of age. This is when children begin to make the connection between a word they have heard repeatedly and the thing or person to which it refers. They also learn a few interjections like “Hi!” and “Bye-bye.”

Let’s consider this development in terms of the body-to-literacy bridge and the developmental stage from birth to 2 years that Erik Erikson identified as the “trust vs. distrust” stage. At around 8 or 9 months old, children begin to show signs of separation anxiety. Up until that time, they may fuss a bit when their primary caregiver leaves them, but they can be comforted by just about any friendly, calm person; their bodies don’t really care who’s holding them as long as it’s being done competently.

At around 8 months of age, the brain begins to develop the connections needed to form short-term memories and conscious emotional responses to stimuli. This growth in the ability to remember things for a short time leads to what Piaget called “object permanence”—the ability to understand that things continue to exist even when you can’t see them. Eight months is also the age when most children begin to crawl, making them somewhat independently mobile. Until this point, they have been comfortably dependent on their caregivers to satisfy their needs. Now that they have a taste of their own autonomy, they experience a renewed need to know that their caregivers are always going to be there. Their sense of trust in the universe depends on it.

Temperament

But they are also starting to move forward on the developmental path toward autonomy and independence. This development happens at a different pace for children with different temperaments. Some children are naturally bold and inquisitive, while others prefer to stay close to their caregivers and play quietly. Understanding temperaments is important for parents, caregivers, and educators because temperaments make a difference in how children approach learning tasks, no matter what sort of intelligences they display (see Chapter 1). Whereas easy-going children will likely still enjoy the relatively mild stimulation of being read to, more active toddlers and preschoolers will resist the confinement of being held when they can move freely on their own. But that doesn’t mean that stories and books aren’t for them. Adapt your reading style to incorporate more drastic changes in volume, pitch, and rate, and encourage active children to do what comes naturally—act out the story. Literacy-building strategies for active children also include the introduction of

action rhymes and dancing to songs,

visually stimulating toys such as alphabet blocks and patterned rugs, and

the placement of pictures on the wall at eye level for a sitting or crawling baby.

As toddlers develop their motor skills, you also want to give them opportunities to write and draw. All of these strategies—that is, action rhymes, dancing, writing, drawing, etc.—should also be made available for easy-going children, but don’t expect the same level of visible energy or overt enthusiasm. Instead, allow the easy-going children the opportunity to enjoy the activity their own way. Likewise, wait until the active child shows some signs of tiredness to draw him into a read-and-cuddle.

The exploration of temperament is where literature for children can act as a mirror for caregivers and a lamp for children, especially if the temperament of the child is very different than the temperament of the adults. Books like Ian Falconer’s Olivia (2000), David Shannon’s No, David! (1998), Kristine O’Connell George’s Emma Dilemma (2011), Kay Thompson’s classic Eloise (1955), Janell Cannon’s Verdi (1997), Spike Lee’s Please, Baby, Please (2002), and Michael Buckley’s Kel Gilligan’s Daredevil Stunt Show (2012) all show “spirited” children who exhaust their parents, siblings, and caregivers. Parents, caregivers, and even more even-tempered siblings reading these books recognize the children and perhaps gain a new understanding for or at least resign themselves to their boisterous behavior. In other words, these books, by mirroring the behavior of high-spirited children, normalize that behavior and offer an opportunity for adults to see things from the child’s point of view. The parents and caregivers in the books, however, respond calmly to their children, and each book ends with an affirmation that the children are loved and accepted for themselves. This is very reassuring for high-spirited children, who perhaps need a lamp to show that even though their parents and teachers may often seem frustrated or angry with them, their way of being in the world is okay after all.

Books that feature characters with easy-going temperaments include Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (1936), A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and Lucille Clifton’s Everett Anderson books, and Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola books, where older brother Charlie is the easy-going foil to his more excitable sister Lola. Nature-themed books often have more patient, even-tempered characters, such as the unnamed characters in Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed (1945), and Julie Fogliano’s And Then It’s Spring (2012). Because naughty behavior and bad decisions usually make the most exciting stories, however, it is more difficult to find examples of easy-going, quiet, patient children than their more obstreperous counterparts, so it is important to update your list of books of children like this as you find them.

Autonomy and Independence

Regardless of temperament, however, most children cycle through various bursts of dependency with a need for reassurance and independence with a need for freedom from the time they are 8 or 9 months old up through their late adolescence. We will explore how the themes of autonomy and independence play out in books for preschool children in Chapter 6. Here, let’s take a closer look at books aimed at children just emerging from the trust/distrust stage.

Parents and children sometimes have mixed reactions toward books that take an attachment relationship as their theme. The Giving Tree (1964), by Shel Silverstein, for instance, features a boy who spends his childhood years in a loving relationship with a tree. As he grows older, he leaves the tree behind. Each time he comes back, he takes a piece of her to get something that he needs, until there is nothing left of her but a stump. People have objected to this book because of its gender portrayal and because of its environmental message, among other things, but it’s a picture of a vitally important developmental structure—the firm belief that someone, somewhere loves you unconditionally and would sacrifice everything for you. Of course, if you acted on that belief, you would be a horribly selfish person, but the belief that it exists is what is sustaining in hard times; it represents a fundamental trust that the universe will sustain you and that you will have everything you need.

A similar theme is found in Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever (1986). In this book, a mother rocks her newborn with a cradle song that expresses her undying love. She continues this tradition long after the baby is grown, sneaking into his bedroom at night when he’s a teenager, and even getting into her car, driving across town, and climbing a ladder to the window of her grown son’s bedroom to hold him and sing the song. Again, if we look at this book literally, such acts are strange and unbalanced, but for a very young child, the idea of having someone who will always love you no matter what is an absolutely necessary psychic structure. The list of “Recommended Books: For the Trust/Distrust Development Stage” suggests some less ambiguous attachment-themed books.

Recommended Books: For the Trust/Distrust Developmental Stage

Appelt, Kathi. Oh My Baby, Little One. Illus. by Jane Dyer. 2000. As Baby Bird goes off to school, Mama Bird explains all the ways her love remains even while they’re apart.

Brown, Margaret Wise. The Runaway Bunny. Illus. by Clement Hurd. 1942. A little rabbit who wants to run away tells his mother how he will escape, but she is always right behind him.

Karst, Patrice. The Invisible String. Illus. by Geoff Stevenson. 2000. Liza and Jeremy’s mother comforts them during a scary storm by telling them about the Invisible String, which connects people who love each other no matter where they are and means that they are never alone.

Marina, Gianna. Meet Me at the Moon. 2012. During a dry spell, Mama Elephant must leave Little One to ask the skies for rain. She reassures him that he will hear her song in the wind and feel her love in the air.

McBratney, Sam. Guess How Much I Love You. Illus. by Anita Jeram. 1995. During a bedtime game, every time Little Nutbrown Hare demonstrates how much he loves his father, Big Nutbrown Hare gently shows him that the love is returned even more.

Munsch, Robert N. Love You Forever. Illus. by Sheila McGraw. 1986. As her son grows from little boy to adult man, a mother secretly rocks him each night as he sleeps.

Penn, Audrey. The Kissing Hand. Illus. by Ruth E. Harper and Nancy M. Leak. 1993. When Chester the raccoon is reluctant to go to kindergarten for the first time, his mother teaches him a secret way to carry her love with him.

Rusackas, Francesca. I Love You All Day Long. Illus. by Priscilla Burris. 2003. When Owen, a little pig, worries about being apart from his mother when he goes off to school, she reassures him that no matter where he is and what he is doing, she will love him all day long.

The ability to remember someone and yet move independently away from that person leads to a need to feel attached and thus results in separation anxiety. Language is a way to “stay in touch,” metaphorically speaking, with someone who isn’t present. Having names for people and things, as well as words for the actions of leaving and coming back and images of closeness, helps make those people or things present in a representational way when they aren’t there physically. Meaningful language, which consists of sounds connected to mental representations, can bridge the gap between the times apart and time spent together.

In practical terms, language helps children negotiate between what is happening and what they want to happen, and thus gives them some measure of power over their environment. Even when children’s calls for Mommy and Daddy don’t bring them back, they can hold them in their imagination and memories using words. In fact, many nursery rhymes are designed to do just this kind of work. Consider the familiar nursery rhyme, “Bye, Baby Bunting”:

Bye, baby bunting,

Daddy’s gone a-hunting,

Gone to get a rabbit-skin

To wrap his baby bunting in.

In this nursery rhyme, the father is absent from the child, but the rhyme assures the child that he is off for only a short while and will return to snuggle his baby. In addition to the meaning of the words, though, the repetition of few familiar phonemes, along with a tight rhythm and rhyme scheme, complete the holding environment of this rhyme. The anxiety of absence is contained and controlled through the words of the poem—what they say and how they say it. Thus having a word for a thing seems to be necessary for achieving object permanence. As we noted earlier, its rhythms and sounds also act as a bridge to literacy because it helps children begin to understand that people, things, and even unconscious longings can be represented by words.

Books such as those shown in the preceding Trust/Distrust Development Stage list are useful for children who have difficulty separating from their parents when they enter day care or preschool. Often, caregivers and parents try to distract the child while the parent sneaks away, but psychoanalyst Gertraud Diem-Wille (2011) discourages this sort of tactic, because it confirms what the child already believes—that parents will disappear unless they are closely monitored. It is better, she argues, to give the child symbolic support for the rhythms of leaving and returning. A book that a child can carry back and forth can be reinforcing because the parent can read it at home and the teacher can read it at school, thus providing a physical and verbal connection between the two environments. In fact, a book or a song is the perfect support for helping children cope with separation anxiety for the reasons we have noted: Patterned language regulates heart breathing rates, which has a physically calming effect, and books offer ideas for evoking absent loved ones through imaginative mental models.

5.3 Music and the Prereader

Music plays an important role in the prereader’s audio environment. Children are born with an innate love of music. This is partially because their sense of hearing is so advanced at birth, and partly because listening to music is a right-brain-hemisphere activity, and the right hemisphere is more developed at birth than the left. Babies are born with the ability to recognize a melody and simple rhythmic patterns. Fortunately for most of us, though, they are not at all sensitive to whether the song is off-key, so we can sing away without worrying about offending their musical sensibilities.

Babies’ first utterances have a musical quality to them, and young children will often make up songs as they go about their play. Gradually, over the first eight to nine years of life, they do develop the ability to recognize tonality, which is the arrangement of seven tones around a central tone or key. A children’s xylophone, for instance, is usually organized around the key of C major, which means that the lowest tone is a C, and then the rest of the seven notes get progressively higher in an even sequence until you reach the high C, which sounds like the low C. Between the ages of 5 and 9, children learn to recognize a melody when it changes key or when other changes are made, such as difference in rhythm or harmonic accompaniments. But even before then, they know when a melody sounds “finished” and when it stops abruptly without closing on a specific tone.

As we have discussed, music’s most important function in early childhood is its role in bonding, but it also has strong correlations to language learning (Schon et al., 2008). In songs, syllables are linked to different tones, allowing children to discriminate between sounds better, which makes words easier to learn. Additionally, the lyrics to songs often rhyme, which allows children to anticipate a sound before it is vocalized. Sing this song to yourself, stopping right before the last word:

My bonnie lies over the ocean.

My bonnie lies over the sea.

My bonnie lies over the ocean.

Oh, bring back my bonnie to ______.

It’s nearly impossible not to finish this song once you’ve started. The tonal quality requires you to finish the phrase in the last line; otherwise the song doesn’t sound “finished.” Likewise, the lyrics need closure as well, and it’s clear, even if you’ve never heard the song before, that the word must rhyme with sea, and therefore is most likely to be me.

This process of elimination is one of the ways that children learn to read print (Goodman, 1967; Goodman & Goodman, 1979; Smith, 1994). They are trying to make meaning, but they are also linking up verbal signs with familiar oral language constructions. Music organizes oral language into specific phrases and rhythmic and rhyming patterns, so having a rich background in children’s songs increases children’s ability to anticipate what word should fit in a particular phrase or pattern.

There is so much good evidence that children benefit from playing an instrument (see here, for instance) that it is difficult to understand why formal music instruction isn’t mandated in early childhood, but unfortunately most preschools are not sufficiently resourced for such programming. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t provide a musically rich environment for your infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

While there is a strong push to introduce children to classical music as early as possible, very young children prefer music that corresponds to Dissanayake’s principles: simplicity, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration. Finding music that children like is as simple as going to the library or surfing online children’s music sites (see Websites to Save and Explore at the end of the chapter). CDs are organized as collections of children’s standards or as single artist productions. As with books, you will want to balance familiarity with novelty, and introduce new songs regularly. But you also want to attend to children’s preferences; if they like a song or a CD, keep playing it until they let you know they are ready for a change.

Favorite Children’s Recording Artists

Alana Banana Band: Benefits HARK (Healing Arts Reaching Kids) (http://thealanabananaband.com/home.cfm)

Banana Slug String Band: Science, song, and celebration (http://www.bananaslugstringband.com/)

Elizabeth Mitchell: Folk music for children (http://youaremyflower.org/)

Ella Jenkins: “First Lady of Children’s Music” (http://www.ellajenkins.com/index.html)

Finkytown Funtime Band: Various genres (http://finkytownfuntimeband.com/Home_Page.html)

Greg & Steve: Interactive music for kids 3 to 9 (http://www.gregandsteve.com/)

Laurie Berkner: “Kindie rock” (http://www.laurieberkner.com/index.php)

Pete Seeger: Folk icon’s children’s albums include American Folk, Game, and Activity Songs for Children and Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children

Putumayo Playground: Series of world music albums for children (http://www.putumayo.com/putumayo_cds/kidscds)

Raffi: Popular children’s singer since 1975 (http://www.raffinews.com/)

Randy Kaplan: “Not-JUST-for-kids” music (http://www.randykaplan.com/)

Sharon, Lois & Bram: Canadian trio with a variety of genres (http://www.casablancakids.com/slb.html)

Susie Tallman: Lullabies, nursery rhymes, updated classics (http://www.susietallman.com/)

They Might Be Giants: Rock group’s albums for children include Here Come the ABCs and Here Comes Science

Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star: Series of lullaby versions of rock and pop songs (http://www.ttlrs.com/)

5.4 Creating an Audio and Linguistic Literacy-Rich Environment for Prereaders

The audio environment includes much more than human speech, of course. Babies, toddlers, and preschool children delight in strange and novel noises. They quickly become habituated to the common noises in their environments and prefer these for comfort, while their hungry little brains crave new input for learning. Books with rich and playful vocabulary will fascinate them, as will well-told stories with sound effects and music incorporated into the telling.

The goals of audio and linguistic literacy for the emergent literacy stage are not to rush children into recognizing print text as a representation of sound. Rather, this enriched experience with spoken language facilitates the development of print literacy by cultivating the inner ear. Eventually, children will learn to read print texts silently. The larger their oral vocabulary, the more easily children will be able to connect written representations of words with words they already know by sound. Furthermore, understanding and fully appreciating written texts depends on a solid foundation of audio and linguistic literacies, as the marks on the page refer to sounds, accents, and the various meanings associated with those sounds can really come alive in children’s imaginations.

Teaching Ideas: Audio and Linguistic Literacies for Prereaders

General Interaction

Respond to children’s attempts at conversation, even at the babbling stage. Eventually, you will want them to pay attention to you, so set the habit of paying attention to each other and taking turns in conversation early.

Make your interactions with children varied. Use different tones of voice, exaggeration, and rhythm when you speak, and make playful language part of your conversational repertoire. Surprise your children with your voice and funny sound effects.

Put away your cell phone during the time you spend with the children. As you take your children into the community for grocery shopping, walks, and other activities, focus on what they find interesting. Face-to-face interaction encourages children to experiment with language, to test out new utterances in order to gauge your response.

Music and Singing

Play music of various kinds, including classical, reggae and world music, folk, gospel, and energetic pop as well as music composed and performed especially for young children. Consider having special music for special times—a wake-up song, a bath song, a naptime song, and so forth. In a daycare or preschool setting, use music for transitions—let children know that when they hear a particular song, they are to finish their activity, put materials away, and move to a certain place, such as the storytelling rug. This regularity will help a child develop a sense of time, expectation, and ritual.

Sing often. Make up silly songs, and sing folk songs and nursery songs.

Provide access to musical instruments, both real and toys. Encourage experimentation.

Invite community musicians into your class for miniconcerts.

Learning About Sounds

Direct children’s attention to environmental sounds during walks or car rides: nature sounds, such as birdsong and squirrel chatter, and mechanical noises, such as sirens and car sounds. Exploit the sonic richness of ordinary items like bubblewrap, crinkly paper, creaky floorboards. Early attention to these sorts of sounds will help children make meaning of their reading later on, as they encounter descriptions of such sounds in books they read. Their personal experience will make their understanding richer.

Play the quiet game with a difference. Instead of being quiet for the sake of being quiet, direct children to listen to what they hear during a specified time. The child who can name the most sounds is the winner.

Make a sound mystery station. Using everyday materials, record the sounds they make. Have students guess which materials make which sounds.

Storytelling

Attend story hours at local libraries.

Invite a storyteller into your class or day care center. Look online or inquire at your library about local storytelling guilds (google storytelling and your city or state for suggestions). Professional storytellers most often charge for their work, but members of a guild are often working up to professional grade and will come for free to get the practice with an audience.

Invite grandparents and other community members in to read to children so that they hear a variety of voices.

Become a storyteller (more on this in Chapter 7).

Have children listen to stories from professional storytellers. Many are available on YouTube. (See additional resources that follow in Websites to Save and Explore.)

Set aside time every day for storytelling by the children (age 4 and older). Provide a general prompt and then have children volunteer to tell a story based on the prompt. Here is another method for encouraging storytelling.

Encourage respect and good listening skills, and allow children to ask questions after the story is over.

Encourage interaction during storytelling or reading sessions by asking kids to add the sound effects. Very young children can add animal sounds, foot stomps, and hand claps to the story at the appropriate times. Older preschool children can take some tips from Foley artists—the folks who add the everyday sounds to a film. They use three main categories of sound—feet, cloth, and props. Have children experiment with various materials to create different sounds—jello or hand soap in a Ziploc bag; cornstarch in a leather pouch; big clunky shoes; small items in an empty prescription bottle with a childproof cap; cellophane; different types of cloth (taffeta, vinyl, corduroy).

Reading Aloud

Read with panache (more on this in Chapter 7).

Choose books with rich and varied vocabulary, including onomatopoeia.

Have children listen to books and poetry read by the author or by professional actors. (See Websites to Save and Explore.)

Poetry and Nursery Rhymes

Recite poetry, especially nursery rhymes, on a regular basis. Encourage children to memorize poems. (This is easier than you might think—children’s brains are remarkably receptive to linguistic innovation from ages 2–6, much more so than adult brains. They really need to hear a short poem only three or four times to memorize it.)

Recommended Books: To Focus on Sound Vocabulary

Andreae, Giles. Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Barnyard Hullaballoo. Illus. by David Wojtowycz. 2000. A collection of verses that introduce farm animals.

Andreae, Giles. Rumble in the Jungle. Illus. By David Wojtowycz. 2001. A collection of verses that introduce jungle animals.

Aylesworth, Jim. Cock-a-doodle-do, Creak, Pop-pop, Moo. Illus. by Brad Sneed. 2012. Rhymes about sounds heard on a farm, from a rooster’s crow to an owl’s goodnight call.

Crow, Kristyn. Cool Daddy Rat. Illus. by Mike Lester. 2008. A young rat tags along with his jazz-musician father around the big city. Crow’s blog explains jazz scatting, with video examples: http://kristyncrow.blogspot.com/2009/09/cool-daddy-rat-fun-with-scat.html

Dillon, Leo, and Dillon, Diane. Rap a Tap Tap: Here’s Bojangles—Think of That! 2002. The dancing of famous tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson described in illustrations and rhyme.

Joosse, Barbara. Roawr! Illus. by Jan Jutte. 2009. When Liam hears a loud roar in the night, he must jump into action to protect his sleeping mother from a hungry bear that looks a lot like his teddy bear. Barbara Joosse reads Roawr! at http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/podcast/clips/9780399247774read.mp3

Lach, William. Can You Hear It? 2006. CD and book introduce classical music and musical instruments by pairing them with works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Martin, Jr., Bill, and Archambault, John. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Illus. by Lois Ehlert. 1989. A rhythmic alphabet chant about what happens when all the letters of the alphabet try to race up a coconut tree.

Martin, Jr., Bill. Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? Illus. by Eric Carle. 1991. Zoo animals from polar bear to walrus make their sounds for each other, and children imitate the sounds for the zookeeper.

Nascimbeni, Barbara. Animals and Their Families. 2012. Introduces three dozen animals from around the world, including the sounds they make, where they live, and what they eat.

Odanaka, Barbara. Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash! 2006. A rhyming imitation of the sights and sounds of the neighborhood on trash day.

Shea, Bob. Dinosaur vs. Bedtime. 2008. With a roar, a little red dinosaur takes on a pile of leaves, a bowl of spaghetti, and bath time, but bedtime is too big a challenge.

Van Laan, Nancy. Possum Come A-Knockin’. Illus. by George Booth. 1992. A cumulative tale in verse about a mysterious stranger that interrupts a country family’s daily routines.

5.5 Two Principles for Multiliteracy Instruction in the Prereading Stage

The most important part of multiliteracy instruction from infancy forward is to treat it as play for the child. Play is one of the most important activities in children’s lives. In play, they imitate adult behaviors, explore their environment, test their motor abilities, and learn to manage their emotions. As Margaret Meek reminds us, “If reading looks like play to a child, it will be taken seriously” (1982, p. 35).

When our elder daughter, Emily, who has Down syndrome, was almost 3 years old, her therapists told us that while they were very proud of her knowledge of how to handle books—she oriented them correctly and had developed the fine motor skills to carefully turn the pages—we needed to get her to play with something other than books. My husband and I were puzzled—after all, our favorite toys were books, so why shouldn’t hers be as well? But we dutifully got her a kitchen set and dug out some of the dolls she didn’t like to play with. She approached the kitchen and explored all of its features. Then she noticed that it had a high chair incorporated into it, so she picked up a doll, put her in the high chair, and got a book to read to her!

Her therapists were frustrated, but we saw this as a display of temperament as well as a preference for visual rather than tactile stimuli, which continued to be the case throughout all of her schooling. To give another example of this preference, after her first year of preschool, I placed a chart of the signed alphabet on the wall at her eye level when she was sitting, and over the course of a summer, she sat in front of it and taught herself the letter signs from the chart—a pretty remarkable feat for a 3-year-old!

While her teachers tried various methodological interventions, Emily continues to learn best from independent interaction with books and other visual input, rather than direct instruction or motor learning. Even at the age of 21, she continues to learn visually by using the close captioning feature on her DVDs to develop her reading vocabulary. The important thing to notice here is that she has consistently approached each of these activities as play.

Our second daughter, Blair, did not display the same interest in books. She is very active and excels in gross motor activities and interpersonal communication. As a young child, she would sit still for a book or a DVD just long enough to get a sense of the characters and the setting, and then she would be off to enact her own version of a story. Her toybox was thus full of dolls, puppets, flannel boards, dress-up clothes, and props rather than books.

The takeaway lesson of this tale of two sisters: Pay attention to how a child plays and what she likes to play with, and incorporate books, stories, and activities that respond to her interests.

The second most important part of literacy instruction from the very beginning is real-world motivation. In order for a child to want to learn to read, literacy must have a meaningful context. You don’t make grocery lists so that you become a better writer or reader; you make grocery lists so that you have the ingredients you need to make a week’s worth of meals. Children don’t write an e-mail to Grandma so that they can become a better writer or reader; they write so that they can share their day with her or tell her what they want for their birthday. Children don’t read Where the Wild Things Are to become better readers; they read it because it’s an entertaining story that helps them understand and manage difficult emotions. And according to Bruno Bettelheim, they ask for a book again and again because something about it is helping them learn and work through unconscious conflicts, as we noted in Chapter 4 (Bettelheim, 1976). You get the idea: You read and write for reasons that extend far beyond exercising the ability to read and write. Children need this sort of motivation—that reading and writing are useful tools to get them something they want—in order to become interested in learning to read and write.

To sum up, then, a few principles should guide all of your interventions in establishing a meaningful multiliteracy environment for prereaders:

Activities and materials should be varied so that different temperaments are honored and engaged.

Literacy instruction should be presented as play.

Explicit literacy activities should be embedded in their natural contexts.

References

Coats, K. (2013). Children's literature & the developing reader. Electronic Version. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

4.2 What Is a Story?

Babe is a clear example of a well-made story: It centers on a character readers care about, places that character in a clearly identifiable conflict, provides him with helpers and detractors, builds suspense, and releases that suspense in a triumphant moment that resolves the conflict. It also features an uplifting moral that corresponds to several of the developmental projects of early childhood: the need to establish trust in the world, and the need to establish autonomy, take initiative, and assert yourself. It also contains themes that are important to older children as they develop and encounter more complex problems and situations that cause them to question what makes life meaningful. It offers a very reassuring message about our ability to triumph over death and meaninglessness through exercising our particular gifts.

Every day, stuff happens. Just like adults, children have desires and needs, and we all try to fulfill them: We eat, we sleep, we love, we hate, we complain, we worship, we work, we play, we cry, we laugh. Through it all, we try to make sense of the things that happen. Throughout human history, the most persistent way we have tried to put things into some meaningful order or context is through stories. As individuals and in societies, we want to be able to predict future events, avoid pain and unpleasantness, and solve problems. We want to remember things that happen and people we have lost. We want to know why things happen and why the world works the way it does. We want to explain ourselves. We want to imagine other worlds and possible futures. We want to pass on our values and our knowledge to future generations.

These projects are no less urgent for young children than they are for adults. As I have noted throughout this book, we have to remember how new the world is for children and how they must work to make sense of it. Gordon Wells, a professor who specializes in language and learning, argues that "storying" is how we do that:

Rarely, if ever, do we have all the necessary visual or other sensory information to decide unambiguously what it is we are seeing, hearing, or touching. Instead we draw on our mental model of the world to construct a story that would be plausible in the context and use that to check the data of sense against the predictions that the story makes possible. (1986, p. 195)

Wells explains that the process works like this: From infancy, children construct mental models based on what happens repeatedly in their environments. They use these mental models to put things into categories of experience, like things that live in my crib, or what Mommy does when we are getting ready to go outside. When they encounter a new experience, they don't approach it with an "open mind," that is, with no preset understandings. Rather they put things into their already established mental categories (their stories) and then see if their experience fits within those stories. When it doesn't, they make adjustments to their mental models to accommodate the new experiences.

We help in that process of meaning making by passing along stories that explain the world to children. Our stories put experiences into broader contexts, contexts that children may not have imagined before. Our stories also have a more defined shape than simple organizational categories. Instead, the stories we share have temporal sequences—beginnings, middles, and ends—and link up causes and effects. By telling a story, we can help children look at an event or relationship from the outside and see how their behavior might have led to a specific outcome or how their relationships fit into a pattern that they may or may not like. Stories have a shaped, ordered, finished quality that tames an experience by making it smaller so that we can see it whole; this makes the world a more manageable place because it divides it up into chunks of time and experience, much like chapters or episodes. On the other hand, stories can help us imagine alternatives to everyday life, and this makes the world bigger, gives it more possibilities.

Children are not born storytellers; this is one more thing they need to learn in order to become fully human. Fortunate children grow up surrounded by storytellers, though. Just like we provide special spaces for their bodies to help them make the physical world more manageable, we provide stories to furnish and shape their minds. Parents, teachers, siblings, friends all tell stories, and children often learn the form of stories before they learn the meanings behind them. They learn these patterns from the music of our voices—our storytelling voices are different from our everyday voices, more intentionally rhythmic, more animated—and also from the ritualized use of specific words and phrases to begin and end stories that children learn through repetition. For instance, they know how a story begins: "Once upon a time . . ." "Long ago and far away . . ." "I remember when . . ." "That reminds me of the time. . . ." They know how a story ends: "They all lived happily ever after," "That's why things are the way they are today," "If they haven't died, they are living still." But what happens in between?

Plot and Conflict

The plot of a story is the sequence of events that happen in a story. In order for a story to be successful, the plot has to have an identifiable shape. Most stories start with some form of exposition so that readers know something about where the story begins. That is, we need to be grounded somehow. Maybe we are introduced to a character or the setting. Very soon, however, we need a narrative hook. Something has to happen to get us interested, like Babe's being taken out of the piggery or Max being sent to his room in Where the Wild Things Are. Stories that spend too much time establishing the world or the characters without anything actually happening are generally not successful as children's books, but stories that start without giving us any context can be confusing. Striking a balance is key.

The first line of Charlotte's Web, for instance, is a super example of a narrative hook. "'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast" (White, 1952, p. 1). Excellent question, and one that draws reader's attention immediately, as well as introducing the character and the situation. In his original plan for the book, E. B. White thought of starting with a description of the barn that Wilbur eventually goes to live in (Neumeyer 1994, p. xxix). If it had, we wouldn't have had the sense of urgency that fills the entire first chapter until Fern manages to convince her father not to kill the runt pig who eventually becomes known as Wilbur.

Usually, the narrative hook introduces the problem, or conflict, of the story. Here again, conflict is as important as action in a story, especially for children. Very young children may tolerate the narration of a chicken's walk around a farmyard where nothing goes wrong if the book has interesting pictures to look at, but a story without a conflict isn't really a story at all—it's a vignette, or a sketch. That is, if Rosie's Walk (Hutchins, 1971) did not have the pictures of the fox's unsuccessful attempts to capture her, it would be a very dull story indeed. Even Kevin Henkes's Little White Rabbit (2011), which is a very quiet story about a rabbit who imagines what it would be like to be different things—green like the grass or tall like the fir trees—has a moment of conflict and excitement when the rabbit comes unexpectedly upon a cat. A story needs a problem to solve.

Plot Categories by Content

There are multiple models for how plots work. Some are content-based, arguing that there are certain generic plots that storytellers use over and over again as a repertoire (Nodelman & Reimer, 2002). The number and content of these plots varies, and there is much controversy over the theory, but the idea helps us think about the structural similarities of the kinds of plots we like and the kinds that children will like. Christopher Booker, a British journalist (2005), for instance, has made an exhaustive study of what many writers agree are seven basic plots:

Overcoming the Monster: The hero learns of a great evil and sets out to destroy it.

Rags to Riches: Surrounded by dark forces who wish him or her ill, the protagonist eventually overcomes the evil and gets riches, a kingdom, and a mate.

The Quest: The hero learns of a great boon and sets out to find it.

Voyage and Return: The protagonist journeys to a far-off land where he or she triumphs and returns home with a more mature outlook.

Comedy: The hero and heroine are being kept apart by some dark force. The dark force is defeated and the couple reunites.

Tragedy: The protagonist is really a villain, and the story involves his or her spiral into destruction.

Rebirth: Follows the same trajectory as a tragedy, except the hero repents and is rehabilitated.

Some plots of children's books fit neatly into one of these categories. For instance, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, 1865), and Peter Pan (Barrie, 1911) are all Voyage and Return stories. In fact, children's literature scholars Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer (2002) argue that the Voyage and Return plot is the most prevalent of all the plots in children's literature. However, other plots are evident. Traditional versions of "The Three Little Pigs" are clearly Overcoming the Monster stories. Where the Wild Things Are also fits that category, as Max overcomes his own inner monsters.

Some stories combine elements of several of the basic plots. For instance, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" combines elements of Rags to Riches with elements of Comedy. Babe has elements of the Quest, but also of Comedy, if we consider that Rex and Fly are driven apart by Rex's jealousy and reunited by Babe's victory. The Tragedy plot is the one least likely to be found in children's stories, as it is rare to present a protagonist who is really a villain to children without rehabilitating him at some point. The Abominable Snowman in the Rankin/Bass production of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Dr. Seuss's Grinch (1957) are both cases in point; although they start the story as villains, they are reformed by the end.

In addition to content categories, plots come in different shapes or structures. Like the content categories, sometimes these structures overlap.

Cumulative Plots

Oftentimes, the problem shapes the plot. For instance, the problem could be one that leads to other problems, which results in a cumulative plot structure. For instance, in the book based on the folk song There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Taback, 1997), the woman swallows one animal after another to chase the previous one. Suspense mounts as each animal gets bigger until the inevitable happens: The old woman swallows a horse and dies. A similar cumulative structure can be found in the traditional story The Mitten (adapted and illustrated by Jan Brett, 1989), where a boy loses his mitten in the forest and animals take up residence in it for warmth. The first animal is always very small—a mouse in some versions, a mole in others, but the animals get gradually bigger until the mitten rips. These sorts of stories play on the concepts of repetition and elaboration, and they often suggest a theme of how small problems grow into big ones if they aren't solved. Generally, they are funny, and they are great to use for drama activities with children acting out the cumulative plot. They also promote confident reading through the use of repetition. The following are stories with cumulative plots:

Stories With Cumulative Plots

Arnold, K. Knock, Knock, Termok! (1995)

Bishop, Gavin. Chicken Licken. (1987)

Brett, Jan. The Mitten. (1989)

Brisson, Pat. Benny's Pennies. (1995)

Burningham, John, Mr. Grumpy's Outing. (1995)

Carle, Eric. Today is Monday. (1993)

Cole, Henry. Jack's Garden. (1997)

Cole, Joanna. It's Too Noisy. (1992)

Donaldson, Julia. A Squash and a Squeeze. (2005)

Dunbar, Joyce. Seven Sillies. (1999)

Hutchins, Pat. Little Pink Pig. (2000)

Lobel, Arnold. The Rose in My Garden. (1993)

Neitzel, Shirley, and Parker, Nancy Winslow. The Bag I'm Taking to Grandma's. (1998)

Sloat, Teri, and Bernard, Nadine. The Thing That Bothered Farmer Brown. (2001)

Tolstoy, Alexei, and Goto, Scott. The Enormous Turnip. (2003)

Taback, Simms, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. (1997)

Waddell, Martin, and Barton, Jill. The Pig in the Pond. (1996)

West, Colin. "I Don't Care!" Said the Bear. (1997)

Wood, Audrey, and Wood, Don. King Bidgood's in the Bathtub. (1985)

Climactic Plots

Another way of organizing a plot centers on a conflict that leads to a climax or crisis—a moment where the tension breaks and the conflict is decided one way or the other. This is called a climactic plot structure (Figure 4.1). Instead of using repetition, the conflict escalates through some sort of rising action. Cumulative plots can build to climaxes, such as in The Mitten, when the mitten strains to bursting and all of the animals have to leave. However, they don't have to end in climaxes; their structures can simply build to happy chaos without tension. Nor does rising action have to be cumulative; complications in the rising action can be unrelated to each other, as they are in Babe. The difference is that in climactic structures, tension and suspense builds until it breaks. In Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963), the height of the action is the wild rumpus in the land where the wild things are. It breaks the tension that has been building throughout the book and leads to the resolution. Following the climax, Max calls an end to the festivities and heads home.

Another book with a climactic plot structure is Kevin Henkes's Owen (1993). The establishing shot of Owen playing peacefully in his yard is immediately interrupted by the words on the first page, where the nosy neighbor, Mrs. Tweezers, tells Owen's parents that it is time for Owen to give up his blanket. That's the narrative hook that introduces the conflict. The rising action, or complications, involves Owen's parents trying various means suggested by Mrs. Tweezers to separate Owen from his blanket, but Owen always succeeds in thwarting their plans. Finally, though, the climax occurs when Owen's mother cuts his blanket into handkerchiefs. This solves the problem to everyone's satisfaction and thus leads to a happy resolution of the conflict.

A climactic plot is often pictured as a witch's hat. The flat brim of exposition takes off at the narrative hook up a steep slope of rising action, peaks at the climax, follows an equally long downward slope of falling action, and then levels off again in the resolution. This is a useful model for teaching story structure to children and for helping them develop their own stories when they begin to tell and write them. But most books, including children's books, are usually not that symmetrical. First, as noted earlier, children don't often have patience for too much exposition before the action starts. Likewise, once the problem is solved, the story is effectively over, so the falling action and resolution are often quite quick. But each of these elements is necessary in order for the story to feel whole and complete.

Episodic Plots

Books for emerging independent readers most often favor episodic plot structures (see Figure 4.2). Rather than track one conflict over the entire book, these books feature mini-climactic plots in each chapter. This is important for young children, because it builds on what they are already familiar with. New readers have learned to follow a climactic plot structure over a 32-page picturebook, but it would be daunting to jump right into a book that stretches the suspense out over a hundred pages. Children's brains have not yet sufficiently developed to process complex relationships of cause and effect, but if the consequences for an action are immediate and concrete, they get it.

Hence the authors of books like the Ramona, the Alvin Ho, and the Ivy and Bean series plot their books by creating short episodes that follow the basic pattern of exposition, narrative hook, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. However, the best authors guide their readers toward mastering a longer narrative by making each episode relate to a larger conflict that dominates the story. For instance, in Alvin Ho: Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and other Fatal Circumstances (Look, 2011), Alvin impetuously volunteers to accompany his grandfather to his grandfather's best friend's funeral. He regrets his offer, immediately. He is too scared to go and too scared to tell his grandfather that he's scared. Meanwhile, he is afraid that his grandfather will also die.

In addition to Alvin's immediate problem in this particular book, he suffers from a social anxiety disorder that renders him unable to talk at all in school. In one chapter, Alvin's fear of talking leads to a comical episode where his teachers misunderstand the situation and think his grandfather is actually dead. They orchestrate a memorial service that ends in chaos when Alvin's grandfather walks in the door. While the episode is very funny and self-contained, it relates to the larger problems of Alvin having to attend a funeral and his fears that his grandfather will die.

Types of Conflicts

The conflicts in children's books need to be centered on children's experiences, and they need to be problems that children can see an end to or at least be able to find a method of coping if the problem itself cannot be resolved. In traditional literary study, the core conflicts are categorized in terms of abstract struggles of a fictional character:

· character vs. character

· character vs. society

· character vs. nature

· character vs. self

· character vs. the supernatural

· character vs. technology or machines

Children's literature makes these basic sorts of conflicts relevant to children by relating them to common childhood experience.

Mastering fear of the dark, for instance, would be a character vs. self conflict, as would mastering one's angry impulses, as in Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry (2004). Books that focus on sibling rivalry can demonstrate a character vs. character or a character vs. self conflict, depending on whether the sibling is actively trying to thwart the main character or the main character is simply jealous of the new sibling's arrival.

As we noted previously, the main conflict in Babe is character vs. society, but we can also see character vs. technology, as both Farmer Hoggett and Ferdinand resist attempts at modernization, exemplified by the alarm clock and the fax machine. Paul Fleischman's Weslandia (2002) offers a firm example of character vs. society, as Wesley rejects the values of his peers and forms his own civilization. David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes (2007) offers a more complex example that combines character vs. the self with character vs. society. Camilla Cream desperately wants to fit in with her peers at first, so she denies her love of lima beans, but in the end she has to take a stand against her society in order to reclaim her sense of self.

Children's books that confront natural disasters and frightening weather events, such as Jonathan London's Hurricane! (1998), Darlene Bailey Beard's Twister (2003), and Karen Hesse's Come on, Rain! (1999) often treat the character's inner struggles with fear as much as they demonstrate a character vs. nature conflict. Chapter books suitable for read-alouds with third graders such as Jewell Parker Rhodes' Ninth Ward (2010) and Brenda Woods' Saint Louis Armstrong Beach (2011) help children understand both the emotional and the physical conflicts that emerge when characters are faced with the devastation nature can inflict on communities.

Identifying these types of conflicts is an activity that can help school-aged children (grades 1–3) analyze what is called story grammar, that is, all of the elements that go into a story and how they are arranged. For a way to introduce and teach this concept, see the Teaching Ideas at the end of this chapter. But just talking about the problem in the book will help them see how it might relate to their own experiences. Common problems in children's books are the same as common problems in children's lives: sibling rivalry, toilet teaching, giving up a beloved blanket or stuffed animal, losing a loved one, mastering negative emotions, learning a new skill, entering school, figuring out identity, and so forth.

Before reading Owen, for instance, you might ask students whether they have a blanket or a favorite stuffed animal that they couldn't bring to school with them. Talk a little bit about how they feel about the problem, and then read the story and ask what they think about Owen's parents' solution. Then read similarly themed books, such as Something From Nothing and Mo Willem's Knuffle Bunny (2004), and ask students to compare the books to each other and to their own experiences. Pay attention to the conflicts that children bring with them to school, the things they talk about that are bothering them, and find books to help them find solutions or at least solidarity in their conflict.

Character

As we noted in Chapter 1, characters in children's books are often iconic—that is, they are drawn as types so that children who don't look like them can relate to them anyway. The fewer details in a face, the more people the figure could possibly look like. The same concept can also be used in developing a character's personality.

Max, in Where the Wild Things Are, is a particular boy, but his face is drawn in such a way so that many children can relate to him; he is mostly defined by his expressions, which most children replicate. As a character, all we really know about him is that he has a mom and a dog, lives in a house where he has his own bedroom, likes to eat hot food, and has a vivid imagination. These scanty details enable Max to be a sort of "everychild," which is one of the reasons why his story remains popular nearly 50 years after it was published.

Peter in Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day (1963, available to be read online at http://www.wegivebooks.org/books/the-snowy-day) functions similarly; his figure is depicted mostly as shape and color, with very few facial details except that he is clearly African American, and his character is developed by his actions. He is excited to see the snow, active and curious as he plays, realistic about his chances of playing with older boys, talkative with his mother, thoughtful in his bath, and naïve about the ability to keep a snowball in his pocket. These sorts of "universal" characters enable children to relate to their adventures rather than being distanced by details that make the characters into distinct children.

In early chapter books, characters are more fully developed in words, and less so through pictures. This is where all of their early training in multiliteracies becomes important to help them understand what they read. Here is how Annie Barrows (2006) describes her characters in Ivy and Bean:

Ivy sat nicely on her front steps. Bean zipped around her yard and yelled. Ivy had long, curly red hair pushed back with a sparkly headband. Bean's hair was black, and it only came to her chin because it got tangled if it was any longer. When Bean put on a headband, it fell off. Ivy wore a dress every day. Bean wore a dress when her mother made her. Ivy was always reading a big book. Bean never read big books. Reading made her jumpy. (pp. 8–9)

From these descriptions of what the characters wear and look like (visual), how they move (gestural), where they like to sit or play (spatial), and how they feel about reading (linguistic), readers have to make inferences about which girl they might like and which one is most like them. They plug these descriptions into mental models and start making predictions that carry them into the world of the story. The descriptions are general enough to allow them to make identifications, but specific enough for the readers to be able to tell which character is which and predict how they might respond to situations.

Protagonists, Antagonists, and Secondary Characters

The main character of a story is called the protagonist. Sometimes in stories with character vs. character conflict there is another character who acts as the antagonist, who creates the obstacles that keep the protagonist from getting what he or she wants. Depending on the conflict, however, there may not be a clear antagonist. Instead, there are usually secondary characters who help the main character or just fill out the character's world. Sometimes these secondary characters are there to provide humor; sometimes they help us get to know the main character.

Round and Flat Characters

Readers get to know characters by various means. We learn about them through the way they dress and hold themselves in the pictures, the way they talk, the way they treat other characters, and the way other characters treat them. Characters who have multiple traits and facets are called round characters, while characters who have only one characteristic are called flat characters.

Main characters are usually round, while antagonists are often flat, unless the author wants to solve the conflict by having the protagonist and antagonist become friends. In that case, the antagonist must have some good qualities to balance out the ones that caused the conflict. Otherwise, keeping the antagonist flat is a device authors use to keep the sides of the conflict simple: protagonist good, antagonist bad. For instance, in traditional versions of "The Three Little Pigs" (listen to a traditional version here), the characters are all flat. The brother who builds his house from bricks is the protagonist, and the wolf is the antagonist. The foolish brothers are secondary characters included in the story to teach a lesson. So when the wolf gobbles them up after blowing their houses down, his evil nature is conveyed without too much grief on the part of the audience. But in nontraditional versions where the wolf is supposed to be more sympathetic, such as the parody, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by John Scieszka and Lane Smith (1996), the wolf is a round character, with fully developed reasons why his story has been misunderstood.

Dynamic and Static Characters

Another important quality to bear in mind while analyzing characters is whether or not they grow or change over the course of the story. Characters who grow by learning a lesson or mastering an emotion are called dynamic characters. Their growth is called the character arc. Characters who remain the same over the course of the story are called static characters. Winnie the Pooh and his friends are good examples of static characters. They don't grow or change over the course of their books, while Christopher Robin does; he learns new things and eventually leaves them to go to school, so he is a dynamic character.

This reflects A. A. Milne's ideology of childhood, which is obviously shared by many of us as evidenced by the lasting popularity of his books and characters: We like to think that childhood as an idea remains the same even if we ourselves grow out of it. For children, Pooh and the other animals help them negotiate that sense of change and growth by providing a stable, unchanging environment that will still be there if they need to come back to it. This is very similar to the conflict that is worked out over the course of the three Toy Story movies as well.

Different Characters for Different Reading Purposes

In judging quality in terms of characters, it is not necessarily true that books with round, dynamic characters are better than books that feature flat, static ones. If that were the case, we would be dismissing most folk literature as bad. But folk stories are very useful to developing readers in understanding their own character traits and conflicts, as well as what traits their culture values and devalues.

In other words, child readers don't necessarily need psychologically complex characters in order to develop more psychological complexity themselves. Here, as in most cases of evaluation, we need to think about the age of the child and what the story is useful for. Static, flat characters are often good for reading about when children are going through traumatic situations or changes themselves. Characters like Pooh, Brer Rabbit, Elephant and Piggie (Willems, 2007) and Bink and Gollie (DiCamillo, McGhee, and Fucile, 2010) are comforting because children know what to expect from them. However, when children are beginning to show signs of boredom within themselves, introducing books with round, dynamic characters such as Ramona or Ivy and Bean, can help them chart a path forward in their personal development.

Setting

When and where a book takes place is called its setting. Setting is often the most important way that an author establishes the mood or tone of the story. It also helps in the development of spatial literacy as readers observe characters interacting with their various environments.

Because children make sense of books by bringing their knowledge of the world into their reading and then adjusting their knowledge of the world through what they read, texts set in different places do a lot of cultural and personal work. They remind us, for instance, that children grow up in all sorts of settings and that an ideal childhood can be lived anywhere, if it even exists. Urban stories capture the attention of urban children by looking like the environments they see around them. Rural and suburban settings introduce different kinds of experiences. Through books, children can expand their understanding of the world no matter where they live.

Attending to setting from a comparative perspective helps foster a child's spatial literacy. For instance, comparing the world of the book with the world children live in helps them understand the special qualities of their own time and place. Focusing on pictorial details of books set in the past or elsewhere in the world and asking students to compare the clothing, housing, landscapes, and other setting indicators with their own environments will help them notice the unique features of their everyday surroundings, and understand that others in the world live and have lived differently.

The important thing for teachers is to make sure they choose books that present a variety of settings so that children's experiences can be both affirmed through similarities and expanded through differences.

Theme

The theme of a book is its main conceptual idea—the point it is trying to communicate. When grownups are asked what a children's book is about, they will most often state the theme, what the book seems to be about. For instance, they are likely to say that Dr. Seuss's The Lorax (1972) is about environmentalism and the dangers of deforestation and corporate irresponsibility. Children, however, think in terms of details. For them, The Lorax is about a grumpy little orange creature who keeps yelling at the guy who makes the thneeds. They might get the tone of the book as well by discussing the way the colors make them feel, the style of the pictures or the expressions of the characters, or the way the language works. The Lorax always looks sad or angry, and he often yells, so even though the book has comical-looking pictures, children will sense that this is not a funny book.

But it is important to remember that the subject of a book is not the same as the plot, and that the subject and plot are not the same as the theme. Each level of understanding represents a higher order of thinking and abstraction. In the case of the Lorax, the subject is a boy wanting to know why his town is so polluted. The plot tells the story of the Once-ler who came to town and harvested the Truffula trees to make thneeds, ignored the warnings of the Lorax, and destroyed the environment through his greed. The theme is that this sort of environmental destruction is caused by corporate greed and can be prevented or reversed if people pay attention to the damage they are causing. This is driven home by the Once-ler giving the boy the last Truffula seed to plant and nurture.

Moreover, there are implicit themes that emerge as well as explicit ones. The explicit theme of H. A. and Margret Rey's Curious George (1941), for instance, may well be that little monkeys are happiest in zoos (it is a product of its time, after all). But there are multiple implicit themes as well, depending on how you view the characters in the book. My students, for instance, often see the Man in the Yellow Hat as a neglectful parent who can't handle his child's mischief, so he sends him away. There are also implicit racist themes throughout the book communicated through the fact that George is from Africa and is surrounded by White people. Whenever he tries to act like them, he fails, and ultimately ends up incarcerated. The fun and adventures that Curious George has throughout the book may implicitly communicate the theme that bad behavior is worth the consequences, or the outrageous consequences of Curious George's actions may communicate to still others that curiosity is best curbed. Any of these themes is possible depending on the experiences and dispositions the reader brings to the text.

Given this potential confusion of thematic messages, it is tempting to say that the best way to evaluate a book based on its theme is to consider how clearly the theme is communicated. The problem here is that books for which the theme is more important than the entertainment can be preachy and boring. Look for books that entertain as they instruct. For instance, many of Dr. Seuss's books are very message-driven, but the messages are couched in interesting stories.

On the other hand, don't shy away from books whose themes are not immediately clear. Instead, talk with children about their experience of the book. Children as young as 4 or 5 can be engaged in discussion about the theme of a book if questions are scaffolded through the book's details. Ask them what they thought the book was about, what the main problem was, how it was solved, and whether they thought it was a good solution. Oftentimes, letting children respond to a book by drawing a picture or acting out a scene helps them communicate what they found was most important or confusing or interesting about a book. This will help them figure out what theme was most important to them and also help them develop the skill of responding to a book thoughtfully rather than hunting for an author's message.

Coats, K. (2013).  Children’s literature & the developing reader  [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/

3.1 A Word (or Several) About Author's Intentions

At this point, students usually ask whether the author or illustrator makes the decision to turn the little engine around intentionally or whether we are "reading too much into it." It's a good question and one we can't really answer without asking the author or illustrator. It might be more helpful to consider that much of what each of us does every day is unintentional, but it is guided by norms of behavior and cultural know-how. As we grow up in a culture, we internalize its codes, values, and beliefs. Our ways of talking, moving, and seeing are all developed in a specific culture at a specific time. And in fact, the literature that we read and the way we are exposed to it helps us learn those cultural codes.

So for Watty Piper and his original illustrators, George and Doris Hauman, having grown up in a culture that reads from left to right, it probably made intuitive sense to orient the train the way they did when they wanted to indicate that it was making progress, and then to reorient it when they wanted to show that there was a problem. Just by living in a culture, they had developed visual, gestural, and spatial literacies specific to their culture, and they combined these ways of seeing to create multimodal metaphors of making and not making progress. So the first answer to the question of whether an author or illustrator intends to put a meaning into a work is that authors and illustrators always act out of a knowledge, conscious or not, of the codes of their culture.

The second answer to that question comes from the theory of reader response criticism. In the late 1960s, Roland Barthes wrote an article called "The Death of the Author" (1977) in which he claimed that an author's intentions, background, or biography doesn't matter at all when it came to interpreting a text. Instead, what really matters is how the reader sees the text. Similarly, in 1978, Louise Rosenblatt argued that reading was not a fishing expedition, where the reader was looking for the single, correct meaning hidden under the surface of a text by a cagey author, but was instead a transaction between the reader and the book. In the process of this transaction, both readers and texts are changed, as readers bring their understanding of the world to the text, and the text enhances their understanding of the world. Thus, the second answer is that the author's intentions matter less than the way readers interpret the text in light of their own experience, especially the experience they are having while they are reading the book.

When my daughter was 3, she picked up a copy of Stellaluna (Cannon, 1993) that I was then teaching in a Literature for Young Children class. I hadn't read it to her yet, so I let her look through the pictures and tell me what she thought the book was about. "Oh," she said, "it's about a bird who has to leave her mother and go to school. But she makes friends at school so it's okay. Then she sees her mother when school is over."

What actually happens in Stellaluna is that Stellaluna's mother, who is a bat, drops her during a fight with an owl. Stellaluna lands in a bird's nest with three baby birds in it, where, after some initial trouble with Mama Bird, she learns to live like a bird. When she and the three baby birds in the nest all learn to fly, Stellaluna comes across a group of bats and finds her mother. She is excited to be among bats again and helps save her bird friends when they try to fly at night.

My daughter's interpretation of the story followed the basic trajectory of events—a child gets separated from her mother, enters a world of peers, and then reunites with her mother at the end—but placed them into what she was doing at the time, that is, leaving home for the first time to enter preschool. Her reader response transaction with the book required her to bring her idea of what school would be like and map it onto a crowded bird's nest with a single adult presiding, and the book helped her cope with her anxiety of attending school for the first time by providing a comforting narrative of finding friends and returning to Mom at the end. Because she had no context for understanding the difference between a bird and a bat, that detail became irrelevant for her, even though it is a very important theme in the book.

Both Rosenblatt's and Barthes' work was largely a reaction against the idea that books have one single meaning—the one that the author intended—and that the job of the reader is simply to figure out what that meaning is. Rosenblatt and Barthes argued for reading as a more interactive experience. Readers, even very young ones like my daughter, bring their own experiences to a book, and their interpretations and responses are colored by those experiences. The book becomes meaningful to them as a result of this interaction between what they already know and what the book introduces. This transaction forms the basis of reader response criticism.

Children's Books Intended to Teach a Lesson

Before we move on from the question of whether an author's intentions matter in analyzing a book, though, we should pay some attention to books where the author's intentions are impossible to miss: the dreaded didactic children's book. The word didactic refers to instruction, so a didactic book is one that is mainly focused on teaching a lesson. I think we can agree that nobody likes to be preached to. We can probably also agree that stories that focus too much on teaching a lesson are usually bland and boring; this was the main problem identified by Hersey (1954) in his article on why children weren't learning to read in schools—their books were too boring and focused too much on good children always choosing to do the right thing.

At the same time, though, we need to remember that a children's book is always didactic—that is, it always teaches something about the way the world works to its intended audience. For children, the world is new, and they are remarkably open to whatever adults tell them about how it works, at least until they develop the cognitive and emotional capacities to entertain doubt and skepticism. So while it may not be the author's intention to teach them some lesson, children nonetheless take one away based on what caused the conflict in the story and how it is resolved.

But authors are not completely innocent in this transaction. While many say, "Hey, I was just telling a story, not trying to teach a lesson," they still selected which story they wanted to tell and decided who would win and who would lose in the end. Walt Disney once said, for instance, "We just make the pictures, and let the professors tell us what they mean" (quoted in Bell, Haas, & Sells, 1995, p. 1), and think of what children learn about the world from the films that come out of that studio. Consider, for instance, what girls and boys learn about romantic relationships from The Little Mermaid. Read the lyrics to Ursula's song when she is trying to get Ariel to give up her voice here. Still, at least with that perspective, the authors are focusing on the quality of the story they want to tell. Other authors and purveyors of children's literature are more openly agenda driven; they want children to think a certain way about gender, manners, the environment, or some other issue, and their storytelling takes a back seat.

A rule of thumb, then: if a book makes you feel preached to, it will have that effect on child readers as well. If, on the other hand, you feel swept up in a good story, then you will want to step back at some point and take a more objective look at what sorts of messages are being conveyed through the story.

How to Share a Book With a Baby

As noted, a very young child encountering a book may not necessarily know what a book is for or how it works. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't share books with infants. In fact, book sharing with very young children is particularly important in these days when children are likely to have more access to television and electronic devices than to actual books. (For a humorous take on this problem in contemporary culture, see the book trailer for Lane Smith's It's a Book here.) The key is adult interaction and responsiveness.

Sharing a book with a child, like telling a story, or singing an action song, should be an interactive experience as the adult and the child develop a habit of shared attention. As the adult points to a picture, the child follows the pointed finger and begins to put together the special qualities of the book as a particular kind of object. Soon, the child will begin to do the pointing, and the adult should follow the child's lead in discovering and talking about the pictures on the page.

Early print awareness spawns intellectual curiosity, and it's not difficult, because it builds on preferences that children already have. Research shows that infants as young as 4 months old will look at a picture ("What do babies think," 2012; Winner, 1982). In fact, they prefer a picture of something they have never seen before over a picture of something that is familiar. However, children do not make the connection between the picture and the thing it represents until they are nearly 2 years old (Piaget, 1963; Winner, 1982, pp. 114–116). So, for infants, the book is an object just like any other object in their world, and they will enjoy looking at it and the pictures inside it simply for the joy of looking at something new. Interaction with adults helps them start to name and understand what they are seeing and make connections between pictures in books and objects and concepts in the real world.

3.2 The Elements of Picturebook Art

It takes time, careful attention, and some specialized knowledge to analyze how a picturebook works, but this kind of work enriches our understanding of why a book is good or why we or our children may like it even if it isn't. More importantly, this is information that we can teach children who are ready to learn it so that we can help them become competent in visual, spatial, and gestural literacies. As we go through the elements of picturebook art, it will be helpful for you to have a selection of picturebooks on hand to look at. Stop now and collect four or five books to have nearby.

Color

Color is probably the most significant characteristic of picturebooks. Color has three elements or aspects: hue, tone or shade, and saturation.

Hue

Hue refers to the color itself, that is, its position on the color spectrum that identifies it as blue, red, green, yellow, and so forth. Hues are classified as either warm or cool. The warm hues are red, orange, and yellow; and the cool hues are purple, blue, and green. Brown is a warm hue, as it results from a combination of more warm colors than cool ones. Adults and older children tend to prefer cool colors to warm ones, whereas younger children are attracted to high contrast, regardless of whether the colors are warm or cool (Winner, 1982, p. 114).

Even though color distinctions are determined through the way light refracts off a surface, there are differences in the ability to perceive color based on cultural variation. For instance, some cultures do not have words that distinguish red from orange, and therefore members of that culture do not perceive a difference in those two hues (Berlin and Kay, 1969; Davis, 2000). On the other hand, some cultures have multiple words for white, based on the quality of light through snow, which makes their perception of white more subtle than people who don't live in that culture. Hues also take on different meaning in different cultures. In the United States, for instance, it is typical to wear black as a sign of mourning. In India, white clothing signals that someone is in mourning.

In picturebooks, hues often appeal to the traditional meanings of that color in the culture represented. For instance, in Brian Collier's illustration of a young African American girl situated against a red, white, and blue American flag in Doreen Rappaport's Martin's Big Words (2001), he also incorporates the black, green, and orange hues found in the flags of many African nations. This collage of colors creates a visual metaphor of African American identity and is reinforced by the words that accompany the picture: "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., cared about all Americans. He cared about people all over the world. And people all over the world admired him" (n.p.).

In Western culture, brown often signifies earthiness, solidity, and dependability. Rich browns dominate the illustrations in Phoebe Gilman's Something From Nothing (1992), where the boy's home and his grandfather are his dependable anchors as he is going through change. Red, on the other hand, being the color of blood and fire, signals danger, excitement, and warmth (Bang, 2000; Nodelman, 1988) and is more likely to be found in books that feature those elements, as in Eve Bunting's Smoky Night (1994).

Tone or Shade

The tone or shade of a color is created when the color is mixed with black or white. Mixing red with black, for instance, creates burgundy or dark red, while mixing it with white gives it a pink tone. Tones are often used to create mood in a picturebook: Darker shades can make a picture seem scarier, while brighter tones lighten the mood. This association works largely because humans see better in bright light, so we are more confident in well-lighted environments. We associate the dark with fear and mystery because it disables the sense most of us depend on to maintain an awareness of our surroundings (Bang, 2000).

Again, take a look at Eve Bunting's Smoky Night (1994), where the dominant shades are dark to complement the theme of fear during the Los Angeles riots. Compare Smoky Night with any book by Kevin Henkes, who almost always works in light tones for his light-hearted tales of elementary-school-aged mice with typical, easily solved problems. Henkes's books include Chester's Way (1988), Owen (1993), Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse (1996), and Wemberly Worried (2000).

Saturation

Saturation refers to the degree to which the color is pure—that is, a color is said to be fully saturated when it hasn't been mixed with either white or black. Look around the space where you are right now. Most of the colors you see will likely be toned down—that is, mixed with white or black to lighten or darken the purity of their hue. We rarely use fully saturated colors for interior design elements, and thus the objects whose colors are fully saturated stand out and capture our attention.

As we noted in Chapter 1, children under the age of 9 almost invariably prefer fully saturated colors (Winner, 1982). This age-related color preference is something to pay attention to when choosing appealing literature for children. What adults find garish and overly bright may appeal very much to young children, while children are likely to be unimpressed by subtle shifts of muted color that adults find beautiful.

Children also learn to associate colors with emotions (Zentner, 2001). The research in this area is unclear as to exactly why or how color affects mood, but we use color words to describe our moods (such as "feeling blue" or "green with envy"), and children learn to associate certain colors with certain states of mind or feeling (Boyatzis & Varghese, 1994; Valdez & Mehrabian, 1994; Zentner, 2001). In addition to emotional connections with color, color also becomes tied to gender norms. Some of this is completely subjective—that is, we make associations with color along the lines of positive memories or personal preferences—while other connections are more culturally determined.

An important consideration is the way colors are combined in a story. Different color combinations evoke different responses. For very young children, high contrast is important. Children are looking for basic patterns and shapes, so the less shading, blending, and gradation of color, the easier it will be for them to pick out and focus on a particular shape. High contrast can also contribute to the sense of energy that a picture generates.

Black and white, with occasional dashes of red, are a popular choice for young children (see Mary Azarian's A Farmer's Alphabet [1981], Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand [1936], and Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree [1964]). You can find other high-contrast combinations by looking at the color wheel. The highest contrasts are colors directly across from each other: from blue, for instance, to orange, or from yellow to purple. These high-contrast combinations are often used in sports team uniforms; they generate a sense of action, energy, and excitement.

Eric Carle's books are notable for their use of rich, fully saturated and highly contrasting colors. He employs a collage technique that consists of tissue papers that he paints himself. His figures contrast sharply with their backgrounds. If his figures are colorful, as they are in The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1969), he sets them against a white background. If his figures are white or light colored, he uses a dark background. This seemingly simple technique is not only pleasing to the eye but it helps very young children isolate and focus on the important elements of the story. For a quick slide show that demonstrates Carle's technique, click here or here.

Some books, such as Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon (1947) and Denise Fleming's In a Small, Small Pond (1993), achieve their greatest contrasts through the turn of the page. The contrasts in these books contribute to both the uses of the book and the storytelling. While Goodnight Moon is clearly a bedtime book, In a Small, Small Pond ends with a good night message to the pond, so it can also be a good choice for ending a day. For an extension activity to use with In a Small, Small Pond, click here.

The succession of page turns in Goodnight Moon moves between bright, warm hues and gray hues. In a Small, Small Pond alternates between warm and cool colors with each turn of the page. These shifts cause young eyes to dilate and constrict, which makes children blink and, ideally, feel sleepy. The grays in Goodnight Moon become darker as the story moves along, gently guiding young children to sleep. In In a Small, Small Pond, that movement is more subtle, as the frog moves between underwater environments, which are fully saturated blues and greens, to above the water scenes, which feature a bright yellow sky. By the end of the book, the contrasts are less noticeable; the scenes remain fully saturated, but the colors on the page contrast less, so that energy of the narrative calms to its good night message.

How Color Helps Tell the Story

A good illustrator will use color strategically to complement the story's meaning and help children track the narrative. After all, if books are strange objects to children, stories are no more natural. Learning how to follow a character through a story and figure out relationships between characters is one of the benefits to early exposure to good literature. This skill helps young children become better readers throughout their lives. Good illustrators help scaffold this emerging skill by connecting characters through color.

Children's book author and illustrator Molly Bang (2000) describes how an illustrator might connect the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood by making his eyes the same red as her cloak. Children track the red of the wolf's eyes to the red of Red's cloak and immediately sense that she is in danger, especially if that red is also included in the wolf's mouth.

Similarly, in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963), as Max approaches the island in his boat, one wild thing is smaller than the others and has white fur and horns, which connects him with Max visually, as Max is also wearing a white costume that features horns. Interestingly, this character disappears after the second spread of the island and does not appear in the wild rumpus. This may suggest that he is a representation of Max himself, as Max replaces him once he arrives on the island and established himself as their leader.

A more complex example of how color can head off confusion is found in Gerald McDermott's Raven: A Trickster Tale From the Pacific Northwest (1993). Here, a magical, brightly colored raven decides that he will find light for the people, who lived in perpetual darkness and cold. He travels until he finds the house of the Sky Chief, which has a source of light. He turns himself into a pine needle and lands in the water so that the Sky Chief's daughter will swallow him as she gets herself a drink. This impregnates the girl, and she gives birth to a child, who is really Raven. As a child, Raven pretends to play, but he is continually seeking the source of the light. He finds it in a box and cries until his mother opens the box to reveal a ball, which is really the sun. When she gives him the ball to play with, he transforms back into a Raven and steals the ball, launching it into the sky for all people to enjoy.

Clearly, this would be a difficult narrative for inexperienced readers to track, as the main character changes form. Like many trickster tales, it also has a questionable moral trajectory: Raven has to steal the ball in order to give it to the people. McDermott solves both of these problems through the use of color. Trickster figures feature in many folktale traditions as characters who get what they want and need through deception against more physically powerful opponents. Raven is brightly colored with distinctive markings; his body is marked with patterns taken from Tlingit culture in red, black, green, and blue. When he is reborn as a boy, his clothing features the same colors and markings, which make him stand out from the other inhabitants of the Sky Chief's house, including his mother, who all dress in blue, gold, turquoise, and brown. So even though he has changed form, the colors connect him to his former self and reassure children that this really is Raven. As for his theft, the box in which the sun is hidden bears the same colors and markings as Raven himself, which can indicate to children that the box and its contents actually belong to Raven in the first place, so his actions don't really constitute stealing from his adoptive family. The use of color in this book thus helps children track a potentially confusing story.

Color is an enormously important aspect of picturebook design. It affects whether a book will have immediate appeal for children, establishes its mood, affects its energy, and helps readers track the narrative flow. However, color also combines with other, equally important elements, such as shape, line, texture, figures, and words, to create the overall meaning of a text.

Shape

Picturebook artists are deeply sensitive to shape when they design their illustrations. In her book, Picture This: How Pictures Work (2000), Molly Bang walks readers through an artist's decision-making process when it comes to creating an illustration for a picturebook, and then follows up by outlining certain general principles that affect that decision-making process.

Bang points out, for instance, that rounded shapes are not as threatening as pointed or jagged ones. This seems intuitive, as it reflects our embodied experience; poufy pillows can't hurt us, while pointy sticks can. Horizontal lines offer stability, whereas diagonals suggest energy and movement. Vertical lines suggest power and containment.

These associations are related to the way our bodies work and are oriented in space. Philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (2003) call these kinds of associations conceptual metaphors. A conceptual metaphor is a way of understanding one idea or concept in terms of another. For instance, human beings walk upright, so we associate being vertical with higher or happier status. We often understand and talk about our emotional moods in these terms: When we are sad, we are "down," but when we are happy, things are looking "up." Additionally, we might consider a mean-spirited action as "low-down" while moral actions are "upright" or "high-minded."

This kind of thinking relates to gestural and spatial literacies in picturebooks. We are never more stable than when we are horizontal, but we find it difficult to move in that position, so characters and shapes that are horizontal, or wider than they are tall, seem stable and comforting to us. On the other hand, we can't maintain a diagonal position for very long without moving, so characters or figures placed at an angle seem unstable and in motion. Taller people usually have power over smaller ones, and those wretched vertical bars around a baby's crib separate the baby from the comfort of other people, so taller figures are more likely to be threatening. Just as brighter pictures signify happiness because we see better in the light, so the vertical orientation of our bodies leads us to think that higher is better or more powerful in terms of a direction of movement.

The Meanings of Shapes

These associations with shape translate to picturebook design in several ways, as Bang (2000, pp. 42–50) points out. Here are some examples of how shapes can make us feel:

A triangle on its base is stable, but a triangle balanced on the tip of one of its angles is always in danger of falling over, so it makes us anxious. We see an unfinished movement in a triangle on its tip, and we long to complete it.

A steady horizon can suggest comfort and stability in an anxious situation.

Circles accomplish much the same effect, because they represent a comforting enclosure, a sense of completeness with no sharp edges or menacing corners.

Vertical shapes may make us feel secure, but they may also make us feel confined and powerless, unless we are the ones in control of them.

Tomie DePaola makes use of the principle of horizontal stability in Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs (1973). Four-year-old Tommy has a grandmother and a great-grandmother that he loves very much and likes to visit. One day, his grandmother tells him that his great-grandmother is no longer with them, and Tommy must come to terms with losing someone he loves. This is surely a traumatic experience that many children go through and that has the potential to throw them off balance. DePaola's illustrations have a comforting stability that is created by the firm horizontal line through the center of each illustration. In one illustration, for instance, the horizontal line is the window seat that Tommy sits on; in another, it is the stove where his grandmother cooks; and in yet another, it is his great-grandmother's dresser or the rails of her bed. This subtle feature helps the reader feel secure in the midst of an insecure situation.

Cynthia Rylant's Dog Heaven (1995) also uses shapes quite effectively, though very differently, in her depiction of the afterlife for dogs. Happily remembering a dog who has passed away requires a different kind of imagining than remembering a great-grandmother. Dogs are at their happiest when they are moving, so Rylant uses strong diagonals in most of her pictures, with most of the diagonals moving upward from left to right. As we noted, movement from left to right in Western culture signifies progress and forward movement. Likewise, moving upward is also a signifier that things are getting better.

Rylant puts together a combination of elements to create the effect she wants to achieve. She uses dark colors to acknowledge that the passing of a dog from this world to the next is a sad event. But she creates a heaven for dogs where they are constantly and happily in motion in a mostly upward direction, and then uses the soft, fluffy shapes of clouds to make beds for them to rest in. The overall effect is one of happiness through tears, and Rylant achieves it through the combination of conventional uses of color, movement, and shape.

Line

Like color and shape, lines can affect the mood of illustrations. Outlines can enclose and contain shapes and can also be used to express movement. Borders or white space can surround the entire illustration on a page.

Outlines

The decision to use outlines or not, and what kind of outlines, produces very different feelings in the artwork. With the exception of the angels' wings, Rylant doesn't outline her figures in Dog Heaven. Instead, they are distinguished from their backgrounds by color. This lack of an artificial separation between the subject and its surrounding has the effect of suggesting a natural or organic relationship between the two. DePaola outlines everything in Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs, using a slightly darker color of the thing he is outlining. Like the horizon line, this heightens the effect of stability and calm; Tommy lives in an ordered world where things are contained in their proper places.

In Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry (1999), she uses brightly contrasting outlines to emphasize the energetic, unstable mood of the scene, especially the object of the conflict—in this case, the toy gorilla—and the explosiveness of her words.

Mo Willems' outlines of Pigeon look as though they have been done in crayon, which adds to the childlike perspective that is so important in those books, whereas Beatrix Potter's delicate black-ink outlines draw attention to the enclosed coziness of her books.

One can see updated echoes of Potter's style in some of Kevin Henkes's books, such as Owen (1993) and others whose covers appear earlier in this chapter. Like Potter, Henkes uses thin black ink outlines to separate his watercolor figures and objects from their background, giving a sense of smallness while picking out tiny details.

By contrast, David Diaz makes use of thick black outlines, paying homage to the award-winning style of John Steptoe, who was one of the first African American writers and illustrators to highlight the experiences of urban children. The John Steptoe New Talent Award is given by the American Library Association under the auspices of the Coretta Scott King Award committee to honor writers and illustrators of color who have published fewer than three books. Like Steptoe, Diaz creates a much bolder look that emphasizes the solidity of the characters and suggests moods of fear and anger but also that the characters are self-contained and united in the midst of an unstable situation.

Page Borders

An important role that line plays in picturebooks is the enclosing of pictures in borders. The idea that the world is bounded and enclosed is a very comforting one for children. They prefer small spaces and are sometimes threatened by openings or unbounded spaces. In general, shaky, unfinished lines evoke a feeling of energy or instability, while smooth, controlled lines suggest stability and control.

Ann Jonas's Holes and Peeks (1984) demonstrates the comforting function of borders. "I don't like holes," her unnamed child narrator says. "They scare me." The pictures accompanying these words feature such small annoyances as holes in footie pajamas and stuffed animals, as well as more frightening holes such as the drain hole in the bathtub and that biggest, scariest hole of all—the toilet. Peeks, on the other hand, are not like holes. When the child can control the visual field by peeking through a hole he has made by almost covering his head with a towel, or peering through a rolled-up newspaper, the world is more manageable. Bordered pictures offer such "peeks": they are small, bounded worlds that a child can focus on. In fact, the technique of using borders may actually help teach young readers how to focus on a scene.

Illustrators can also use borders to suggest a sense of who has imaginative control. For instance, with each page turn of Where the Wild Things Are, the pictures become larger and the white space around them becomes smaller. This progression suggests the growing importance of Max's imagination as he reacts to his mother's scolding. The white space around the pictures could be said to represent the influence of Max's mother, her authority over him. As he gets progressively naughtier, her control of the situation lessens, until finally she sends him to his room. Here, his imagination grows larger as his mother's voice has been shut out by the closed door. Finally, there are no borders around the pictures at all, and no words, as he gives in to the wild rumpus of his turbulent emotions. When he is exhausted and lonely and ready to submit to his mother's discipline, the borders return.

Lines That Show Movement

Like shapes, lines also help us make the imaginative leap between still pictures and movement. Comics artists are most well-known for the use of lines to indicate movement, but picturebook artists often use them as well; they draw curved lines around a character's feet to show that the feet are in motion, or wiggly lines around a character to indicate shaking or dancing. These are sometimes referred to as motion lines. Wavy lines around a character's head to show that the character is dizzy, shocked, surprised, or even angry are referred to as emanata. Mo Willems makes extensive use of both motion lines and emanata in his Pigeon books as well as his Elephant and Piggie series.

Texture and Tactile Appeal

Texture is another important feature of picturebook art, both in terms of its representation and in terms of the physical book itself. Because for very young children, picturebooks are objects in the world just like any other object, texture matters. Children are very touch oriented, so the feel of a book is important. You might remember the classic Pat the Bunny (Kunhardt, 2001) from your own childhood; initially published in 1940, it now has DVD versions and apps, which keeps the spirit of interactive book play while addressing it in different ways—after all, Daddy's scratchy beard doesn't feel like a touch screen! Also, there is a brief video showing a child interacting with this book on the Amazon page.

However, there are any number of touch and feel books available now, as well as lift-the-flap and other books with simple mechanisms for children to manipulate. The key to selecting these sorts of books for toddlers is to make sure they can tolerate rough handling. Tabs and flaps should be sturdy enough to bear repeated attempts to pull, lift, and return them to their starting positions.

Pop-Up Books

More elaborate pop-up books are obviously best reserved for older children with more developed fine-motor skills. For example, the paper artistry of Robert Sabuda is awe-inspiring in his versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2003) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (2000), as well as in his seasonal books and fantasy encyclopedias. Other paper artists, such as Joan Irvine (How to Make Super Pop-Ups, 2008), Ruth Wickings (Pop-Up: Everything You Need to Know to Create Your Own Pop-Up Book, 2010), David Carter and James Diaz (Let's Make It Pop-Up, 2004), have books that teach the art of making pop-up books to children, so that they can add these design elements to their own stories.

Visual Textures

In addition to how a book feels in one's hands, we should consider how texture is represented in picturebooks:

Brushstrokes are evident when a picturebook artist has used oils or gouache (opaque watercolor) to create the original art. This gives a book a weighty, serious feel, as it implies the thickness of its paint.

Watercolors tend to create a lighter, more transparent feeling. Sometimes the texture of the paper is visible, making the picture itself seem invitingly soft and nubbly.

More and more contemporary picturebook artists are turning to collage and computer-assisted art, both of which offer a great range of possibilities for depicting texture.

The texture of depicted surfaces engages the desire to touch, even when we know that the page we touch is likely to be smooth. This imaginative transaction can actually move us to run our fingers over the surface of the picture, as the depicted textures can evoke memories or stir curiosity. Or we might be inspired to look more closely at a picture, or linger over details in a collage.

The backgrounds in David Diaz's illustrations of Eve Bunting's Smoky Night (1994), for instance, feature photographs of collages constructed of spilled cereal, plastic bags, matches, bubble wrap, and bits of torn and cut paper of various weights, colors, and textures. These images powerfully evoke the chaos and mess that resulted from the riots in Los Angeles, California, in 1992 following the Rodney King trial, grounding the book with a sense of immediacy. Because we can imagine what these physical things feel like, we are drawn into imagining what the entire night must have felt like for the boy and his mother. The textures also inspire analysis: Because the materials with which the picture is made are recognizable and familiar, we ask how and why the artist made the choices that he did—why these materials, why this combination? How was this put together? These questions take us deeper into the meaning of the story.

Icons, Cartoons, and Animal Characters

In some books, the illustrations are simple line drawings with flat colors that only minimally depict what they represent. These sorts of images are called icons, and they are used in everything from political discourse to advertising to scientific communication to children's books. Icons are simplified images or representations of objects, ideas, philosophies, emotions, or entities. For instance, a picture of a flag is an icon for the country it stands for. A circle with a vertical line running through it and two diagonal lines coming out from the vertical one is recognized as a peace sign. A heart stands for love. Despite their simplicity and distance from the object they depict, children (and adults) still find these images absorbing, and have no trouble relating them to their real-life counterparts. This is because we tend to think conceptually. We pick out a few distinctive features of an item as definitional, and as long as the item has those features, we accept it as a depiction of that thing.

Did you have any difficulty identifying the first one as a cat and the second one as a pig? If you think about it, these figures look nothing like a cat or a pig. They are composed of black lines in simple shapes, and there are relatively few differences between the two. Those differences, however, are crucial in terms of conceptual understanding. Both pigs and cats have eyes, mouths, and pointy ears, sort of, but only cats have whiskers, and only pigs have snouts.

Clearly, resemblance to a real object is less important than having a conceptual understanding of what that object is. This gives picturebook artists incredible freedom to craft characters. As long as they give him a long, hairy snout, broad shoulders, and large, pointy ears, illustrators can make a wolf walk on all fours or on two legs, wear clothes or not, or even wear glasses and a stylish hat, and readers will still identify the character as a wolf. Picture him orange, however, and you may have a fox instead.

When an illustrator uses a nonhuman character, however, it is often to represent simplified human characteristics. The nonhuman characters become icons for human emotions, traits, and character types. This enables readers to identify with them by virtue of their position in a relationship (are they mommies, daddies, neighbors, villains, etc.?) or even body type (short, tall, thin, chubby, etc.). This can broaden the appeal of a picture book by making the characters seem more universal and less bound by a specific culture. Class and gender markers can still be present, though, and sometimes subtle ethnicity markers do come into play. Curious George, for instance, is from Africa, while all of the human characters in his story are White New Yorkers. Ferdinand is a Spanish bull. Mother animals still, in the 21st century, are often portrayed indoors only, wearing aprons.

It is important to try, as much as possible, to avoid these stereotypical images or to make sure that the range of texts that you share with children is diverse enough for them to see that this is just one sort of depiction among many. But while animal characters do not completely erase identity markers, they do tend to blur them so as to widen the opportunities for children from diverse backgrounds to identify with them as characters.

However, using nonhuman characters is, almost paradoxically, also a distancing mechanism—it enables us to explore actions and consequences that might be disturbing if the text featured a human character. Reading about the exploits of a small boy rabbit who disobeys his mother or a monkey who gets in trouble because he's too curious is somehow more palatable than reading about an actual human child who almost gets killed by an angry farmer or from falling off a boat.

Perhaps we need to go back to Dissanayake's explanations of infant preferences for a fuller understanding of how icons work (see Chapter 1). You'll recall that she lists simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration as features that characterize the interactions that infants prefer. Comics artist Scott McCloud (1993) argues that simplification enables the amplification of certain features—that is, by weeding out extra detail in a cartoon figure, an artist can emphasize, or exaggerate, the key features. But more importantly, perhaps, animal characters enable artists to exaggerate the consequences of an action.

When my students and I discussed the response to Curious George's accidental emergency phone call, they were struck by the difference between what happened to Curious George and what happens to children in real life. Most children who have access to a phone, they argued, have dialed 9-1-1 at one point or another. Because this is a common occurrence, the dispatchers are trained to know how to handle it, and they don't make a big deal out of it. In other words, there are no natural negative consequences for children who do this. But it is still a behavior that we want to discourage, for obvious reasons. Thus, a story like Curious George, where Curious George has to go to jail for accidentally calling the fire department, makes the point through exaggeration that it's a bad idea.

Of course, simplification and exaggeration are not limited to animal characters in picturebooks. The practice of cartooning distances even human characters enough so that they can get involved in humorously exaggerated situations. Simms Taback's There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (1997) demonstrates this nicely, as both the old lady and the animals she eats are cartooned enough to allow readers to distance themselves from her predicament rather than empathize with it.

The wonder of cartoon illustrations is that they can produce either a humorous or a frightening effect, depending on how the author manipulates the figures. Grossly exaggerated or distorted figures tend to evoke humor, because they are incongruous with what readers know to be true or possible about the world. But they can also be creepy or frightening if their body shapes seem painful or overbearing.

On the other hand, more realistic figures who behave in ways that either match their own species or successfully imitate human gestures and postures invite empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel what another person, or even a cartoon character in a book, is feeling. Figure drawings, like textures, should evoke at least an imaginative kinetic response—that is, readers should be able to feel their bodies in that posture and extrapolate from that feeling how the character must be feeling emotionally. This is part of gestural literacy—the ability to read an emotion based on a body posture or expression. Drooping shoulders, down-turned mouths, and large eyes evoke feelings of sadness, while upraised arms, big smiles, and wide-legged stances generate feelings of triumph and elation. Stiffly drawn characters with neutral expressions evoke, well, nothing, and can be hard for children to interpret.

Point of View

In order for readers to identify with a character within the story, artists must decide how the characters and objects are going to be positioned, and they must give the reader a specific place from which to view the scenes. This relates to the development of spatial literacy. Ann Jonas, for instance, maintains the toddler's perspective throughout Holes and Peeks. While adults come and go in the pictures, readers never see their upper bodies or faces. Instead, we see the bottoms of towels, the lower windowsill, the lower half of the shower, the pipes that go under the sink. The toilet and bathtub are just below eye level. By adopting and maintaining a point of view that is at eye level for the child, there is an implicit acknowledgement that the child's fears and perspectives about holes and peeks are valid and important.

Point of view can also be manipulated for storytelling purposes. On the cover of Nan Gregory's How Smudge Came (1995), we are invited to see from Smudge the puppy's perspective as a hand reaches down from above to pet him. This perspective also hides the owner of that hand, who turns out to be a young woman, Cindy, with Down syndrome who lives in a group home. The fact that Cindy has Down syndrome is not revealed until after she has rescued Smudge from a rainy night outdoors and carried him home—that is, we learn of her smart thinking, compassion, and heroism before we learn of her disability.

Immediately after we see Cindy's face and recognize the features of Down syndrome, the perspective shifts so that the viewer is looking down on Cindy from above as she sits on the floor to feed Smudge. This shift in stance indicates that Cindy is in for a bit of trouble—the viewer is watching from the position of higher authority and surveillance, and Cindy is lower than the viewer, which is the way Cindy is positioned in her group home and elsewhere in her life.

In the spreads where we are looking head-on at Cindy—that is, seeing her from her own height and point of view, she is either happily doing her chores in the group home, cuddled up in bed, or playing with Smudge, or talking to the residents of the hospice where she works. We also get that perspective when she is despondent after having lost Smudge and is trying to find a way to get him back.

When she is in trouble, though, for keeping a puppy without permission, the viewer is once more placed high above her, looking down on her as she is being scolded. In one picture, the viewer is positioned as the authority figure; the angle is from the bottom of the steps with pointing finger emerging from the lower edge of the picture, presumably where the reader would be, banishing Cindy to her room at the top of the stairs.

When Smudge is taken away from her, we are shown a full frontal picture of half of Cindy's face as a tear falls from her eye. This picture conveys the meaning of how torn in half she feels at the loss of her pet, but it is also confrontational, as readers are forced to face her on an equal level and acknowledge her deep sadness, an emotion that people don't conventionally associate with people who have Down syndrome.

The shifting of sight lines from Smudge's perspective, to Cindy's, to an external position of authority over her, forces readers to think about what their stance would be in this situation. It would be easy to say that we would be on Cindy's and Smudge's side, but neurotypical people are not in the habit of respecting the wishes of people with developmental disabilities, who are rarely allowed the same freedoms to make decisions as neurotypical people are. By alternating our visual perspective, the illustrator Ron Lightburn makes us confront the fact that there is a hierarchy in the way we treat people and that we are complicit in the oppression of certain groups of people, whose feelings and desires are just as deep and powerful as our own.

Composition

The way the viewer is positioned is just one of the elements that affects the overall composition of a picture. Composition is the way that elements of a picture are arranged to relate to one another.

Do they overlap, for instance? How does this closeness make readers feel? The reader might experience a kind of tension if the characters seem to be "in each other's faces." Other overlaps, such as readers find in Smoky Night, Time for Bed, or Stellaluna indicate physical closeness and intimacy between parents and their children.

Does the positioning of the figures or objects in a drawing suggest a larger overall shape, such as a triangle or circle? In Owen, the main character is confronted with the problem of having to give up his beloved blanket. The near final scene features his mother cutting his blanket into handkerchiefs, but the composition suggests that the destruction of his blanket is a victory for Owen, as the handkerchiefs fall in a complete circle that includes his mother, his father, and himself as part of its structure, symbolizing that he is still whole and complete, even if his blanket is not. Henkes even stresses this symbolism in his composition by including a dotted line to trace the circle.

Some compositions are very clean, with only a single central image on a white background, as in most of Beatrix Potter's texts. This keeps the focus clearly on the main character and his adventures. Other compositions are busier, inviting readers to consider multiple details and activities that are taking place simultaneously, such as the scenes from Something From Nothing. While the compositions are busy, they don't seem cluttered or chaotic because of the use of borders separating the elements of the pictures: the various rooms of the house; the inside of the house from the outside; the pictures from the text; and finally, the top of the house from the mouse's level below. Different things are going on in each section, but the clear demarcations ensure that readers aren't overwhelmed by busyness.

Other pictorial compositions show a single character going through a series of activities that take place over time. For instance, when Curious George enters the house of the man in the yellow hat, he eats dinner, smokes a pipe, and changes into pajamas on the same page. This page is laid out vertically, with the first small scene oriented top right, the second scene oriented in the middle on the left, and the third scene oriented on the right again at the bottom. The scenes are separated by white space, which helps readers imagine the time lapse. This type of layout indicates continuity in the flow of time; these things happened on the same evening, one right after the other. Having each scene on a separate page might indicate that more time had passed, which might confuse the reader about the time span of the story.

Strong composition not only conveys story information within each individual spread but it also contributes to the flow of the book. A single page may suggest unfinished action through the use of diagonals or a figure about to leave the picture. The next picture then should somehow be related to the one preceding it. Reader response theorists (Chatman, 1980; Iser, 1978; Rosenblatt, 1978) point out that there is always a system of gaps in a narrative that readers must fill in—time lapses or incomplete information that readers cover over with their own experience of how things work. A book that portrayed every detail of every minute of a character's life would be a tedious book indeed. But the gaps must be skillfully constructed so that readers don't have to make too many guesses about what happened between one scene and the next. This is particularly true in picturebooks. Characters cannot change clothes, hairstyles, or body shapes between pictures without a clear explanation. Dramatic changes in scenery must be accounted for. A sense of continuity must be maintained with each page turn in order for the narrative to flow properly, but there also must be enough variety to make each picture interesting on its own terms. And the final pages must bring the pictorial narrative to some sort of closure.

Finally, it is important to consider the composition of the cover of the book. You should be able to judge, for instance, who the main character or characters are. You should also be able to tell something about the seriousness of the book—whether you are in for a humorous book or one that has a more somber or subdued tone. You might also get some sense of the setting.

Guidelines for Identifying Elements in Effective Picturebook Design

Color

· Babies and toddlers prefer high-contrast colors.

· Until age 9, children prefer fully saturated colors.

· Colors can help readers track narrative flow.

· Colors can help readers focus attention on important details.

· Colors can connect characters.

· Colors can create mood.

· Colors can have different meanings in different cultures.

Shape, Line, and Texture

· Shapes and lines, including outlines, can support the overall meaning and mood of the story.

· Lines can help readers understand movement.

· Borders can be used to create specific effects.

· Textures and tactile appeal can invite interaction and close viewing.

Characters and Icons

· Characters should have natural-looking gestures and postures that suggest fluid movement, unless these are beingmanipulated for humorous or thematic effect.

· Animal characters should have enough conceptual features to be recognizable as their species, even if they are behaving inhuman ways.

· Characters should not be pictured in stereotypical roles.

Composition and Point of View

· The viewer's perspective created by the artwork can assist in understanding the story and its themes.

· Compositions should be arranged so that readers can follow the time sequence.

· Compositions can be highly detailed, but not cluttered and chaotic, unless chaos is a thematic element of the story.

· Pictures should imply continuity between page turns.

· Overall compositions can attend to the shapes that best fit the theme of the story.

· Cover art should set appropriate expectations for the book.

3.3 But What About the Words?

So far we have focused mainly on the images of picturebooks, but what about the words? In the next chapter, we will focus on the stories these words tell and the kinds of characters they create, but it is important to think about the words of a picturebook specifically as they relate to the visual images.

The same principles that we have been focusing on with regard to the visual aspect of children's books apply to the words: Children like novelty, simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration in the stories that they hear. Now, obviously, there are some possible contradictions here. Repetition, for instance, competes with novelty, and simplification competes with elaboration. The answer, then, is to make sure you are attending to a balance of these things as you choose the books and stories you will share with children.

Wordless Picturebooks

Of course, some books have few or no words at all. Many concept books for babies have pictures of everyday things organized according to a theme but without a story to connect them. Ironically, wordless books that do tell stories often take longer to read than books with words. Since the story is told entirely visually, it calls for patient attention to small details. However, some wordless books are fairly simple for very young children to follow. For instance, Alexandra Day's series of mostly wordless books about a Rottweiler named Carl features simple predicaments that arise when the mother leaves Carl in charge of the baby. They get into humorous scrapes, but the heroic Carl always manages to keep the baby safe from harm. Eric Rohmann's My Friend Rabbit (2002) and Jerry Pinkney's The Lion and the Mouse (2009) both won Caldecott Awards and work well with very young children. Adults and children can work together to decide what's happening in these stories, an activity that can stimulate turn-taking and discussion as well as develop visual literacy.

Many wordless books are pitched to older readers as well. They require readers to speculate about cause and effect, attend to multiple visual narratives, and infer plot movement from visual clues. For instance, David Wiesner's books Flotsam (2006) and Tuesday (1997) take careful viewers on extraordinary flights of imagination through time and space. Bill Thomson's Chalk (2010) follows the adventures of three multicultural children who discover a bag of magic chalk. Like Harold with his purple crayon, the boys discover that what they draw becomes real. If you are unfamiliar with this classic text, you may see and hear it read here.

Wordless picturebooks are useful resources for teaching visual, gestural, and spatial literacies. As readers translate the pictures into words that tell the stories, they exercise their creativity, develop their vocabulary and visual acuity, and learn about story sequencing. When they read wordless picturebooks in groups or with an adult, they also develop skills in logic and reasoning as they defend their interpretation of the pictures, which may differ from their classmates' views.

Reading Aloud

When books do have words, picturebook authors often provide visual clues for reading aloud. We can almost think of them as stage directions:

Large fonts mean to read something loudly,

smaller fonts mean to quiet down, and

shaky fonts may mean to make your voice quiver with fear.

Ellipses (the three dots that follow an unfinished sentence) before a page turn indicate that you should stretch out a syllable as you turn the page so that you carry over the anticipation to the next page, where the sentence should finish.

Most of us have enough visual and cultural knowledge to attend to these clues almost instinctively, but it is ALWAYS a good idea to practice a read-aloud before you share it, just in case there are moments when the text stumbles or when you encounter a place where you are uncertain about what the reading requires in terms of performance. In the practice of reading aloud, take your cue from children's television and the principle of exaggeration. Gestures, voice modulation, accents, and eye movement all benefit from being bigger than they would be in normal conversation. For inspiration on developing your read-aloud technique, listen to a few stories read by professional actors: http://www.storylineonline.net/.

Learning New Words

When you choose a book to read aloud, remember that children have greater receptive language than expressive language. In fact, adults do as well. Receptive language refers to the words and expressions we understand when we hear them, while expressive language refers to the words we use on a daily basis. Thus we can read and even understand more words than we typically use, especially if those words are given an appropriate context. In traditional literacy studies, context clues are the other words surrounding the unfamiliar word that enable us to make a good guess about what the unfamiliar word might mean.

A multiliteracies approach widens the range of possible context clues for developing readers. Pictures can help, but so can our gestures and the way we say a word. One of my favorite words, for instance, is "twitterpated," which is a word the owl in Disney's Bambi uses to describe the springtime mating behavior of the animals in the forest. Bambi, Thumper, and Flower (and the young viewers of the film, presumably) don't understand the word, so the owl launches into a very thorough explanation, using not only words but his whole body to explain the feeling. Watch the scene from Bambi for a lovely example of how to elaborate on unfamiliar vocabulary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qq-dGMVOzc.

Another example of multimodal context clues can be found in Leo Lionni's Swimmy (1973), where Swimmy is described as being "as black as a mussel shell." New readers may not have come across the word mussel before, though they may know its homophone muscle, which sounds the same, but this is clearly not that. There is no picture of a mussel shell on the page. There is a picture of Swimmy, though, and he's quite black. The entire picture of which he is a part is underwater, so readers putting all those things together, along with the word shell, which they will likely know, will figure out that a mussel is a sea creature with a black shell. The context clues work kind of backwards when you think about it, because you don't need the simile to understand what color Swimmy is, but seeing what color Swimmy is gives you the context to learn the new word, mussel.

While new words are often quite delicious for children to hear and learn to read, sentence structure should be fairly simple. Complex sentences with multiple levels of cause and effect can be confusing for young children. But strings of simple sentences can sound robotic and uninteresting. As you practice reading a book aloud, pay attention to how it sounds. Does it have a natural flow, with a good mix of familiar and novel words and sentence patterns? Will the pictures carry across the room so that children can see the visual cues that will help them understand new words?

Another aspect to pay attention to is the pace of the picturebook. Too many words on a page can cause a young child's attention to wander, particularly if the picture isn't interesting or detailed enough to focus on as you read the words. Unfortunately, this is more of an art than a science, so you will need to let the children you share with teach you what they will tolerate in terms of a picture-to-word ratio. Consider the following characteristics of effective language use in picturebooks:

The book can be read aloud in a natural rhythm, without stumbling or awkwardness.

The book introduces new words with multiple context clues.

The book uses some repetition and some novelty.

The fonts and punctuation marks provide cues for effective performance of the book as a read-aloud.

Sentence structure is varied, but simple.

3.4 Putting It All Together: Word and Picture Interaction

Now let's look at the way the words and pictures work together to convey a story. Various picturebook theorists have come up with various terms for describing the interaction between the words and the pictures, such as limiting (Nodelman, 1988); interanimating (Meek, 1992); polystemic, which refers to "the piecing together of text out of different kinds of signifying systems" (Lewis, 1996, p. 105); or synergistic (Sipe, 1998). For our purposes, we will talk about the interaction as multimodal—the final and most important of the multiliteracies identified by the New London Group (1996).

The advantage to the term multimodal is that it includes the audio aspect—how the words sound out loud—as well as the ways in which readers interact with the book in gestural and spatial terms, which can change its meaning. For instance, books shared with a parent or caregiver in a quiet, cuddly moment assume different meanings than books read in school. They are even read differently; a parent, for instance, might be more likely than the teacher to linger over a picture that interests a child and engage in conversation between reading the lines written. The parent may elaborate or simplify the text or the pictures. School reading, on the other hand, tends to be goal-oriented, with children focusing on the task of progressing through the book, reading the words exactly as they are written, and using the pictures as context clues.

Well-executed picturebooks strike a balance between words and pictures that facilitates maximum interaction and expresses their message through the various modes available to them. For instance, in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Mo Willems uses a simple method of direct address to invite readers to interact with the character in the book. He uses thought bubbles to indicate the pigeon's unspoken desires and then has the pigeon look at and speak directly to the reader.

The pigeon is a very simple, iconic figure drawing, but his postures are articulate—they mirror human postures and gestures enough so that children can imagine what the pigeon is feeling through his body language. For instance, when he first asks if he can drive the bus, he bends down, folds his wings, and looks up at the reader as he says, "Please?" The shape of the indicator line for the speech bubble is wavy, so a reader will know to say "Please" in that wavering, sing-songy voice that people use when they are pleading for something that might not be granted.

The pigeon is by turns conspiratorial, disgruntled, dejected, stubborn, humble, exasperated, and finally, explosively angry as he indulges in a full-on tantrum, literally beside himself with frustration. Readers have likely experienced all of these emotions, and they have shown them through their bodies in gestures and postures very similar to the pigeon. Likewise, they have probably used all of his various arguments to try to wheedle their way into getting something they want. In this book, the words and the pictures act in cooperation with each other to create a powerful whole.

Sometimes, however, the pictures and the words in a book seem to contradict each other, and in those cases, readers need to sort out what the relationship is and how it contributes to the overall meaning of the book. For instance, in The Cat in the Hat, the pictures suggest chaos, and the words describe that chaos in a fairly straightforward way. The rhyme and rhythm of the words, however, suggest something completely different—the sound of the words remains completely orderly and under control. This orderliness may help to contain the anxiety some readers experience in reading a story about strange-looking creatures coming in and messing up the house when the parents aren't home. The fact that the poetry never gets out of control, even if the action it narrates seems to, helps readers feel as though the story never gets out of control either.

Another way that pictures and words might seem to contradict each other is through irony. Irony can happen when the words mean something more or different than what they say, as evidenced by the pictures. For instance, in Pat Hutchins's Rosie's Walk (1971), for instance, Rosie the hen takes a walk around the barnyard. The text never indicates that anything else is going on other than Rosie's walk, and Rosie herself remains oblivious to the fact that she is being stalked by a fox, who is thwarted every time he tries to attack her. This is an example of dramatic irony, which happens when the reader knows something more and different about the situation than the character.

The best picturebooks leave some room for reader interpretation. They do this by establishing a particular kind of rhythm between pictures and words, where each provides enough information for readers to move forward while leaving some space for readers to puzzle over the gaps. Consider the following elements related to multimodal quality:

The words and pictures establish a rhythm that facilitates movement through the book.

Ironic relationships between words and pictures contribute to the meaning of the story.

When words are included that describe gestures or emotions, the pictures should match the words.

Some gaps are left for the readers to interpret but not so many or so large that the reader is confused.

Coats, K. (2013).  Children’s literature & the developing reader  [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/\

1.1 The Benefits of Children's Literature

Imagine what it must be like to be a newborn: You've left a world of warmth, comfort, and consistency and have been thrust into a place of unpredictable noises, bright lights, and comparatively rough handling. The regular heartbeat and soft sounds of the liquid environment that has enveloped you for the past nine months are suddenly gone, replaced by electronic beeps, sharp bangs and clangs, and loud and unfamiliar voices.

Remarkably, newborn infants do have some resources to cope with the strange environment in which they find themselves. Neurotypical infants can track a brightly colored ball as it passes in front of their eyes, and they can recognize a human face. If their hearing is functional, they will respond to a familiar voice, preferring a voice whose music they have heard while in the womb. They have instincts for sucking and vocalizing that prompt responses from adults. Thus, they already have many of the tools they need to begin the long process of ordering, understanding, interacting with, and manipulating their world.

However, as neuroscientists are quick to point out, all human infants are born prematurely, meaning that despite the nine months of development in the womb, the human brain and body still have a long way to go in terms of developing neural connections and pathways that coordinate both thinking and moving. To become fully human, infants need to learn how to use language the way other people in their culture do, how to read and interpret images and gestures, how to regulate their emotions and behaviors, how to communicate with others and take up a meaningful place in that culture as individuals, how to find out things they don't know, and how to participate in community activities and rituals.

This is where children's literature comes in. Through storytelling, poetry, song, and printed texts, children learn how their culture is organized, what it values, how it differs from other cultures, how they can both assert and develop their individuality, and how they can become valued and responsible members of a community.

That seems like a lot of weight to put on children's books, which on the surface may seem simple, sentimental, or sometimes even silly. But throughout this book, we will explore the richness of the interaction between children and quality literature. Children's literature, through its forms, its messages, and the conversations it inspires, helps children understand the complex world they have entered. It expands their capacity to enjoy that world by providing pleasure. It may even help them change their world by stimulating their imaginations and developing their intellects.

Consider, for instance, the picturebook Swimmy (1963), by Leo Lionni. Swimmy is the lone black fish in a school of red ones. Besides being a different color, he is also a faster swimmer than his fellow fish, which is why he alone escapes on that fateful day when the rest of his brothers and sisters are swallowed up by a larger fish. After the loss of his family, he swims around the ocean and meets many wonderful and unique creatures, but he is lonely for his own kind. When he meets up with a new school of small red fish, he joins them and teaches them that together they can camouflage themselves in such a way as to scare off big fish—they mass into a big fish shape themselves, with Swimmy as their black eye.

As children enjoy this story of a small fish who uses his intelligence and his physical difference to solve a problem, they learn many things about the social organization of their world. They learn, for instance, that big fish eat small ones and that this is a problem for small fish. They learn that being different can be hard but that it has its rewards. They learn that the world is full of strange and mysterious things that are worth finding out about. And finally, they learn that working together can save them from danger. These messages are similar to other Lionni books, which often feature characters whose difference and special qualities are essential to the success of the group. As children grow, they will face many pressures to talk, act, and think like everyone else, but Swimmy is accepted for who he is because the group recognizes that they need him to be and think differently than they. His story expresses a core cultural value of accepting and honoring individual differences.

Different books offer different messages about a range of cultural values. Sometimes, these messages are explicit and easy to understand. Often, though, they are subtle, and child readers absorb them unconsciously as they enjoy the story. One of the reasons it is important for parents, professional caregivers, and early childhood educators to study children's literature is because children's literature always teaches children something about the world, and we need to be aware of what those lessons are. Because children have limited experience with the world around them, and because their brains are so active in taking in new information and making connections, they are remarkably open to both the overt and the subtle messages embedded in the stories we share.

1.2 What Do Children's Literature Researchers Study?

There are many ways to go about the study of children's literature. Literary researchers, for instance, study the literature itself. They might look at books, folk stories, poems, and films from a historical perspective, asking why certain stories and poems become classics. Alternately, they might look at form, that is, how the art and the words of children's books invite children to read them, and how those forms have changed over time. Still other literary researchers focus on the messages of children's literature, as we just did with Swimmy, to try to determine how these messages are communicated to children through their books. They call these sorts of messages ideologies, which are the unconscious beliefs and values that underlie our behavior. Our cultural beliefs and values seem like common sense to us, when really they have been taught to us through various means, including children's literature, throughout our lifetimes.

Scholars in the fields of Education and Library and Information Sciences focus more on the interaction of children with books. They want to know how to get children to engage with books so that they can meet educational and personal goals and enrich their lives through reading. Educators understand that children acquire literacy and literary understanding in stages, and they research how engagement with literature helps children progress through these stages. Librarians are committed to a practice they call a readers' advisory, which aims to put the right book in the right person's hand at the right time. In order to help children engage with books, teachers and librarians need to understand something about children's preferences as well as have a broad knowledge of what sorts of books are available.

1.3 What Will You Study About Children's Literature in This Book?

This book will introduce strategies from all of these different ways of looking at children's literature, which includes not only printed books, but also oral stories and poems, music, film, and digital media. In Chapter 2, you will see how the history of children's literature reflects the ideas society has had in different periods about who children are and what they need. You will learn how to analyze pictures and stories in Chapters 3 and 4 so that you can assess them for quality. And throughout the book, you will explore how the interaction between adults, children, and developmentally appropriate, quality literature enriches children's lives.

Of course, one of the primary purposes of children's literature is to help children learn to read. Learning to read, however, is much more complicated than simply knowing which marks on a page correspond to which sounds. In order to be truly literate, children must learn to make meaning from texts and pictures, to transform the words on the page into mental images of places, characters, and things that move and interact with one another. They need to connect causes and effects and problems and solutions, and they need to be able to follow paths of growth and development as they unfold. As we move through the chapters of this book, we will think carefully about how children's brain development grows alongside their increasing language and literacy development. This introductory chapter will offer an overview of how these factors interact, while Chapters 6–10 break down the interaction more precisely and suggest how to select and share developmentally appropriate, quality literature with children at different stages of their reading development.

Additionally, in this first chapter we will explore the various resources available to help readers find good books. In studies that focus on community and state literacy rates, researchers have found that access to many good books is the single most important factor affecting successful literacy acquisition (McQuillan, 1998; Shin, 2004). Ensuring book-rich environments for all children should thus be a top priority for early childhood educators. Throughout this book, we will discuss the types of books available for children and the appropriate ages at which to introduce them.

By the end of this book, then, you should feel confident in your ability to find, select, and share quality, developmentally appropriate literature with young children from birth to age 8.

What Does "Developmentally Appropriate" Mean?

"Developmentally appropriate" is a loaded term when it comes to describing literature for children. To assess whether a book is developmentally appropriate, however, we need to understand how language development and literacy are connected and how learning happens, but perhaps most importantly, we need to be attuned to children's preferences and emotional concerns.

It is tempting to rely solely on a mathematically based formula for assessing reading level and call that "developmentally appropriate." Most publishers of children's books produce series of leveled readers, that is, books that have been run through a formula that calculates variables such as sentence length, percentage of difficult words, and average number of syllables per word. What these formulae don't take into account is reader interest and developmental age, which produce motivations or barriers that can often differ greatly from a simplistic assessment of reading level. For instance, Scholastic Inc., the largest publisher and distributor of children's books in the world, has a resource on their website called the Book Wizard, where you can enter the title of a book and obtain a reading level for that book. According to their leveling system, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight has a reading grade level equivalent of 4.4 (Twilight, n.d.). This means that 50% of all students in their fourth month of fourth grade have attained the reading level necessary for understanding the words and sentence structures of that book. By contrast, the interest level of the book is listed as grades 9–12. However, no consideration beyond interest is given to the appropriateness of the content for the developmental age of the child. For examples of the various formulae used to determine readability levels.

In this book, we take a holistic approach to determining developmental appropriateness by focusing on children's preferences and their developmental concerns. We believe that while children need appropriate supports in learning to read, they are more likely to want to read if the literature they encounter is interesting to them, which means that it corresponds to the concerns of their developmental age. Moreover, they will stretch to more difficult texts if their prior experience with literature is engaging, meaningful, and satisfying. In Chapters 6–10 we focus on the kinds of texts most likely to correspond to abilities and preferences correlated with developmental age as well as where children are in their literacy development. We also use these factors to suggest the most effective ways to share those texts with children to ensure that they acquire fluency and confidence in reading.

1.4 Changing Definitions of Literacy

Literacy seems to have always been a vexed issue. Over the years, people have worried about how to teach it, who has access to it, how it is related to power and progress. Definitions of literacy have changed over time. For instance, in the early 19th century in America, the ability to sign one's name was all it took to be considered literate. However, prior to that, beginning in the 1600s in the colonies, local schools supported by their communities in New England fostered high levels of literacy in order for children to be able to read and understand the Bible. These local schools did not last through the Revolutionary War, but by the end of the 1700s, the idea of public, state-funded schools had caught on in New England with the interesting fact that the ability to read was a prerequisite for the 7-year-olds who wanted to attend the public grammar school, at least in Boston. The idea of secular, compulsory public schooling was introduced in the 1800s, a move that fostered the universal expectation of literacy for all citizens, if not its actualization.

The 20th Century: Dick and Jane Versus Eloise

During the 20th century, literacy always seemed to be in a state of crisis, a phenomenon epitomized by the mid-century book entitled Why Johnny Can't Read—And What You Can do About It (Flesch, 1955). A 1954 article in Life magazine claimed that one of the main reasons children didn't learn to read well was that the primers used in schools were boring. They featured spiffy, White, middle-class children who were universally good-natured and always did the right thing; rather than challenging children with adventure and conflict and acknowledging the fact that bad decisions often turn into the best stories.

More interesting books were out there, certainly, featuring rambunctious, humorous characters making dubious choices. Consider Curious George (Rey, 1941), The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Potter, 1902), and Eloise (Thompson, 1955), just to name three books available at the time. But books like these weren't being used in schools to teach children how to read. The director of the educational division at Houghton Mifflin, William Ellsworth Spaulding, presented the findings of the Life article as a challenge to his friend Ted Geisel, who, nine months later and using a pen name, presented him with a manuscript for The Cat in the Hat (Seuss, 1957). This book used only 236 words, all but 13 of which appeared on a list of words every first grader should know, and started a revolution of sorts in early reader books by combining education and entertainment. Arguably, though, this trend started long before Dr. Seuss, as we will see in Chapter 2. It might be more accurate to say that Seuss's Beginner Books series presented the first significant challenge to school curriculums in the 20th century, in that the books paid attention to the needs of reading instruction at the same time as they sought to tell interesting stories.

The emphasis in this midcentury literacy crisis mentality centered on students' ability to access traditional forms of reading and writing in a single language, and it arose at least in part out of a general philosophy of standardization and assimilation. In other words, this anxiety arose out of the belief that the purpose of schooling was to ensure that everyone could function at roughly the same level in the national language and achieve a certain level of what E. D. Hirsch in the 1980s called "cultural literacy." Hirsch's project caused some controversy, however, and not long after he published his authoritarian, directive curriculum of "what every American needs to know" (Hirsch, 1988), the emphasis shifted away from assimilation and shared cultural knowledge to an emphasis on showcasing and honoring cultural and linguistic diversity.

In the 21st century, given this shift in sensibility and the significant changes wrought by technology on our daily lives, educators are now being asked to radically re-conceptualize our ideas of literacy. Children today are growing up in an increasingly image-rich and media-saturated culture. Becoming literate means being able to "read" not only print but also images, moving images, and soundtracks designed to appeal directly to their emotions. While there is widespread worry that this increase in media will detract from traditional literacy acquisition and result in a decline in the habit and ability to read (see, for instance, NEA, 2004), an expanded definition of literacy can actually be quite helpful in considering literature for young children.

Multiliteracies

The New London Group (NLG), a group of 10 well-known literacy educators from the United States, Australia, and Great Britain, advocates for a shift in understanding and teaching literacy to incorporate multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996; Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). They suggest that we focus on six different ways that we make meaning:

linguistic literacy, which includes elements of tradition verbal and written language;

audio literacy, which includes music and sound effects;

visual literacy, which includes elements of visual design, such as color, perspective, shape, position, and so forth;

gestural literacy, which includes behavior, gesture, physicality, feelings, movement;

spatial literacy, which includes elements of geographical and ecosystem design and architectural and sculptural design; and

tactile literacy, which includes elements of touch, smell, and taste.

According to the NLG, the ability to analyze and use these modes is necessary for both understanding our world as it is and for crafting a future that we find meaningful and fulfilling. More importantly for our purposes, however, is the understanding that these literacies are crucial for young children as they learn to read. Infants begin the process of learning to read gestures and other visual information almost immediately after birth. They also start to interpret sounds and space as they become habituated to their environments; they learn, for instance, to associate their cribs with being alone, or kitchens with community and interesting activity and smells.

As they grow, their understandings and manipulations of these literacies become more intentional and form the basis for their understanding of literary texts. When children have stories read to them, they use their embodied experiences to make sense of the words and pictures. They draw on their knowledge of sounds, facial expressions and gestures, spatial environments and features, what things feel and smell like, and visual information to turn words into mental images that make a story come alive. The stories themselves then expand those mental models so that they can imagine worlds and scenarios beyond their everyday experiences. This is how reading works and how it provides pleasure: It starts by linking our sensory experiences to the words on a page, and then the words on the page help our imaginations reach beyond what we have experienced into new possibilities.

Because good reading—that is, the ability to make meaning from texts—depends on children's ability to employ these multiliteracies effectively, it is important that we help them build a wealth of multimodal experiences and engage them in conversations that encourage their understanding of the various modes. We will explore this process in more depth in future chapters, using the NLG's multiliteracies as our guide and organizational strategy. Our focus is on literature appropriate for children from infancy to age 8, or third grade. However, there are differences in the ages at which children acquire literacy, as well as different terminology used by literacy specialists, so we have divided our developmental discussion into three broad stages of reading development: prereaders, new readers, and young readers. For each level, there will be one chapter devoted to the development and enrichment of audio and linguistic literacies and another that focuses on visual, gestural, spatial, and tactile literacies. For a more extensive discussion on multiliteracies and the work of the New London Group

1.5 How Does the Path to Literacy and Literary Enjoyment Begin?

Ellen Dissanayake, a scholar who studies the role of art in cultures around the globe, claims that the bond between infant and caregivers begins in what she and others call "communicative musicality" (2009, p. 23). Mothers and infants develop relational call-and-response patterns that bring them in sync with one another and enable bonding. Dissanayake explores this bonding behavior as an explanation for the origins of music in human society, but we can link it to how an appreciation of literature begins. The literature we share with children is a way of communicating with them the wonder and possibilities of the world we live in. And it begins with helping them recognize patterns and developing the skill of joint attention.

Being new to the world is certainly stressful for the baby, but having a new baby is also stressful for the caregiver; getting to know a whole new person who is wholly dependent on you for survival can be overwhelming. "Getting to know someone" means figuring out what is predictable or consistent about that person's responses and behaviors. Part of getting to know a new baby involves actively helping the baby establish patterns of predictability that will make the baby feel safe by imposing some order on the world. One of a caregiver's or early childhood educator's most important roles in working with infants and young children is to help them structure their world so that they have categories and patterns into which they can fit new information. Adults help children make sense of their world.

Dissanayake stresses, however, that communication between adults and infants is not a one-way street. Instead, she says, babies teach adults how to talk to them by responding in different ways to different utterances. Infants are more likely to respond positively to expressions that are "simplified, repeated, exaggerated, and elaborated" (2009, p. 23). Again, although Dissanayake's claims are made in the service of explaining how music functions in human culture, we can see how these observations of infant preferences can be mapped onto not only the kinds of music they enjoy but the literature they favor as well. Children's poetry and nursery rhymes typically make use of the qualities of simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration.

Dissanayake also says that children prefer multimodal presentations—that is, through "simultaneous vocal, visual, and kinesic (relating to motion) expressions" (2009, p. 23). Children's literature is almost always presented in a multimodal format—that is, a format that engages more than one of the five senses. Storytellers use their bodies and voices to convey their message, and often incorporate music and costuming and invite children to participate in the storytelling process, either by joining in on a repetitive refrain or by acting out a behavior. Action songs and rhymes are a large part of children's literature and culture. But perhaps the most dominant and familiar form of children's literature, the form that defines the genre, is the children's picturebook—a multimodal form of infinite variety that in so many ways ushers children into the world of literacy.

As adults share picturebooks with children, they are engaging them in an activity that draws on all six multiliteracies in order to make meaning. While looking at the pictures and simultaneously hearing the words or having conversations about the book, children are engaged in a project of joint attention with an adult over a special kind of object. They are not eating or being dressed or rolling a ball back and forth. Instead, the adult is showing them something that they are expected to make meaning from. By pointing and directing their eyes to the pictures on the page, adults help them make the connection between two-dimensional images, spoken and written words, and objects in their world. Children begin fitting the images on the page and the words they hear into mental models they have developed from their own experiences. Eventually, they come to understand how books work. That is, they learn that images and words are not just objects to be looked at, but that they have intentions, so to speak. They are trying to say something that the child needs to try to understand. This is the starting point of print literacy.

Developmental Considerations

In first-world cultures such as the United States, literacy development is as important to children as learning to walk and talk. Researchers in the development of identity argue that this is because we develop our sense of self from words and images that are available to us, and these include images from print and nonprint literature and media (Bracher, 2009; Gergen, 2000; Strenger, 2005). Children's texts in particular provide a range of images that children learn to identity with and imitate on the one hand, and dis-identify with and distance themselves from on the other. So it is necessary to understand how development occurs, and the role literature and literacy play in that development, in order to understand how to choose and share developmentally appropriate literature that supports healthy growth, a strong sense of self, and a positive orientation toward others.

Developmental psychologists have developed stage theories to describe various aspects of how children grow and change in relatively predictable ways. Two things are important to remember about stage theories: First, children progress through stages at different rates, depending on innate abilities, temperament, and environmental factors, so the age range attributed to stages is approximate. The order of the stages is more important than the age at which each stage is achieved. Second, stages should not be thought of as one-way gates toward progress. That is, once children have moved from one stage to another, they don't simply abandon the ways of thinking that characterized the earlier stage forever. Instead, they have more complex ways of thinking available to them as they approach a task. A better way to think about stages is that each stage offers what art education professor Michael J. Parsons calls "a cluster of ideas" (1987, p. 11) for considering a problem or thinking about a work of art or an aspect of a relationship.

Parsons adds that each stage of development, whether it be cognitive, moral, social, or aesthetic, moves progressively toward a greater capacity to consider the perspectives of others (1987). This is important in terms of literacy development and literature appreciation. The ability to understand stories requires the ability to take the perspective of characters and think about why they behave as they do. In turn, the more children listen and respond to stories, the greater their capacity to enter into the perspective of characters. This helps them consider more options when they approach conflict in their own lives.

Another reason to consider stage theories in relation to literature is to consider what kinds of books children will likely be interested in at what stages. For instance, British doctor and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott asserts that an infant's most crucial need is for an adequate "holding environment." Babies need to be held, literally and emotionally, so that they are able "to feel the body is the place where the psyche lives" (Winnicott, 1964, p. 194). Literally speaking, holding a baby while reading a book or singing to him or her helps the child feel safe. Many children's books, such as Mem Fox's Time for Bed (1993), Denise Fleming's Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy (2010) and Jean-Baptiste Baronian's Con Todo Mi Corazon (originally published in French as De Tout mon Coeur, 1998) offer comforting images of holding, in which human and animal parents cuddle their babies. As they grow older, Winnicott notes, children work through their ongoing need for physical holding through the use of a "transitional object" such as a blanket or a teddy bear. The beloved character Corduroy was introduced in 1968 (Corduroy, Don Freeman) and remains popular today precisely because children relate to the need for a transitional object.

The most influential developmental stage theories were framed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, German-born American developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. We will briefly review their theories here and relate them to the kinds of themes common in books for young children. In Chapters 6–10, we will hone in more specifically on how understanding development can assist in choosing developmentally appropriate literature in terms of format and presentation.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget proposed a model of intellectual or cognitive development. He believed that children's intellectual development grew in tandem with their physical development. As children grow, he reasoned, they organize their experience into categories. Early concept books, which feature objects grouped according to a single characteristic, such as color or shape, and concept books, which are informational books organized around a single subject, help children with the work of categorizing. Learning requires that they adapt those categories in one of two ways: assimilation or accommodation. Assimilation occurs when new information can be made to fit existing categories. For instance, a child may have environmental experience with a particular kind of dog, but when introduced to Matthew van Fleet's Dog (2007), which shows 20 different kinds of dogs, the child inputs a variety of new data into his or her category of dog.

Accommodation occurs when the new data can't be made to fit the existing category, so the category itself needs to be adjusted. Suppose a child knows what a horse is and then watches the children's film Racing Stripes (2005) or reads a traditional alphabet book. The child knows that horses can come in different colors and have patterned hides, but a "horse" with black and white stripes is not a horse at all. The child then has to change his existing knowledge to accommodate the new information.

Although Piaget proposed these are two separate kinds of learning adaptations, they most often happen in concert with each other, with children testing and exploring what things are like other things and how categories can be formed to break up the world into manageable chunks. Books for very young children assist in the development and expansion of mental categories by presenting various objects grouped by one or two dominant characteristics. For instance, Matthew van Fleet has a series of board books that focus on a single species (Dog, 2007; Cat, 2009) or body part (Heads, 2010; Tails, 2003). Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury introduce the concept of diversity in their board book Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes (2008) by featuring a cast of multicultural tykes from different environments all over the world that nevertheless share the characteristic of having ten little fingers and ten little toes.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development grew out of Sigmund Freud's theory of psychosexual development. Freud linked each stage to a particular erogenous zone of the body that a child focuses on to achieve satisfaction, including an oral stage, an anal stage, and phallic stage. He tied these stages of development to problems of sexual and gender identity and general effectiveness as a human being later in life. His focus on psychosexual development made his work very controversial, but later Freudian thinkers, such as Erikson, expanded Freud's focus beyond gender and sexual development to the development of the personality as whole. While Erikson developed his theory beyond childhood all the way to old age, we will focus on the relevant stages from birth to age 8.

Erikson formulated his stages around a set of basic conflicts that children must work through as they grow. The way children resolve these conflicts creates a pattern of relationality that can persist throughout their lives. Understanding the nature of these conflicts helps us understand which books may be useful to children at certain times in their lives. Children can use the stories and behaviors modeled in books and other media to help them understand and work through the conflicts they are experiencing.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg supplemented Piaget's theory of cognitive development with a breakdown of the stages of moral development. He developed his theory through extensive conversations with children. However, it is important to remember that the level of children's moral reasoning does not always correspond to their moral behavior. Children often act out of compassion or selfishness even when it goes against their principles. The later stages of Kohlberg's system have been criticized for overemphasizing the importance of individualism and personal rights and freedoms, while other cultural values, such as the importance of interdependence and social responsibility are devalued. However, the early stages do seem to correspond to children's developing moral reasoning.

These theories of development can act as fairly reliable guides to choosing books that children will find interesting and relevant to their current situations. As we move through the chapters of this book, we will introduce further details about development from different perspectives so that we can get a fuller picture of what developmentally appropriate literature means.

Multiple Intelligences

In addition to considering developmental stages when choosing literature for children, it is also helpful to understand Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (1983). There is considerable conceptual overlap between the NLG's articulation of multiliteracies and Gardner's theory, considering that they both respond to the diverse ways we interpret experience. Gardner argues that there is no general way of conceiving of intelligence but that people are intelligent in different registers. He proposes nine such ways of being smart:

Spatial: an ability to understand and visualize objects in two- and three-dimensional space

Logical-mathematical: an ability to reason through abstractions, recognize patterns, perform calculations, think critically, and consider multiple hypotheses

Linguistic: an ease with spoken and written language, including storytelling, creative uses of language, debate and discussion, and the ability to learn multiple languages

Bodily-kinethestic: an ability to effectively use and control one's gross and fine motor skills and to train those skills until they become seemingly instinctual; also includes a strong sense of time, space, and goals with regard to bodily actions

Musical: an ability to distinguish sound, pitch, rhythm, meter, melody, and tone

Interpersonal: a sensitivity to the emotional needs and expressions of other people and an ability to cooperate with and/or direct groups

Intrapersonal: an ability to understand and reflect on one's own actions and motivations

Naturalistic: a sensitivity to one's natural environment, including animals, plants, and geographical features

Existential: a sensitivity to and ability to contemplate ideas and phenomena that transcend the senses (Gardner resisted the idea of a spiritual intelligence but considered this an acceptable substitute)

Gardner contends that education programs emphasizing only linguistic and logical-mathematic intelligence (which are dominant in most school settings) miss many of the ways in which children approach the world. According to Gardner, all people possess all of the intelligences to some degree, with one or two being dominant. Children prefer to approach tasks and activities that use the modalities through which they excel.

Many of the intelligence modes interact and overlap with each other; for instance, people with a high degree of musical intelligence may also tend to excel in logical-mathematical tasks, since there are similarities in musical and mathematical structures. But sometimes, people with a high level of empathy, or interpersonal intelligence, might be seen as troublemakers in school or day care settings, since their concern for other people often runs afoul of classroom rules of staying quiet, attending to their own work, and keeping their hands to themselves. Alternately, immature leadership skills may devolve into bullying if teachers and caregivers don't recognize and channel this expression of interpersonal intelligence in sensitive ways.

Understanding the various kinds of intelligence enables parents and caregivers to select books for children that respond to their interests and their modes of approaching the world. For instance, 3-to-5-year-olds who have a tendency to ask big questions about why the physical world works the way it does (existential intelligence) will appreciate the philosophical and metaphorical connections in Mary Lyn Ray's and Marla Frazee's Stars (2011). Children who demonstrate a naturalistic intelligence will appreciate Joyce Sidman's poetry and gravitate toward books that explore animal behavior and habitats. Stories about family relationships and friendships will appeal to children who favor inter- and intrapersonal intelligence modes.

In addition to aiding book selection, an understanding of multiple intelligences can assist educators in determining the best ways to share books with their particular children. Young readers with interpersonal intelligence skills can be encouraged to share their favorite books with prereaders in one-on-one reading sessions. Logical-mathematical learners can be paired with bodily-kinesthetic learners to create sets, props, and puppets to augment story times. Children who demonstrate musical intelligence can be asked to create and perform a song in response to a book.

Choosing the right book for the right children at the right time depends on careful observation skills. By paying attention to the habits, fears, and preoccupations of the children under your care and thinking about them in light of developmental stages and different kinds of intelligences, you can assess what topics, themes, and kinds of books will be most likely to meet their needs and preferences. The question, then, becomes where you find the books themselves.

1.6 Where to Find Children's Books

Children's books are everywhere, from grocery stores to large department stores to specialty bookshops. With nearly 30,000 children's books published every year, the sheer volume of books available can be overwhelming. Getting to know your way around your local public or school library is a good first step to finding what you need.

Libraries and Bookstores

The most general categories that books fall into are fiction and nonfiction. Fiction encompasses all stories that are imaginary, that never actually happened. This doesn't mean that they are not "true," because all good stories have elements of truth to them, but it is psychological or moral truth, not historical truth. Nonfiction, then, covers all books that relate incidents that actually happened, or explain known facts about the world. That doesn't mean that every nonfiction book is "true," because every incident is told through a perspective which may or may not be shared by everyone who experienced that incident, and what we know about the world sometimes changes. Fiction books are alphabetized by the last name of their authors, while nonfiction books are organized by topic. Bookstores use broad categories, but libraries use the more precise categories and subcategories of the Dewey Decimal System.

Developed in 1876, the Dewey decimal classification (DDC) system is a way of organizing library collections into 10 main categories. Each category then has subcategories to make the organization more meaningful. Books are arranged according to call numbers that correspond to the subcategories. Most public libraries have special children's sections that are organized according to the DDC, but they insert a J before the call number to indicate that it is part of their juvenile collection. It's important for people who work with young children to be familiar with the DDC so that they can respond to children's interests as well as work toward specific learning goals.

Here are the 10 classifications in the DDC:

000–099   Computer Science, Information, and General Works

100–199   Philosophy and Psychology

200–299   Religion

300–399   Social Sciences

400–499   Language

500–599   Science

600–699   Technology

700–799   Arts

800–899   Literature

900–999   History, Geography, and Biography

For instance, nonfiction children's picturebooks on snakes will be found in the J500s, specifically J597, with other books on cold-blooded vertebrates. Andrea Pinkney's Sit-in: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down is identified by the call number J323.1196 PIN, which indicates that it is a book about civil and political rights and that the author's last name starts with the letters PIN.

What you find in some categories may be surprising. For instance, folk and fairy tales might seem oddly out of place in the 300s, but they are classified under the subcategory "customs, etiquette, and folklore" in J398. Children's poetry will be found in the J811. Technically, this section is devoted to American poetry, but in children's sections, most poetry books will be in that category.

Notice that there is a literature category (800–899), but most libraries separate out fiction books so that readers can more easily find them. In children's sections, which are usually in a special area of the library, fiction is further divided into categories of picturebooks, middle grade literature, and young adult literature. Some libraries also have categories for beginning readers, which is where they shelve leveled readers, both fiction and nonfiction, and for early readers, which is where they put early chapter books, graphic novels for young readers, and series fiction. Other sections may be set aside for board books, audio books, award winners, and books that are not written in English.

Children's sections in bookstores are often organized in a similar fashion, with separate sections for board books, leveled readers, early chapter books, and picturebooks. They may have shelves set aside for award winners and books in other languages. In addition, they may have sections devoted to a specific publisher, like Disney Hyperion. Bookstores are more likely than libraries to carry tactile books, such as movable books or activity books (sticker books, puzzle books, books that have wheels attached or other toy-like features, etc.) because tactile books are not particularly durable or aren't meant to be shared with multiple readers.

Introducing Children to Librarians

Books are not the only important resource in the library or the bookstore: School and public librarians, fellow teachers, and bookstore employees are enormously valuable resources in helping you choose books for individual students as well as classroom use, particularly when you are just starting out in the profession. Many libraries will arrange guided tours of their facilities for day-care groups. Some have outreach librarians who will visit your facility to share books and introduce children to the services that libraries offer. If possible, you can arrange a regular weekly visit to the library with your children so that they learn to feel comfortable there.

It is also important for children to develop the confidence to approach a librarian on their own. Since young children can be bashful, and since approaching unfamiliar adults can be intimidating, the key is preparation. Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori educational approach, included what she called "grace and courtesy" lessons as part of the Montessori practical life curriculum. She believed that children need the sense of order that social manners provides. While many children are taught manners, greeting protocols, and proper ways to get the attention of an adult as a matter of course, many are not, and this can make it difficult for them to feel comfortable in unfamiliar social situations. You can help your children become more comfortable with adults by teaching them proper manners. Consider the following suggested books about manners.

Books About Manners

Cole, Babette. Lady Lupin's Guide to Etiquette. (2002, Spanish edition, El Libro de Etiqueta de Lady Lupina, 2003).

Cooper, Ilene and Swiatowska, Gabi. The Golden Rule. (2007).

Dutton, Sandra. Dear Miss Perfect: A Beast's Guide to Proper Behavior. (2007).

Eberly, Sheryl. 365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette. (2011, teacher resource).

Goldberg, Whoopi and Olo. Whoopi's Big Book of Manners. (2010).

James, Elizabeth and Barkin, Carol. Social Smarts: Manners for Today's Kids. (teacher resource, 1996).

Joslin, Sesyle and Sendak, Maurice. What Do You Say, Dear? (1986).

Keller, Laurie. Do Unto Otters: A Book about Manners. (2007).

Leaf, Munro. How to Speak Politely and Why. (2005).

Melling, David. The Scallywags. (2006).

Polisar, Barry Louis and Clark, David. Don't Do That!: A Child's Guide to Bad Manners, Ridiculous Rules, and Inadequate Etiquette. (1995).

Rosenthal, Amy Krouse and Dyer, Jane. Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons. (2006).

Sierra, Judy and Seibold, J. Otto. Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf. (2007).

Sierra, Judy and Bowers, Tim. Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur: A First Book of Manners. (2012).

Willems, Mo. Time to Say "Please!" (2005).

Another method of preparing older children (that is, 5 years old and up) to approach librarians is to have them do a personal interest inventory. These are useful for students to clarify their own interests as well as for you to keep on file as you design curriculum for your students. It is also interesting to revisit them later in the school year to see if interests and attitudes toward reading have changed.

Once students have completed the inventory, role-play the interaction between the student and a librarian. Begin by having the student introduce him or herself, and politely ask for the librarian's name. This step is one we often skip in such interactions, but the goal is for the student to develop a trusting relationship with this very important adult, so it helps to know each other's names. Then have the student ask for a book on a certain topic he or she would like to pursue. The librarian will likely ask questions that the student will have already answered on the inventory, such as what sort of books he likes or even a specific title that he particularly enjoyed. Because students have done the inventory, they will have a ready answer, which will increase the likelihood of a successful reader's advisory.

Now, they are ready to meet their librarian. If this activity is limited to a school context, the school librarian will likely have already met the children in your class, and be familiar with both your curriculum and their interests (librarians are wondrously good at getting to know individual students' reading preferences and habits). It is important, though, to have the students meet the public librarian in their town as well, since public libraries often have different collections than school libraries, and they are open in the summer. A class trip might be arranged, but it would be better if students could go in small groups, which could be accomplished through the enlistment of parent and grandparent volunteers who would be willing to take children in small groups to the library during or after school hours. Involving parents in these excursions can have the added benefit of introducing them to library services as well; bear in mind that some parents may be as uncomfortable as their children with such an outing, so arranging to meet them at the library with their children might help them feel more confident. Remind the parents, though, that the goal is for their children to learn to speak for themselves, so they should stand back and let the children make their own introductions and inquiries.

Finding Books Online

Another way for you to find books, of course, is online. When you want to find a list of books focusing on a specific topic, you can simply enter your query into your favorite search engine (Google, Bing, etc.), and let the vast online community of parents, librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, and children's literature bloggers make suggestions for you. Reviews of books are widely available from multiple sources. (A few examples are listed in Websites to Save and Explore at the end of this chapter.) As always with Internet searches, however, you should consider the source of the information. Some websites have specific ideological or commercial interests. This can be very helpful, depending on your community, but you need to educate yourself regarding the perspective of the site and cross-check its information against other sites.

Additionally, while many websites and blogs that review and highlight children's books are free, others have subscription fees for full access. For instance, teachingbooks.net offers a wealth of resources to inspire and complement your lesson planning, such as video author interviews and readings, themed book lists, book guides and lesson plans, suggestions for Common Core curriculum alignment, and professional articles. They offer licensing options for school districts and public libraries, as well as homeschool groups.

Another way to search is to enter a single author or title into a search engine. Among other options, you will be directed to online bookstores. Online bookstores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble feature reader reviews, lists, and suggestions for other titles, so a simple search can open into a wealth of options and possibilities. These vendors often allow you to preview the book through the Look Inside feature. Additionally, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google have e-book apps that can be loaded onto multiple devices, and many of the books available are free or very low cost.

2.1 What Is Literature?

Literature can be defined in multiple ways. In one respect, the term simply refers to any writing on any subject. For instance, the literature on mental illness or gardening refers to reliable, well-informed writing on those particular subjects. But when most people hear the word literature, they think in terms of literary merit or quality; in such usage, literature refers to books that are well-written and have a significant message to communicate.

Lots of people get into fussy debates about what defines “quality” literature. They establish what they call canons, which are lists of books and poems that they believe every truly literate person should have read and studied because these books, according to them, represent the best expressions of what it means to be fully human. Literature is thus understood as the most effective expression of some meaningful truth about experience. The problem is that these list makers are using their own standards of what constitutes beauty and wisdom, standards marked by their historical period, cultural ideologies, and social position, which are affected by their race, class, spiritual tradition, and gender, among other things. What they regard as universal human truth is really quite specific to their own experiences; what they regard as beauty has been conditioned by their social and cultural position. Like taste in visual art, taste in literature is both culturally and personally determined rather than based on some universal standard of value.

Moreover, people who construct canons of “best books” often seem to value adult culture over child culture, so most books written for children don't make their cut (see, for instance, Lacayo, 2005; Lewis, 1998; Norwegian Book Club, 2002). Yet it is important to remember that the literature we read as children has a great effect on the way we grow up to appreciate language, humor, other people, and beauty. We don't learn to see or form value judgments simply through our experiences; we also learn through the books we read as children.

One of the reasons children's literature is important is that it forms the foundation of literary competence. The books children read when they are young help them understand and enjoy works of literature when they are older. For instance, knowing that a work is a poem requires a reader to draw on different skill sets and experiential knowledge in order to understand why it looks the way it does and what attitudes to bring to it in order to make sense of and appreciate it. Knowing that fairy tales often begin with the phrase “once upon a time” clues a reader in to what to expect from a story that starts that way. Literary competence goes beyond literacy in that readers must have some knowledge about how figurative language and genres work in order to approach a new work of literature.

As we noted in chapter one, children's literature always teaches, not because it's overly preachy or didactic, but because children are starting from scratch when it comes to learning about the ways the world works and the ways they can engage with it. Chapter 4 will discuss the characteristics of quality children's literature so that you can make informed choices of children's literature that meets your curricular goals as well as provides the best possible foundation for children in order that they may become lifelong readers.

2.2 What Are Children?

At first glance, this may seem like a rather silly question, but in fact the way we think about children has changed over time. So the second term to examine when considering children's literature is children. Beliefs about who children are and what they need are neither universal nor static; they change over time and across cultures. Today, for instance, in most developed countries we tend to view childhood as a time when small humans need to be protected from work and instead engage in play and learning in a safe, structured environment. All kinds of consumer goods, events, and artifacts, including toys, clothes, furniture, housewares, foods, play equipment, media, music, concerts, and, of course, books, are developed, produced, and marketed specifically for children. Special places set aside for children, such as playgrounds and children's rooms, form part of our contemporary spatial literacy; we teach children how to navigate the larger world by providing smaller, safer spaces for them to navigate. Moreover, though, the very existence of such spaces indicates that we consider childhood distinct from adulthood. This has not been the case throughout history and is not the case today in many parts of the world.

Unlike other categories of literature, such as women's literature or American literature, children's literature is defined by its audience, not its authorship. In order for a culture to have special literature devoted to children, the culture must first have a notion of childhood as a separate time of life with special educational and developmental needs. Second, there must be a sufficient number of people in the culture who have enough disposable income and leisure time to create, purchase, and share goods not immediately related to their survival, such as children's books, that correspond to the special needs of children. Third, the culture must have sufficiently developed technology to produce books on a large scale for distribution and consumption.

The next sections describe how these three conditions developed in Europe and the United States. In many parts of the world, these conditions are still in development. Many nonprofit organizations around the world are working to develop reading cultures in their countries and bring children and books together.

Childhood in Medieval Europe

Thinking about the special needs of children has developed into an academic field of study called Childhood Studies or Children's Studies. This research area could be said to have been started by historian Philippe Ariès with his 1962 book Centuries of Childhood, in which he made the controversial claim that, “in medieval society, the notion of childhood did not exist” (p. 125). Such a bold claim was bound to meet with criticism, and it has (see, for instance, Hendrick, 1992). Ariès based his claim mostly on portraiture of the Middle Ages in Western Europe that showed children dressed as miniature adults, as well as on the cultural practice of putting children as young as 7 to work as apprentices.

Critics of Ariès's argument claim that he based it on faulty evidence: Yes, children were dressed as little adults for their portraits, but this probably wasn't the way they dressed every day. Then, as now, sitting for a portrait was a special event and a marker of status, and special clothing would have been chosen for the occasion. Additionally, Ariès based some of his evidence on the writings of moralists and educationists of the time, and as we know, what the experts and theorists say we should be thinking and doing regarding our children doesn't always correspond with what we actually do. Without accounts of actual practice in terms of childrearing, it's difficult to know how parents felt about their children.

In her 2008 book, The Child in the World: Embodiment, Time, and Language in Early Childhood, Eva M. Simms makes a more compelling argument than Ariès does: She says that a firm notion of childhood as a separate time of life depends on a firm notion of adulthood. Without the latter, you don't have the former. In most medieval villages in Europe, people lived surrounded by the same few villagers their entire lives, with few learning to read or ever going on a voyage or doing anything that might be considered a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. Marriage and having children might or might not involve moving out of one's childhood home into one of your own, so even those traditional markers of assuming adult responsibility were not clearly delineated as significant changes in status. Work that contributed to the welfare of a family began as early as possible, and most people did not attend school, if one were even available. Without that protected period of relative leisure and learning followed by a hard break or significant new experience, there is no distinction between cultural ideas of what a child is versus what an adult is. People were babies and then contributing members of a community, so there would be no need for a separate literature dedicated to the tastes and concerns of children.

Even in schools, there were no books, given that books were expensive and precious. Before the invention of the printing press in 1450, a single hand-copied edition of the Bible could take up to three years to produce. What manuscripts did exist for young people in the Middle Ages, such as The Babee's Book, written in the 1400s and similarly hand-copied, were concerned with teaching proper conduct (read the book online in modern English in the Internet Archive here). So despite the fact that there was not a separate storytelling or literary tradition devoted to children prior to the 1700s, there was the sense that at least some children, primarily those born to wealthy families, did have a special need to be instructed in their cultural traditions and expectations. However, manuscripts of this sort were extremely rare. More common for the teaching of literacy were hornbooks, which typically contained the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, and common vowel and consonant combinations.

It should be remembered, though, that stories started with storytellers, not with books, and not much thought was given to whether an oral story was “appropriate” for children or not. Children in the Middle Ages would have been exposed to traditional, sometimes bawdy and violent, folk tales and epics told to entertain people as they worked, as well as the adventure stories popular for the literate and the preliterate alike. Children in Southern Europe would likely have known versions of the stories of the Greeks and Romans, which included the tales of the Trojan War as preserved in the Iliad, the exploits of Odysseus as he traveled home from the war, and the fables of the slave Aesop. The stories of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, which we now called myths, would have also provided entertainment on dark evenings, offering fanciful explanations of things such as the origins of the seasons and the creation of the world, as well as the gods' use of humans as pawns and playthings in their high-stakes games. During the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, the Norse and Celtic myths recounting the exploits of Odin and Loki and tales of heroes such as Robin Hood and King Arthur would have been part of the storytellers' repertoire. And of course, lesser known tales would have been invented by talented talespinners everywhere to commemorate regional heroes.

Today, we might consider the sexual exploits of Zeus too racy or the tale of Beowulf too grisly for children under the age of 8 or 9, but this was not the case when whole communities joined together to hear the stories recounted by an itinerant or local storyteller. Children thrilled to the heroics and blanched with fear right along with the adults as they listened to these breathtaking adventure tales. Although the study of Greek mythology is now usually part of the middle school curriculum, versions for younger children are available, such as this one.

In addition to these secular stories, children learned their religious traditions orally as well. Storytellers would recount tales from the Old and New Testaments as well as stories of the lives of the saints, to both titillate and instruct. In addition to these oral tellings, children from Catholic and Orthodox families would also have learned the stories of the Bible through the iconography of their churches. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, icons are stylized paintings of important scenes from the Bible that have specific meanings embedded in their use of color, gesture, and figure. They were used to focus the attention of parishioners on worship and instruct people who couldn't read in the stories of the Bible and the lives of the saints. Similar purposes were served by the elaborate stained glass windows of churches. Churchgoers would have understood these complicated visual images on different levels. Some tell stories in much the same way as wordless picturebooks today do, inviting readers to navigate their way through a series of scenes in order to piece together a sequence of events. Again, while these visual stories were not specifically developed for children, they played a significant role in shaping their understanding of religion, which was central to their daily lives.

Childhood in the Renaissance and the Reformation

As early as 1658, we find a book of words and pictures written and published especially for children to be used in schools. Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures) was written by Czech educator John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) and is considered the first picturebook in Western Europe intended specifically for children. The book was intended to teach children to read as well as to provide information about the natural world, religion, and humans and their activities and diversity. Comenius's acknowledgement of the value of what would come to be called multimodal learning has more or less set the standard for children's books ever since, and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) even gives an award in his name for the best nonfiction books for children every year. For information about the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award and lists of past winners, see http://www.ncte.org/awards/orbispictus.

Comenius was vastly influential in the development of educational thought, and particularly in the organization of schools. Like other Protestant thinkers, he believed that everyone was responsible for his or her own salvation, so literacy was essential for children so that they could read the Bible on their own. This way of thinking, also espoused by the Puritans, contributed to the spread of literacy and the growth of schools. Although the Puritans frowned on the inclusion of secular stories in their school materials, feeling that most fictional stories were ungodly, they did encourage the use of poetry as a memory and worship aid in books like the New England Primer, especially the poetry of Isaac Watts (1674–1748). Isaac Watts was in fact so popular that his work was parodied in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland books. And there is at least one poem written by Isaac Watts, “Joy to the World,” that virtually every English-speaking person who celebrates Christmas can recite from memory, nearly 300 years since it was first penned.

Comenius and the Puritans, as well as earlier Reformation thinkers such as John Calvin (1509–1564), shared the view that children come into the world marked by original sin. They thus took child-rearing and education very seriously, since they believed that children need to be called out of a prior sinful condition into a salvation marked by good works (which they believed were a Christian's responsibility) and earthly success (which they believed to be a sign of God's blessing). This did not necessarily mean that they were harsh and unloving parents or that they believed that children needed to have the devil beaten out of them. On the contrary, they most often took their earthly relationships to be a model for their heavenly ones; Calvin, for instance, believed that children were gifts from God sent to teach people about unconditional love and remind us of the goodness of creation.

Two influential thinkers, John Locke (1632–1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), were to challenge the Puritan belief about human nature in general, and children in particular. Rather than believing that children were born with an innate bent toward sin, English philosopher John Locke believed that children's minds were blank slates or what he called tabula rasa. All children are born unprejudiced, with the capacity to learn, and it is up to adults to provide them with an adequately enriched educational environment. His emphasis was on a naturalistic education that answered children's questions about the world and kept them from unhealthy imaginings. He explicitly rejected, for instance, the practice of scaring children into good behavior through the use of frightening stories. Children had access to horror stories as well as traditional fairy tales not only through their nursemaids but through the increasing availability of chapbooks and broadsides, which featured a variety of tales of knights and creatures such as “Rawhead” and “Bloody Bones” designed to shock and frighten readers. Locke believed that in banishing the supernatural from children's stories, society could banish all superstitious and irrational fears, beliefs, and behaviors; on the contrary, introducing children to scary stories when they are young will lead to their becoming fearful and timid adults.

Approximately 100 years after Locke penned his ideas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau introduced an even more radical idea of children's nature: Unlike the Puritans (and other Judeo-Christian thinkers), he rejected the idea of original sin, and unlike Locke, he rejected the idea of children's minds as blank slates. Instead, Rousseau believed children are born naturally good and that they grew increasingly corrupted by adult society as they matured. Therefore, his approach to child-rearing was to keep children as far from society as possible, and this included delaying children's reading until they had reached the age of 12, and then they were only to read Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and certain bits of the Bible. He published his ideals for child-rearing in a book called Émile in 1762, and though most people no longer read this work, his way of thinking about children has become widely pervasive.

Childhood in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Despite the differences of these three schools of thought, there emerged a clear sense throughout the 1600s and 1700s that children were different from adults, and their moral, spiritual, and intellectual education required special attention, which included books written especially for children. Locke's admonition that when a child

begins to be able to read, some easy pleasant book, suited to his capacity, should be put into his hands, wherein the entertainment, that he finds, might draw him on, and reward his pains in reading; and yet not such as should fill his head with perfectly useless trumpery, or lay the principles of vice and folly. (1693, para. 156)

About 50 years later, in 1744 John Newbery (c. 1713–1767), for whom the Newbury Award was named, published A Little Pretty Pocket Book. Widely considered the first nonschool or commercial book for children, the title page claims that the book is “for the instruction and amusement” (emphasis added) of children. The book contains a section on parenting advice as well as poems and songs that are keyed to the letters of the alphabet, including the first reference in print to the game of baseball. To see a digitized copy of this book, click here. And lest we think that cross-marketing is a cynical invention of the 20th century, the book came with either a ball for boys or a pincushion for girls, with a letter from “Jack the Giant-Killer” instructing children to record and assess their behavior by sticking a pin in the red side of the ball or pincushion for every good action or the black side for every bad action.

Once Newbery introduced the practice of publishing for children, more and more writers began to write specifically for a child audience. Most of these writers were women, such as Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810), Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), Hannah More (1745–1833), Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), and Mary Martha Sherwood (1775–1851), and most of their writing was extremely moralistic and didactic—far more instruction than delight—although Mrs. Sherwood's three-volume History of the Fairchild Family (1818, 1842, and 1847) includes enough graphic descriptions of naughty children meeting grisly ends and being tortured in the pits of Hell to satisfy even the most ghoulish middle-grade imagination. What these writers, heavily influenced by Locke and Rousseau, would not acknowledge was that children do indeed have a dark side to their imaginations that isn't necessarily introduced from the outside—that acknowledgement would have to wait until the late 19th century and the work of Sigmund Freud.

Despite the objections of these thinkers to exposing children to the fantastic, the magical, and the darker side of life, folk and fairy tales have always been a very popular choice for readers and storytellers. Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a contemporary of Comenius, published Tales of Mother Goose in 1697, a popular collection of well-known oral tales, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Bluebeard, among others, that he imbued with literary style and concluded with instructive morals. In the 18th century, collecting and adapting oral tales into lasting literary versions came into vogue. Jeanne Marie de Beaumont (1711–1780) in France, Elizabeth Newbery (c. 1745–1821) in England, Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) in Russia, and Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859) Grimm in Germany collected, revised, and published collections of folk and fairy tales indigenous to their countries. These collectors were attempting to preserve the treasures of the oral tradition, which they believed expressed the character and values of a people.

While these works were not necessarily written for children, and indeed people such as the female authors mentioned in the previous paragraph actively discouraged their being shared with children, they were widely read, told, and enjoyed by people of all ages. Inspired by the Grimm brothers, other collectors such as Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916) and Andrew Lang (1844–1912) in England, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812–1885) and Jørgen Moe (1813–1882) in Norway scoured their respective countrysides in search of tales from the folk tradition. Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) drew on the folktales of Denmark to create his own original literary fairy tales. Contemporary children's literature is deeply indebted to these collectors, as their stories continue to be retold in diverse media to children. Table 2.2 lists some of the most famous fairy tales with their authors.

2.3 The Golden Age of Children's Books

As we said earlier, for a thriving children's literature tradition, a society requires the idea that childhood is separate from adulthood, sufficient affluence to purchase books and the leisure time to read them, and the technology to produce books on a large scale. These three conditions were all abetted in some way by the Industrial Revolution, which started in England in the late 1700s, and inaugurated what has come to be regarded as the “Golden Age” of children's books.

The Industrial Revolution was a hard road to travel for many children. Small bodies were required to fit into small spaces like mine shafts and chimneys and under machines; many machine operations required no special skills or strength; and children could be paid as little as 10–20 % of an adult's wages. This made child labor far too attractive for any moral qualms. With still few opportunities for education, children of the lower classes were expected to work. The ideological pull of Locke and Rousseau was strong among the educated classes, however, and public outrage and activism resulted in the first child labor laws being enacted in England: The Cotton Regulation Act of 1819 set the minimum working age at 9; the Regulation of Child Labor Law in 1833, which provided for paid inspectors; and the Ten Hours Bill of 1847, which set a limit of a 10-hour workday for women and children. The United States was much slower to enact legislation. Although 28 states had laws regulating child labor by 1899, the first national law specifying the ages at which children could be employed in various jobs was not successfully passed until 1938.

Despite the wretched conditions for child laborers and the poor, the Industrial Revolution led to sustained economic growth in per capita income in industrialized nations. Thus, by the late 19th century, all of the conditions for a robust children's literature tradition had been met, particularly in Victorian England (1837–1901), and children's books became a viable product. Finally, children's authors began to write books that would appeal to children simply because they were entertaining, and they even acknowledged a sometimes sly and subversive sense of humor that undercut adult authority.

Advances in printing technology allowed for the emergence of full-color illustration, prompting some of the most prominent illustrators of the time to turn their attention to illustrating for children. George Cruikshank, Walter Crane, John Tenniel, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, and Arthur Rackham all became well-known for their children's book illustrations during this period. In 1899, Helen Bannerman published her very controversial but highly successful The Story of Little Black Sambo. In 1901, Beatrix Potter wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit, a project that grew out of fantasies she invented around her own pets. Children's poetry remained popular, and many collections of poetry appeared in illustrated editions.

For older readers, adventure stories appeared for boys, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Fantasy was at its (first) heyday with Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin (1872), J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904), and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Girls' stories, such as Kate Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911), Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), and Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna (1913), flourished. The fact that these titles are probably all familiar (even if we haven't actually read them) testifies to the enduring impact of this period of children's literature.

The ideologies embedded in children's books are therefore important to consider. For instance, in books for young children, the main characters are often animals. This could be said to reflect the ideology that children have a close connection to nature, and this connection should be encouraged, because it fosters a sense of care and responsibility to the environment. On the other hand, it could implicitly reveal a way of thinking about children as uncivilized and animal-like, particularly when the animals are considered cute but also pesky or unsanitary, such as mice, rats, and rabbits. Animals also have connotations carried over from their use in fables and fairy tales, so readers sometimes need to know some of those associations in order for them to fully understand the story.

There are also strong connotations related to gender. Of the books for older children mentioned in the previous paragraph, as well as many titles not mentioned, there is a tendency to relate boys to the adventure genre while girls are confined to domestic spaces. Additionally, in each of the stories mentioned, the girls perform the work of reforming their society, turning grumpy old folks into sentimental, generous benefactors, and healing their communities. Boys, on the other hand, light out for treasure and are not held responsible for nurturing community or family ties.

The other significant trend in these books is the prevalence of orphans as main characters—the girl characters are often orphans looking for a home, while the boy characters are orphans looking for travel and adventure. Even Dorothy, who has her successful adventure in Oz, is still drawn home in the end. Orphans are very common in children's literature, much more so than in contemporary society, which means that they are often orphaned to convey an idea rather than replicate real life. My daughter explained it to me this way when she was about 5 years old. She said, “Well, if the mother were alive, then she'd be the most important one in the story.” I think she has it right—in order for the main character to be independent and central to his or her own adventure, he or she must be unencumbered by parents, whose advice, support, and protection might solve the conflict for the main character, and then there would be no story. There is also psychological significance to the loss of parents, however, that we will explore further on.

2.4 The 20th Century and Beyond

Alongside quality children's books in the early 20th century grew the popular, consumer-driven side of children's literature. Comics, serialized sensational stories justly called “penny dreadfuls” (because they cost a penny and were in fact dreadfully cheesy), and dime novels (so-called because they cost a dime), were readily consumed by eager young readers. Serial novels were very popular, with series like Nancy Drew (1930–2003), the Hardy Boys (1927–2005), and the Bobbsey Twins (1904–1979) written by ghost writers who worked for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the first book packager to have a target audience of children rather than adults. Howard Garis's Uncle Wiggily first appeared in the Newark News in 1910 and starred in nearly 80 books and a board game before the author died in 1950.

These books, comics, and series novels are often recalled fondly by parents and grandparents and are passed on to their children as a result. They form what Deborah Stevenson (1997) has called a “canon of sentiment” (p. 112) as opposed to a “canon of significance (p. 113).” Books like the Berenstain Bears series (http://www.berenstainbears.com/), Mercer Mayer's Little Critter books (http://www.littlecritter.com/), and Ann M. Martin's The Baby-sitters Club (http://www.scholastic.com/thebabysittersclub/) often fall into the canon-of-sentiment category for today's college students. These books aren't necessarily high-quality literature, but they are fun, sometimes addictive reading for children and therefore encourage literacy development and create fond memories.

The war years (1914–1945), however, produced some highly memorable books for children, as adult authors turned to children's texts for a much-needed escape into the fantasy world of an idyllic childhood such as Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood by A. A. Milne (1882–1956). Perhaps they were also trying to instill the values of a more peaceful world into their child readers in hopes for a more cooperative future or to fortify them for the challenges they might face in creating a more just world, such as we find in J. R. R. Tolkien's (1892–1973) Middle Earth or C. S. Lewis's (1898–1963) Narnia.

One text that explicitly addressed the anxieties of war for children in the 1930s is Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand. Ferdinand is best known for his pacifism; unlike the other young bulls in his field, he is not at all interested in competing in the bullfights in Madrid, instead preferring to sit “just quietly” under his cork tree and smell the flowers. When a misunderstanding leads to his being chosen to fight, he still refuses, angering the banderilleros, picadores, and the matador, who have no choice but to send him home. This book, published within months of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, was considered political propaganda and was burned in Nazi Germany and banned in Spain, but has been in continuous print since its original publication and is still being taught today as a heartening fable of both nonconformity and nonviolence.

In the wake of the world wars, people had lost faith in the idea that humanity was becoming progressively more civilized and that technology was necessarily a sign of a glorious future. After all, advances in technology during the wars had mostly resulted in more efficient ways to kill more people at one time. The dark side of human nature was on full display, and Sigmund Freud's and Carl Jung's insights into that dark side, which were originally rejected by many in mainstream culture, were becoming more accepted by the 1950s as truth in the public and artistic imagination.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is probably best known for his idea that people's actions are influenced by their “unconscious” mind—that is, a mental space that houses the instincts and impulses that we must repress in order to function in society. According to Freud, the id, that part of our mind that is driven by the pleasure principle, demands that we satisfy our appetites in order to reduce the tension that these appetites exert on us. Babies are entirely id driven; when they are hungry, they don't give any thought to where they are or whether it is convenient for them to be fed. Instead, they demand to be fed right that instant.

As babies grow older, they begin to develop a sense of self, which Freud called the ego, and a sense of right and wrong that comes from outside, which Freud referred to as the superego. The superego is revealed to children through parental discipline and rules but also through the rules and advice they receive through books and media. Children internalize these rules about how to behave and form a conscience that guides them in making decisions. In Freud's view, the role of the ego is to negotiate between the id and the superego; the ego has to constantly figure out how to satisfy the id's desires without getting in too much trouble with the superego. The healthy ego thus learns how to delay gratification or deny aggressive impulses. On the other hand, though, the healthy ego also figures out ways to satisfy desires in socially acceptable ways.

One practical application of Freud's ideas was the acknowledgement that children had much more complicated inner lives than people had previously given them credit for. Had Freud been a believer in God, he might have suggested that the idea of original sin wasn't so far off the mark as thinkers like Locke and Rousseau imagined. Instead he suggested that children were born self-absorbed and aggressively competitive and that they harbored murderous impulses against their rivals. Carl Jung (1875–1961) concurred, calling this dark side the Shadow, and both thinkers agreed that the purpose of art, on the individual as well as the social level, was to sublimate these desires into fantasies so that they could be acknowledged and worked through, exercised and exorcised, as it were, in socially harmless ways.

Consider the levels of aggression in a story like The Story of Babar the Little Elephant (1931), which contains what is certainly one of the most horrific scenes in children's literature—that of a mother elephant shot and killed while carrying her baby on her back. This illustration of a very common childhood fear—the loss of the mother—followed by the eventual triumph of Babar as he travels to the city, becomes a very urbane fellow indeed, and returns to his jungle family to be proclaimed as their king, takes child readers on an imaginary path from loss to recovery and offers reassurance that, even if children's worst fears are realized and they are left to fend for themselves in the world, there is still hope. While there are very complicated cultural problems with this book (Gopnik, 2008), at the psychological level, it acknowledges and addresses children's most traumatic fears and fervent hopes. Scores of 20th and 21st century children's texts treat the loss of the mother and its aftermath in similar ways.

Freudian and Jungian interpretations of folk and fairy tales also became common as a means of explaining the lasting appeal of these stories as well as thinking about how they might be useful for children. Jung believed that folk stories grew out of what he called the “collective unconscious,” which is something that each of us is born with that helps us organize experience. Characters that he called archetypes inhabit the collective unconscious and regularly show up in stories. Examples include the damsel in distress, the hero, the wise old man or woman, the trickster, the eternal child, the wicked witch or devil, the great mother. These character types are found in tales from cultures around the world. For instance, trickster figures include Anansi the Spider (West African), Brer Rabbit (African American), Coyote (Native American), Jack (Appalachian), John the Conqueror (African American), Kirikou (West African), Loki (Norse), Ma-ui (Polynesian), and Raven (Native American). Tricksters are especially appealing to young children because they are usually small in size and must use their cunning to overcome people more powerful than they are.

Like the cartoon images we will discuss in Chapter 3, these characters tend to be iconic. Because of this, children can project themselves and those they know onto characters in order to make the story theirs. When children listen to stories with these characters in them, they relate them to situations in their own lives, and this helps them organize experience—in any given situation, who are their helpers, who are their bad guys, and how should they deal with their conflicts? But as they grow older, they begin to realize that each of the attributes of these archetypes is present in themselves. According to Jungian psychology, our job is to integrate the characteristics of the archetypes into useful patterns that will help us in our daily lives. In other words, one way to think of a fairy tale in Jungian terms is to consider that each character represents an aspect of the self, and the story describes how each aspect might help or hinder growth and achieving goals.

In “Hansel and Gretel,” for instance, the children can represent the masculine and feminine qualities of the self. The stepmother, who fears that she won't have enough to eat and persuades her husband to get rid of the children, represents a fear of scarcity that can lead to despicable acts. The father is compassionate but ultimately too weak to counter fear. The children are resourceful, but also naïve, as they scatter breadcrumbs in an attempt to find their way back home. They then succumb to their own hunger and greed by attacking the witch's house. But it is the witch's greed that is the most destructive, as she plans to eat the children. As Hansel is placed in a cage to fatten up, both he and Gretel become tricksters, and Gretel demonstrates her bravery by killing the witch. The children find the witch's treasure and are ferried home by a pair of swans, where they find that their stepmother has died and they can therefore live happily ever after with their father. The characteristics of the characters thus include fear, compassion, naivety, hunger, greed, resourcefulness, trickiness, and bravery. The story demonstrates that fear, naivety, and greed must be overcome through resourcefulness, trickiness, and bravery so that compassion can ultimately triumph.

Freudian readings of fairy tales often focus on the relationship dynamics in the stories and how stories help children manage unconscious desires and conflicts. Freud suggested that children have socially unacceptable desires and conflicts. For instance, a toddler may show no interest in a toy until another toddler does, and then that toy becomes the only one worth having, and conflict ensues. One approach to such conflict would be to talk about the importance of sharing and perhaps read a story where the characters are happily cooperative and share all of their toys. Bruno Bettelheim (1903–1990), a Freudian child psychologist, disagrees with this approach. In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1975), he argues that children need outlets for their negative emotions, and the best option for this is stories that openly acknowledge the intensity of those feelings. If children see only models of sweet, cooperative children in their books, and they themselves struggle with aggressive, angry feelings that get them in trouble, then they will begin to suspect that they are the only ones who have feelings like this. They will feel like monsters. But if they read stories where jealous, punishing evil stepmothers are killed, and valiant princes slay menacing monsters, their own inner demons can be vicariously soothed through the imaginative acting out of their aggressive impulses.

One of the literary milestones in the acknowledgement of aggression and psychological depth in children is found in the 1963 Caldecott Award-winning Where the Wild Things Are. In this familiar tale, the main character Max misbehaves, chasing his dog with a fork and making “mischief of one kind / and another” until his mother has had enough. She sends him to his room, where the aggrieved Max entertains an elaborate fantasy of getting his own back—that is, taking a troupe of wild things on a wild rumpus and then treating them the same way his mother treated him. In The Child That Books Built, Francis Spufford remarks that this is “one of the very few picture books to make an entirely deliberate, and beautiful, use of the psychoanalytic story of anger” (2002, p. 60); it is certainly one of the first children's books to do so. Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry is another book that acknowledges the intensity of child anger, just as Shaun Tan's The Red Tree acknowledges the depths of sadness that children are capable of, even if we as adults are reluctant to believe or acknowledge that children feel these emotions so deeply. Works like these owe a huge debt to Maurice Sendak for opening up the possibilities of children's literature to tackle serious emotional struggles.

The 20th century thus saw the dawn of a new interest in and respect for children, the complexity of their inner worlds, and their literature. Successful authors such as Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), Countee Cullen (1903–1946), Langston Hughes (1902–1967), Arna Bontemps (1902–1973), and Carl Sandburg (1878–1967), began writing for children as well as adults. Oxford professors C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), author of the Chronicles of Narnia, and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973), author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, not only wrote children's books but they also wrote about the art and practice of writing for children (Lewis, 1967; Tolkien, 1965). Taking issue with the idea that children need to be protected from fearful content, they side with British writer and philosopher G. K. Chesterton, who famously argued that “[f]airy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey” (1909), an idea that has been widely paraphrased as “Fairy tales are more than true—not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten” (quoted as the epigraph for the horror/fantasy novella Coraline, by Neil Gaiman [2002], and attributed to G. K. Chesterton).

But of course one of the most famous writers for children of the mid-20th century was Theodore Geisel (1904–1991), who adopted the pen name Seuss so that he could continue writing incognito for the college humor magazine after being caught drinking gin in his college dorm room (Nel, 2003). After he graduated, of course, he became Dr. Seuss. He began writing children's books in 1937, the first being And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which was rejected by 27 publishers before it finally appeared from Vanguard Press. However, he continued to write children's books while he made a living doing advertising work and political cartoons. His many books for children are energetic, well-plotted, funny, and engaged with the psychology of young children.

The Development of Diversity in Children's Books

As authors began to take the inner and outer worlds of the child seriously, books for children became more diverse in their themes, characters, and genres. Realistic depictions of children in various socioeconomic settings took their place alongside the fantasies of the Golden Age as children's favorites. However, the books of the 20th century continued to point to some persistent ideologies of childhood, especially in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity.

Gender

If we start with the characters of Tom Sawyer (1876), Huck Finn (1884), and Peter Rabbit (1901), for instance, we can see that we view mischief as the birthright and special privilege of boys; these boy characters steal, disobey their elders, and run away from home, yet they are ultimately valued for their ability to get in and out of trouble. The bad boy archetype is repeatedly refreshed in characters like Curious George (who first appeared in 1941), Dennis the Menace (1951), Max from Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Calvin (1985) of Calvin and Hobbes fame, Bart Simpson (1987), and David (1997) from David Shannon's No, David books. Even Lenore Look's Alvin Ho (2008), who is much more fearful and less intentional about his misbehavior, manages to embody the archetype of the boy who always finds himself in trouble and always manages to be forgiven.

Not so with girl characters, at least until far later in the 20th and early 21st century. Lewis Carroll's Alice is curious, intelligent, and headstrong, but she is also prissy and insistent on protocol even as she questions the absurdity of the adults in Wonderland and, by implication, adult culture in the real world. Most girl characters of the Golden Age of children's literature, however, such as Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna (Pollyanna, 1913), L. M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables, 1908), and the numerous princesses in fairy tales, are rewarded for their meek goodness rather than their mischievous nature. It is not until the appearance of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking in 1945 that girls really get their shot at the mischievous, anti-authoritarian life. Pippi challenges everything, from the superior strength of boys and men, to the authority of policemen, the intelligence of schooling, and the reserved protocols of polite society.

Ten years later, in 1955, Eloise (Eloise, by Kay Thompson) and Ramona (Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary) make their appearances, signaling that a real change has taken place in the way girls are depicted in children's literature, since Eloise and Ramona are realistic girls (that is, they don't have any supernatural powers) rather than fantasy heroes like Pippi. Like her predecessors, Eloise renders adult society absurd through her outrageous imitation of it, while Ramona's unsuccessful attempts to conform to social rules calls them into question by other means.

The character who really challenged the gender stereotype of the sweetly funny, good-natured girl, however, is Harriet, from Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1964). Harriet is a disturbing character because she is a girl who isn't at all nice or funny; indeed the only quality that she possesses that could be considered positive is her intelligence, which sets her apart and makes her judgmental of her peers rather than understanding and sympathetic toward them. When her beloved nanny leaves her and her friends discover her notebook, her nervous breakdown has a subtle and unsettling realism that sets her apart from most characters in children's literature. Despite the awareness of the complexity of children's inner lives, we still harbor the hope that their problems will be easily solved through the wisdom of adult intervention. Harriet is thus perhaps more the predecessor of the troubled heroine of young adult fiction rather than the culmination of heroines for younger readers. The legacy of Pippi, Eloise, and Ramona is more appropriately on display in characters like Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones (who first appeared in 1992), Lenore Look's Ruby Lu (2004), Annie Barrows' Ivy and Bean (2006), and Megan McDonald's Judy Moody (2000), who get into mischief and emerge unscathed, much like their male predecessors and counterparts.

Children's picturebooks have also responded to cultural changes in traditional family structures. Leslea Newman's (1989) Heather Has Two Mommies, and Michael Willhoite's (1991) Daddy's Roommate broke new ground with their positive portrayals of gay and lesbian family life. Since these books were published, many more have appeared that contain lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual content, as well as issues of losing a family member to AIDS, nontraditional families in general, children who don't follow traditional gender norms, and the experience of donor offspring. For a comprehensive, annotated list of books that feature gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual content, nontraditional families and children, and donor children, see New York librarian Patricia A. Sarles's blog: http://booksforkidsingayfamilies.blogspot.com/.

As the 20th century progressed, educators and parents became more aware of the importance of children being about to see positive portrayals of themselves, their cultures and lifestyles, and their problems, in books. In a survey of over 5,000 children's books published between 1962 and 1964, Nancy Larrick (1965) found that only 6.7% contained any reference to a non-White character in the text or the illustrations. That percentage has increased (Sims, 1982), however, and today there are many beautiful, affirmative picturebooks celebrating the family life and traditions of children from diverse backgrounds.

African Americans

Although the first books for children of color in America were published as early as 1890, the publishing history has been a rocky one. For instance, some of the first stories that featured non-White characters were by White authors and featured offensive stereotypes. For instance, Little Black Sambo was written in 1899 by a White woman named Helen Bannerman. Sambo is a South Indian child who, upon encountering four hungry tigers, gives up a piece of his colorful wardrobe to each tiger in exchange for their not eating him. The tigers then become jealous of each others' finery and chase each other in a circle with such ferocity that they melt into a pool of butter, which Sambo then eats with an enormous pile of pancakes after he recovers his clothes. It's easy to see why this story has appeal for children—a trickster figure outsmarts characters far more powerful and dangerous than himself and then ends up eating those who wanted to eat him. The imagery, however, was widely condemned as stereotypical and degrading to Black children. Sambo was depicted with very dark skin, a wide mouth and nose, startling white eyes, and unkempt hair; in other words, he embodied the pickaninny caricature, and his name, Sambo, became a racial slur.

Julius Lester, a noted Black author, had this heartbreaking reaction to the book:

When I read Little Black Sambo as a child, I had no choice but to identify with him because I am black and so was he. Even as I sit here and write the feelings of shame, embarrassment and hurt come back. And there was a bit of confusion because I liked the story and I especially liked all those pancakes, but the illustrations exaggerated the racial features society had made it clear to me represented my racial inferiority—the black, black skin, the eyes shining white, the red protruding lips. I did not feel good about myself as a black child looking at those pictures. (1997)

Lester's response was to write a new version of the book called Sam and the Tigers, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. This version of the story preserves all of the wit and energy of the story, even amping up those characteristics, while stripping away the racist overtones.

Issues of representation became very important during the early and mid-20th century, which was characterized by the uplift tradition in African American literature, particularly for children. W. E. B. Dubois (1919) described what he called the “talented tenth,” that is, the 10% of Black people who would become world leaders through education and activism. In order to raise up a class of leaders, he started a children's magazine called The Brownies' Book in 1920, with the following seven purposes:

To make colored children realize that being ‘colored' is a normal, beautiful thing.

To make them familiar with the history of the Negro race.

To make them know that other colored children have grown into beautiful, useful, and famous persons.

To teach them delicately a code of honor and action in their relations with White children.

To turn their little hurts and resentments into emulation, ambition and love of their own homes and companions.

To point out the best amusements and joys and worthwhile things of life.

To inspire them to prepare for definite occupations and duties with a broad spirit of sacrifice. (p. 287)

The magazine's focus on noble behavior and didacticism makes it an unlikely breeding ground for popular child characters who, as we have noted, tend to have a bit of vinegar in their dispositions. However, its existence and goals indicate concern for the way Black children were represented in books and a need for positive role models and iconic characters. For more information and to read the issues of The Brownies Book, click here.

Indeed, the complaints leveled at books written about children of color throughout the early and mid-century focused on the fact that the characters almost always learn that growing up means learning to accept an inferior role in society, a lesson that boys like Jim Hawkins (of Treasure Island) and Tom Sawyer never have to learn (Harris, 1990; Kline, 1992). Given that, and the fact that even in a book featuring Black characters that won the Newbery Award, Sounder (by William H. Armstrong, 1969), only the dog is given a name, there are few models of Black childhood that snag a place on children's literature's greatest hits list. Armstrong, a White author, defends his choice to leave his characters nameless by saying that in doing so he creates characters that are universal, but the prejudice and harsh treatment of the family are clearly related to their ethnicity, so claims of universality in this situation falter. Albert Schwartz (1970) argues that the absence of names is related to the fact that long-standing racism has prevented the dominant culture from seeing people of color as individuals.

Since the 1990s, however, conditions have changed for the better. Today's children can listen to and read beautifully written picturebooks by Ashley Bryan, Lucille Clifton, Donald Crews, Eloise Greenfield, Nikki Grimes, Patricia McKissack, Walter Dean Myers, Faith Ringgold, Joyce Carol Thomas, Carole Boston Weatherford, and Jacqueline Woodson. Illustrators Bryan Collier, Floyd Cooper, E. B. Lewis, Christopher Myers, Kadir Nelson, Jerry Pinkney, and Javaka Steptoe have expanded the repertoire of possibilities for children's picturebook art with their innovative styles. These authors and illustrators, as well as many others, present personal stories, civil rights history, biographies, and folktales that highlight Black experience and culture. Fluent readers will find the folktale retellings and original early chapter books by Christopher Paul Curtis, Nikki Grimes, Virginia Hamilton, and Julius Lester challenging and fun. Since 1969, the American Library Association has been awarding the Coretta Scott King Award to outstanding African American authors and illustrators whose work demonstrates an appreciation for African American culture.

Latino/Latina and Hispanic Americans

Pérez and Martina: A Portorican Folk Tale, written by Pura Belpré in 1932, is usually considered the first children's book written by a Latina author in the United States. Belpré is most well-known as the first Puerto Rican librarian in the New York Public Library system, and her influence as a children's librarian, author, and storyteller has been honored by the American Library Association with the establishment of the Pura Belpré Award given to the Latino/Latina author and illustrator that “best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth” (para. 1).

Another important milestone in the representation of Latino/Latina culture in children's literature and media is the advent of Sesame Street, which featured human Latino/Latina cast members Miguel, Luis, and Maria as early as its second season in 1970. But despite the early publication of Belpré's work, the establishment of the award, and the presence of Latino/Latina characters in one of the most popular children's shows of all time, most critics agree that the publishing industry is not keeping up with the need for quality literature that addresses the expanding diversity of American culture, particularly the rapidly growing population of Latino/Latina children in America. Marisa Treviño (2012) attributes this to two factors: (1) that “[a]bout 75% of children's book buyers [in America] are white,” and (2) that the vast majority of published children's authors, over 90%, are White as well. She sees some positive change on the horizon, but such change will require enthusiastic advocacy on the part of educators and parents.

Another problem identified by critics is the lack of diversity within representations of Latino/Latina culture (see, for instance, the statistics at the bottom of Pat Mora's Bookjoy website: http://www.patmora.com./sampler.htm). Even the term—Latino/Latina—has a vexed history, since it seems to erase the rich diversity of traditions that emerge from the range of Latin American countries and cultures. It has come to be the preferred term over Hispanic, for instance, because Hispanic seems to privilege Spanish origin rather than Latin American. And many authors of Mexican heritage still refer to themselves as Chicano, a term that, since the 1960s and 1970s, connotes ethnic pride for many Mexican Americans as an expression of the uniquely hybrid nature of their culture. Phillip Serrato (2011) argues that the important thing for teachers to remember is that terms such as these are more often than not overly simplified conveniences for categorizing a range of books and that teachers should be attentive to the distinguishing characteristics of the books they share with children.

Despite these problems, there are still many respected Latino children's authors. Look for books by Alma Flor Ada, Francisco Alarcón, George Ancona, Monica Brown, Carmen Agra Deedy, Lulu Delacre, David Diaz, Pat Mora, Yuyi Morales, and Gary Soto for picturebooks, and Rudolfo Anaya and Carmen Lomas Garza for fluent readers.

Native Americans

Representation is also a problem with Native American texts, because our culture has tended to romanticize so much of the history of Native Americans. Lavish headdresses and costuming, which is often connected to sacred tribal tradition and not intended for public viewing or imitation, is used indiscreetly and irreverently in much children's literature. For instance, Susan Jeffer's Brother Eagle, Sister Sky (1991) is a wildly popular book that has inspired many a bulletin board, but it completely misrepresents the speech, questionably attributed to someone she calls Chief Seattle, from which she adapts her text, the message it contains, and the nation of the person who supposedly spoke the words. Jeffers uses a stylized stereotype of a Plains Indian to give a generic sense of “Indian-ness” to her book, and her nostalgic tone seems to insist that American Indians no longer exist, putting this book at the top of Oyate website's Books to Avoid (Seale, n.d.). Oyate is an organization that reviews children's literature and advocates for Native Americans/American Indians to be portrayed with historical accuracy, cultural appropriateness, and without anti-Indian bias and stereotypes.

The Oyate website (http://www.oyate.org/) offers guidance for teachers in evaluating books they might want to choose for inclusion in their curriculum. These guidelines could be easily adapted for considering any books about children of color. Another very useful resource is Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature blog (http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/), where she has book lists, articles, reviews, and news updates on issues affecting the representation of indigenous people in children's and young adult literature and culture. When considering which books to include in your curriculum, it is a good idea to consult these sources for specific recommendations as well as books and images to avoid. You will find books by Nicola Campbell, Joy Harjo, Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, and Tim Tingle consistently recommended for very young children, and Joseph Bruchac, Louise Erdrich, and Cynthia Leitich Smith as recommended authors of books for young readers.

Asian Americans

Like Latino/Latina children's literature, Asian American and Asian Heritage children's books represent a variety of cultural traditions and cultures. Unlike the other ethnicities we have discussed, however, the critical discussions around representation are not as robust or developed. While the majority of Asian American books for children today are folktales, there is a growing trend in realistic representations of Asian American children. Allen Say and Ken Mochizuki, for instance, write from the perspective of Japanese Americans, often focusing on the difficulties of assimilating to life in a new culture. Minfong Ho takes her very young readers to Thailand. Janet Wong writes poetry that honors her Chinese and Korean heritage while being grounded firmly in the universal landscapes of childhood dreams, hopes, and fears. There is also a growing body of literature featuring recent immigrants and adoptees and the challenges they face. For instance, My Name Is Yoon, by Helen Recorvits, and The Name Jar, by Yangsook Choi, both focus on young Korean girls entering American schools where their names present difficulties until they learn their value and meaning.

Choosing the Best Multicultural Children's Literature

According to statistics gathered by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, between the years of 1985 and 1993, the number of books created by African American authors increased dramatically. Since that time, however, the number of books by and about African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos has been trended downward (see Figure 2.1). As people who work with children, we must be intentional in ensuring that the literature we share with them reflects a full spectrum of experience. Publishing is a business, and while publishers may have strong ideological commitments, they must also respond to market demand. If we want a robust supply of quality multicultural books, we must ensure that we are creating sufficient demand for them.

Research shows that children develop their most persistent attitudes toward race when they are 3–7 years old, and that not talking about racial issues is more detrimental toward developing an open attitude toward diversity than explicit discussion, even in schools and neighborhoods where diversity is the norm (Vittrup, 2007). Children are not color-blind: They notice racial difference, and they overwhelmingly prefer people who look similar to themselves, but we adults are the ones who teach them what skin color means. Vague, color-blind statements such as “we are all equal” mean little to children, but explicitly showing doctors, rescue workers, or plumbers, say, with a variety of skin colors or both genders, and talking about their representations, is much more effective. Passive exposure has also been disproven as a means of promoting mixed-race interaction in schools; rather, children must be encouraged to talk about racial difference as we have learned to talk about gender difference (Bronson & Merryman, 2009).

Guidelines for Evaluating Diversity in Children's Books

Accurate representation of cultural specifics: Are countries of origin specifically named where appropriate? (For instance, Africa is not a country, nor is Latin America.) Does the style of dress represent time period accurately? Do pictured setting details accord with textual setting? Do the intergenerational relationships depicted reflect the values prevalent in the culture? (For instance, respect for elders, importance of extended families, etc.)

Avoidance of stereotypes: Are characters depicted as individuals? Are characters shown in a variety of activities, with a variety of skin tones and body types? Pay particular attention to gender—are men and women always shown performing activities traditionally thought of as male or female activities, or do they behave in ways that more accurately represent the contemporary diversity of roles?

Achievement: Are characters shown to be resourceful and able to solve their own problems? Are authority figures diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender? Are power dynamics equally distributed among characters of various ethnicities and genders?

Author/Illustrator: Does the author/illustrator come from the culture depicted? If not, is there evidence that sufficient research has been done regarding the portrayal of the culture? It is useful to check reviews for this information if it is not provided in the author's/illustrator's note.

Copyright Date: Generally speaking, the newer the book, the more likely it will address cultural issues with contemporary sensibilities.

Sensibility: If the book portrays a struggle between a minority character and the dominant culture, does the book give appropriate weight to the conflict and the minority character's right to justice, even if that right challenges the status quo or laws of the dominant culture?

Language: Does the language of the characters and/or the narrator accurately reflect, but not stereotype, typical language use in that culture?

Icons and Children's Media Today

Children's authors and illustrators today are sensitive to the exciting challenges of living in a world where gender roles are more fluid and cultural differences are increasingly valued. While some authors, such as Mo Willems, are creating new icons of child culture, such as the Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, and Elephant and Piggie, in some cases, the authors themselves are becoming icons, such as, again, Mo Willems, with children eagerly awaiting the next offering by Kevin Henkes or Kadir Nelson. These authors have an almost unlimited range of artistic tools available to them, and they are re-creating the picturebook as a work of art, shaping the aesthetic vision of child readers in diverse and fascinating ways. Children's picturebooks today are more sophisticated than they have ever been, offering visual and verbal challenges that demonstrate an unprecedented respect for the cognitive and affective abilities of child readers.

In today's media-saturated culture, whether characters become children's literature icons often depends on whether they are picked up for TV and movies. The Walt Disney Company, for example, is largely responsible for keeping the fairy tale princess alive and well in contemporary culture. Disney's remakes of classic fairy tales have been criticized for their perpetuation of impossible ideals of feminine beauty, as their wasp-waisted, big-eyed beauties set the standard for pretty among young girls. However, what seems to bother people most about Disney is their overwhelming hold on children's culture. The “Disney version” of any particular story is likely to be the one children are most familiar with, and thus, to their minds, the “right” version. For instance, Disney's bright, colorful image of Winnie the Pooh with his ill-fitting T-shirt and very chubby tummy is very different from the original illustrations by E. H. Shepard . Although the first movies Disney produced were very respectful of the book, their continual repackaging of Pooh over the years has diminished the power of those original stories, making contemporary Pooh a very silly bear indeed.

Other purveyors of children's literature and culture have created cultural icons as well. For instance, the Sesame Street characters are widely recognized around the world. Interestingly, these characters have gone from TV to books, rather than the other way around like such characters as Marc Brown's Arthur, Rosemary Wells's Max and Ruby, Susan Meddaugh's Martha, and Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat. The main purveyors of children's media today are Disney, Nickelodeon, and PBS. While each network, producer, and distributor has a slightly different emphasis and mission statement, their products are marketed across the spectrum of child culture, creating books, TV shows, music, stage shows, amusement parks, toys, games, and play sets to immerse children in the world of their products and gain brand loyalty. As we look more closely at media specifically targeted to the various age groups, we will discuss the philosophy and dominant aesthetic statements of each of these purveyors more closely. For the most part, though, these media outlets are competing for market share while attempting to maintain their ideal of what children should and should not experience through their storytelling.

PBS, for instance, has very clear guidelines regarding their children's television programming (http://www.pbs.org/producers/pbskidssubmissionguidelines.pdf). They have a clearly articulated “Child Development and Learning Framework” that all of their programs must be responsive to, and they encourage periodic evaluation through focus groups to see if the program's goals are having the desired effects on child learning. They also have a list of specific prohibitions in children's programming. Violence of any kind, as well as any dangerous or illegal behavior that children might model, are prohibited, as is any sort of image or programming that might evoke fear in children. They also put strict limits on “grossness” and images of bathroom use; clearly, the Shrek franchise could not be distributed through PBS. PBS also has explicit guidelines against racial and gender stereotyping and insists that any depictions of antisocial behavior be portrayed with negative consequences.

Disney, on the other hand, places its emphasis on creativity, innovation, and profitability. Their official website (http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/) highlights this mission across all of their businesses and programs. Their focus is now and always has been on creative and memorable storytelling. This means that they will occasionally present fearful images and violent scenes in their films, although they do find ways to imply the more gratuitous scenes of violence rather than actually show what happens. For instance, when the wicked queen falls to her death in Disney's first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), all the audience sees are two very interested vultures watching over the edge of the cliff. Likewise, some 50 years later, Gaston falls off a rain-soaked roof after stabbing the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (1991), but viewers do not witness either his entire fall or his landing. The Beast survives the stabbing and is transformed back into his former self. Violent deaths are actually quite common in animated Disney films, but they always function within the storytelling role of vanquishing villains who deserve to be vanquished.

PBS and the Disney-ABC Television Group represent two extremes in children's media programming. PBS's focus is explicitly on providing developmentally appropriate educational media that emphasizes social equality and explicitly rejects stereotyping. Disney's focus is on creative storytelling, which requires the use of icons and archetypes, if not stereotypes, so that children are drawn into identifications. Other purveyors of children's media fall somewhere in between. For instance, Nickelodeon, which is owned by Viacom, places a high emphasis on humor and the empowerment of viewers, which they promote through online interaction, viewer's choice programming and awards, and gaming. They then claim to use their influence to promote healthy lifestyles by using their well-known characters, like Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants, to encourage exercise through their “Let's Just Play” campaign (Altschuler, 2008). While many of the shows distributed through these outlets end up seeming similar, it is nonetheless possible to detect their various commitments by watching with an analytical eye.

Children's literature has a long history of availability in audio and visual formats, including touch-and-feel books, pop-ups, lift-the-flap, and other formats that encourage interaction. The development of digital technologies offers exciting possibilities for children's reading in the future. Color versions of e-readers offer a natural platform for picturebooks, and YouTube has any number of videos that feature people telling stories, reading children's books, setting them to music, and adapting them in various child-friendly ways. Many local public library websites also feature online children's books that children can access for free from a computer. For instance, explore Tumblebooks at http://www.normalpl.org/online-tools/kids/.

Apps are also being developed based on children's books. Some of these are similar to the computerized versions of children's books that first became available in the 1980s in that they offer options for being read to or reading alone, hot spots with animations, and the ability to receive the story in other languages. Because these new apps have been developed for tablets, they include features that are activated by swiping and shaking the tablet as well. Some include interactive features, such as Mo Willems' Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App, based on his popular pigeon character. This app allows children to record their answers to questions and create new stories in a fill-in-the-blank fashion, where players are asked for specific kinds of words to fill in blanks that can be saved and replayed. And of course, Disney offers a wide range of apps based on its recent movies. Many nonfiction apps are also available that encourage children to learn through interactive edutainment.

Most exciting, perhaps, though is the development of augmented reality (AR) children's books. These books use a webcam (or other device such as a camera phone) to project 3-D images that have been encoded in the book itself. In addition, readers can interact with the image in their books. It really must be seen to be fully understood. You'll find videos demonstrating AR in Websites to Save and Explore at the end of the chapter.

Running head: BUTTERFLIES 1

BUTTERFLIES 8

Title Name Course Instructor Date Submitted

The Life Cycle of the Butterfly

Butterflies are colorful, attractive and usually live around the eye level of children. So as I introduce the second letter of the alphabet we will be using this popular insect that most children love. In this unit we are going to study the life cycle of the butterfly. Butterflies change four times during their lives. These changes are called metamorphosis—born as an egg (stage 1), turns into a caterpillar or a larvae (stage 2)— the caterpillar will eat constantly…it loves leaves and flowers and will grow and grow through this stage of its life, as it grows it will shed its skin…when the caterpillar has grown several thousand times its original size, it goes into a resting stage—this is when the caterpillar becomes a pupa or chrysalis (stage 3)—finally, the chrysalis breaks open and a beautiful butterfly comes out (stage 4)—the adult butterfly will begin the stage all over again by laying eggs. This unit will allow students to explore several books on butterflies and caterpillars. A number of skills will be taught to include phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, character, setting, theme, knowledge acquisition, cognitive development and physical motor development. After the completion of this unit the children will have a better understanding of life and the environment in which they live and be able to complete a story map by drawing pictures that accurately represent the beginning, middle and end of a story. The activities include the discussion of the books, singing and dancing, arts and crafts as well as exploration and discovery learning through materials.

The five year old child development phase is an exciting time. This is the age when many children will begin kindergarten and enter into a world of school with classroom rules and even homework. They will begin learning more about the world around them and will gain new confidence as they develop new skills and understandings. Some kindergarteners will have already mastered the alphabet while others will be learning them for the first time. Some are able to write letters and are familiar with their corresponding sounds while others will be learning these exciting milestones for the first time. Reading abilities can also vary at this age; while some children may begin to learn simple words, others may be reading books already. At this stage, most five year old children can remember stories and can repeat them in broad terms however the details may be a little tricky for them. They understand that stories have a beginning, middle and an ending. As the students are introduce to various types of literature it enhances their understanding of the concept of print and word, linguistic and phonemic awareness and vocabulary development.

Quality literature books help children to better understand themselves, others and the world around them. As children interact with the environment through books or hands on experience, individual schemes become modified, combined, and reorganized to form more complex cognitive structures. Jean Piaget believed that extensive interaction with the environment is absolutely essential for each child’s cognitive development. Though Piaget acknowledged that biological maturation sets the general limits within which cognitive development occurs, he placed much more emphasis on the role of the environment. Children who have severely limited interactions with their environments simply will not have the opportunities to develop and reorganize their cognitive structures so as to achieve mature ways of thinking (Coats, 2013). I believe this unit on the butterfly will increase student’s cognitive development by introducing new challenging vocabulary, promoting alphabetic recognition and phonemic awareness and educate them about the environment through stories and videos that will teach them about the life cycle of the butterfly.

Lesson Plan - Monday

Subject: Reading (THE SUBJECT STAYS THE SAME NY SUBJECT IS READING AND WRITING)

Grade: Kindergarten

Topic: The Way the Letters Sounds - B is for Butterfly (FOR THE TOPIC CHOSE A DIFFERENT ONE FROM THE HEAD START LINK)

Duration: 50 minutes

Goals/Objectives:	This lesson will help students recognize the sounds of the various letters in the alphabet and learn to identify them by using the names of different types of butterflies. Each unit will focus on a different letter of the alphabet. For this week we will use the letter B
Standards Covered:	TEKS 110.11.b.1.B and 110.11.b.3.A Identify upper- and lower-case letters; Identify the common sounds that letters represent; Use this link for standards on all the lesson plans Head Start Framework: If you work in a Head Start program, please click HERE to choose a standard from the Head Start Early Learning Framework. HEAD START IS THE GRADE I WOULS LIK ETO USE FRO THIS ASSIGNMENT. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf use the link to choose the topics for the lesson plans If the HERE above doesn’t work click on the link.
Materials:	Butterfly Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta and Brian Cassie Construction Paper Magazines and books with lots of pictures Glue Crayons 4X6 inch card with the letter B printed on it for each student
Introduction:	“Hello class! This week we are going to be reading books about a beautiful insect that begin with the letter B. Who can tell me the name of an insect that begins with the letter B?” Wait for the students to respond. “Yes, that is right a butterfly. Butterfly begins with the letter B. Can anyone tell me what sound the letter B makes?” Wait for the students to respond. “Let me give you a clue by repeating the name of the insect we will be studying this week, butterfly.” Wait for the students to respond. “Yes, the letter B says “buh”. Today I am going to share an alphabet book with you about the different species of butterflies. Can anyone tell me what the word species means?” Wait for the students to respond. “A species is a class of things included with other classes.”
Lesson Development:	1. Read the Butterfly Alphabet Book to the students. Stop at each letter and have the students repeat the letter and sound after you. 2. Explain to the students that each letter of the alphabet has a different name and its own unique sound. 3. Show students an example of a letter B picture board with cut out pictures from books and magazines of things that begin with the letter of the week. 4. Find a picture of something that begins with the letter B. Ask the students if anyone knows what the picture is and have them say it. 5. Have the students repeat the sound Buh for B and then say the name associated with the picture. 6. Continue with this exercise until every student has had a chance to identify a picture that begins with a B. 7. Then ask students to name some things in the classroom or at their home that begins with a B sound.
Practice/ Checking for Understanding:	1. Explain to the students that they are going to have a chance to make a letter B chart to show that they can identify items that begin with the B sound. 2. Pass out a piece of construction paper, a 4X6 card and a magazine to each student. 3. Tell the students to trace the letter B and then write the letter B next to it. 4. Have the students to glue their card onto the top of their construction paper. 5. Tell the students to find, cut out and glue pictures from the magazines of items that begin with the B sound. 6. While the students are working, walk around and monitor. Help students if needed.
Closing:	Bringing students back together as a whole group. Have students to share the pictures on their B board to ensure that they can recognize items with the B sound. Have them to write the first letter of one of their B words on the chart and I finish writing the rest of the word for them. Write the upper and lower case letter on the board and ask who can tell me what letter this is? Then ask who know the sound these letters make?
Personal Reflection:	The students did a great job writing and finding pictures that begin with the letter B. However, I noticed that a few students were struggling with identifying pictures that begin with the letter sound B. These students I will be pulling aside in smaller groups to work on phonemic awareness of the letter B.

Lesson Plan - Tuesday

THIS IS WHERE THE LESSON PLAN I ATTACHED WILL GO

Subject: Reading

Grade: Kindergarten

Topic: Story Elements: Beginning, Middle and End (TOPIC ON MINE FOR TUESDAY IS Character, Plot and Setting USE THE LESSON PLAN ATTACHED FRO THIS PART)

Duration: 50 minutes

Goals/Objectives:	The students will be able to complete a story map by drawing pictures that accurately represent the beginning, middle and end of the story.
Standards Covered:	TEKS 110.11.b.6.A Identify elements of a story including setting, character and key events
Materials:	Beginning, Middle and End Story Map (a copy for each student) The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle White board with the Story Map drawn on it Markers
Introduction:	“Hello class! This week we are learning about butterflies. Who can tell me what insect a butterfly is before it turns into the butterfly?” Wait for the student responses. “Today I am going to read a book to you about a very hungry caterpillar. When I am reading the story I want you to listen for what happens at the beginning of the story, the middle of the story and the end of the story. Who can tell me where these words or phrases are found in a story: once upon a time, the end, they lived happily ever after?” Wait for the students responses. “Do you know that every story has a beginning, middle and end?” Wait for the children responses. “Today I am going to share The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle with you. What do you think a very hungry caterpillar eats?” Wait for the students responses. “While I am reading the story today, I want you to listen for what happens at the beginning of the story, the middle of the story and the end of the story.
Lesson Development:	1. Read The very Hungry Caterpillar to the students. As I read I will pause to identify the beginning, middle and end to the students. 2. Show the students the chart paper that has a picture of the story map drawn on it. 3. Start with the first column labeled Beginning. Explain what the beginning of a story is. Ask probing question about the beginning of the story to model how you find the beginning. Let the students assist with the answers. Record them in the “Beginning” section of the Story Map. 4. Next explain what the middle of the story is. Ask probing question about the middle of the story to model how you find the middle. Let the students assist with the answers. Record their answers in the “Middle” section of the chart. 5. Explain what the end of the story is. Ask probing question about the end of the story to model how you find the end. Let the students assist with the answers. Record their answers in the “End” section of the charted Story Map. If students offer ideas that fit better in another section of the chart I would respond by saying, “I remember that part too. I think it would be great to add that to the “Middle” section of the chart. Each student will color, cut out, arrange and glue the pictures and arrows onto construction paper to show the four stages of the butterfly life cycle.
Practice/ Checking for Understanding:	1. Explain to the students that they are going to have a chance to show what they remember about The Very Hungry Caterpillar by completing their own Story Map. 2. Hand out a copy of the Story Map to each student. 3. Tell the students that they need to draw a picture in each section, Beginning, Middle and End, to show what happened in the story. 4. While the students are working walk around, monitor and support the students.
Closing:	Bring the students back together as a group. Ask the children to share what they drew on their Story Maps with the class. Remind the students that when we tell a story it is important to talk about the events in the correct order, so the story makes sense. Ask the children to take their page home and share The Very Hungry Caterpillar story with a parent, using their paper to help them remember to tell it in order. What are the three parts of the story we practiced today? (Wait for the student’s response.)
Personal Reflection:	After teaching the lesson, I noticed that some students were still struggling with the three parts of the story. I will work with these students individually and use partner sharing with the stronger students to improve their understanding. Overall the students did a good job. After working with the students that were struggling I will see if everyone can complete the Story Map on their own without me modeling it for them.

Lesson Plan - Wednesday

Subject: Reading

Grade: Kindergarten

Topic: Rhyming Schemes

Duration: 50 minutes

Goals/Objectives:	The students will be able to identify words and pictures that rhyme.
Standards Covered:	TEKS 110.11.b.2.C and 110.11.b.2.D Orally generate rhymes in response to spoken words (e.g., "What rhymes with hat?") Distinguish orally presented rhyming pairs of words from non- rhyming pairs Use this link for standards on all the lesson plans Head Start Framework: If you work in a Head Start program, please click HERE to choose a standard from the Head Start Early Learning Framework. HEAD START IS THE GRADE I WOULS LIK ETO USE FRO THIS ASSIGNMENT. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf If the HERE above doesn’t work click on the link.
Materials:	Birth of A Butterfly poem by Meish Goldish Paint sticks for each student Construction paper cut in the shape of a butterfly Stripes of paper with Things that Rhyme written on it for headers Rhyming picture cards (two or three sets per student)
Introduction:	“Hello class! Today we are going to read a poem about a butterfly. Who can tell me what rhyming means?” Wait for the student response. “When words end the same we call this rhyming. You are going to be rhyme detectives. Whenever you detect (hear) a rhyming pair of words you have to touch your noses to show that you’ve found it. I am going to recite some words and when you hear a pair that rhymes touch your nose. Get your detective finger ready by holding it in the air.”Then I will recite three or four sets of words. In between each word I will make sure the students are raising their fingers back in the air, this way I will be able to informally assess the students’ understanding of this skill. Choose a student to repeat the rhyming pair they heard.
Lesson Development:	1. Ask the children to take their detective fingers back out. Remind them to touch their noses whenever they hear a rhyming word. 2. Read the Birth of a Butterfly to the students. 3. Stop frequently to ask the students if they can think of any other words that rhyme with the pairs they detected. Nonsense words are totally acceptable answers for these rhyming activities! 4. Explain to students that sometimes stories and poems use rhyming words.
Practice/ Checking for Understanding:	1. Explain to the students that they are going to select pictures of things that rhyme to glue on their butterflies. 2. Pass out a paint stick, a butterfly and a title stripe to each child. 3. Have students to select two or three rhyming picture pairs to glue on the butterfly. 4. Have them to color or decorate their butterflies and write their name on the top of the left side of the paper. Now have the students write or dictate a silly rhyming name on the bottom right of the paper. Tell the students that this is the name of their rhyming twin.
Closing:	Have the students come to the carpet and share the rhyming pairs they chose. Write the rhyming pair on the board. Ask the students what does the word rhyme means? Wait for the student’s response.
Personal Reflection:	Overall the students did a nice job. By the end of the lesson they all understood what the word rhyme means. There are a couple of students who need a little more practice so I will work with them in a small group.

Lesson Plan - Thursday

Subject: Reading

Grade: Kindergarten

Topic: Making New Words

Duration: 50 minutes

Goals/Objectives:	The students will be able to remove the first letter of a word to make a new word.
Standards Covered:	TEKS 110.11.b.3.C  Recognize that new words are created when letters are changed, added, or deleted Use this link for standards on all the lesson plans Head Start Framework: If you work in a Head Start program, please click HERE to choose a standard from the Head Start Early Learning Framework. HEAD START IS THE GRADE I WOULS LIK ETO USE FRO THIS ASSIGNMENT. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf If the HERE above doesn’t work click on the link.
Materials:	Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr Alphabet tiles Construction paper Board
Introduction:	“Hello class! This week we are reading stories about the butterfly life cycle. Who can tell us what is the next stage after the butterfly lays the egg?” Wait for the student response. Today I am going to share a book titled The Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. While I am reading I want you to listen for words that sound alike. If you hear a word that sounds alike raise your hand high and then put it back down. After I am finished with the book I would like you to share with the class the words that sound alike.” When the students share the words they identified from the story I will list them on the board. We will use those words to make new words by change the first letter or adding a ‘s’. I will rewrite the word with the first letter missing and choose students to come up to the board to fill in the blank to form new words.
Lesson Development:	1. Read The Ten Little Caterpillars to the students. 2. Explain to the students that we can make new words by changing the first letter of the word. 3. Ask the students who raised their hand to share their words with the class. 4. List these words on the board and show the students how new words were formed by changing a letter or adding new letters. 5. Use those words and new words to allow the students to fill in missing letters to form new words.
Practice/ Checking for Understanding:	1. Explain to the students that they are going to have the chance to practice making new words by changing one letter. 2. Give each student a set of alphabet tiles 3. Pass out a sheet of construction paper for the students to glue the tiles too. 4. List 10 one syllable words on the board. Ask each student to choose two words, write them on their paper and then make new words by changing the first letter(s). 5. Walk around and monitor the students while they are working. Support the students where needed.
Closing:	Bring the students back together as a whole group. Have student share the word groups they made.
Personal Reflection:	After teaching the lesson there were a couple of children who were struggling with making new words. So I pulled them aside individually and we spent time using Alphabet Word Wheels and they now understand much better.

Lesson Plan - Friday

Subject: Reading

Grade: Kindergarten

Topic: Character, Plot and Setting( THE TOPIC HERE CAN BE BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END)

Duration: 50 minutes

Goals/Objectives:	The students will increase listening and reading comprehension skills and be able to determine the main characters, plot, and setting of a story and then write their own story.
Standards Covered:	TEKS 110.11.b.6.A Use this link for standards on all the lesson plans Head Start Framework: If you work in a Head Start program, please click HERE to choose a standard from the Head Start Early Learning Framework. HEAD START IS THE GRADE I WOULS LIK ETO USE FRO THIS ASSIGNMENT. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf If the HERE above doesn’t work click on the link.
Materials:	Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost and Leonid Gore Worksheets Pencils Crayons Markers
Introduction:	“Hello Class! Today we will continue our butterfly theme to learn about characters, setting and plot. Who can tell me the meaning of main character?” Wait for the student response. “Who can tell me the meaning of setting?” Wait for the student response. “Who can tell me the meaning of plot?” Wait for the student response. Explain the meaning of main characters, setting, and plot. “Why do you think it is important to know these things to understand the story?” Wait for the student response. Explain to the students how we know who the main characters are, what the setting tell us and what the plot tell us. “Today, I am going to share a story called Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost and Leonid Gore. When we read the story I want you to listen for the main character(s), the setting and the plot.”
Lesson Development:	1. Read Monarch and Milkweed to the students.   2. Explain to the students that every story has characters, settings and plots. 3. Before reading each page, show each illustration and review what has happened, where it is taking place, and who is involved in the main action. 4. Ask the students questions about what they think will happen next. 5. After the story is over, have a class discussion and ask them to identify the main character, plot, and setting of the story.
Practice/ Checking for Understanding:	1. Explain to the students that they are going to have the chance to complete a worksheet to show the main character(s), setting and plot of Monarch and Milkweed. 2. Pass out a copy of the worksheet that list the headings of characters, setting and plot. 3. Tell the students that in the first heading they need to draw and color a picture of the main character(s), in the second heading they need to draw a picture of the setting, in the third heading they need to draw a picture of the plot. 4. While the students are working walk around and monitor. Give support to the students that need it.
Closing:	Bring the students back together as a whole group. Have the students to share what they drew and colored on their worksheets for the characters, setting and plot. Ask the students who can tell me the three things we need to know in order to understand a story?
Personal Reflection:	Most of the students had no trouble identifying the main character but some struggled with identifying the setting and plot. I will need to work with my students more on identifying the setting and the plot. For the next couple of books I will model filling out the character(s), plot and setting worksheets.

The objectives used in my lesson plans depict the importance of implementing the concepts discussed in class. Reading should be an exciting experience for young children. Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in learning to read. Knowing letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember the forms of written words and their ability to treat words as sequences of letters. These objectives show how significant it is that children learn letter names by singing songs and reciting rhymes. Children appear to acquire alphabetic knowledge in a sequence that begins with letter names, then letter shapes, and finally letter sounds. Children's reading development is dependent on their understanding of the alphabetic principle – the idea that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language. Learning that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to begin to read with fluency (Coats, 2013). As we read together with children it is essential to model active reading skills and help children to identify fundamental story elements such as character, plot and setting to increase and strengthen comprehension. The ability to identify the elements of a story aids in comprehension, leads to a deeper understanding and appreciation of stories, and helps students learn to write stories of their own. As they speak and write they also learn to use rhyming words to express ideas. The ability to recognize and produce rhyming words is an important phonological awareness skill. There is research that indicates a correlation between phonological awareness and reading ability.

Reading stories with children introduces them to the complex nature of language and helps them in acquiring important language skills.  However, the type of books read to children contributes to the depth of their learning. A variety of books should be used in children’s read aloud experiences.  Different types of genre books are associated with different amounts and types of language and each will encourage a different dialog or conversation with children. In my first lesson plan I shared the Butterfly Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta and Brian Cassie with the class. Alphabet or ABC books are used to help children recognize letters and realize that letters are used in language. This book uses the alphabet to name the different types of butterflies and gives information about each species. The book tells the name of each butterfly, where you can find it, and how the butterflies name originated. The illustrations are beautiful and full of color. On Tuesday, I shared a series book by Eric Carle titled The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book was used to teach children beginning, middle and end. The student’s discussed events at the beginning, middle and end of the story. Children learn to talk about a story in the ordered series of events. This book is predictable so it involves students in the reading experience. The patterned language and repetitive phrases help the kindergarteners to anticipate what is coming next. They also help students to understand language and how sentences and stories are put together. These sorts of books make it easy for kindergarteners to repeat elements of the stories which are an important pre-reading skill. The third lesson plan introduced the students to a poem titled Birth of a Butterfly by Meish Goldish. Poems introduce the students to the sounds of language.  Rhyming poetry, especially ones with playful words, help children develop phonemic awareness. The fourth genre of literature I used was a rhyming book titled Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. Children benefit from hearing rhyming language and repetitive sounds.  Rhyming stories are fun to read and provide lots of opportunities to read with emotion and to change the loudness and softness of the voice.  Hearing stories that contain rhymes prepare children for reading by helping them focus on the sounds in words. In my last lesson plan I used a non-fiction book called Monarch & Milkweed by Helen Frost. Non-fiction books are consider informational books and are written about topics that children have a natural interest in such as animals, food, vehicles, sports, or seasons of the year.  This book was simple in style and focused a subject that is familiar to the children's environment, butterflies. “Young children need increased exposure and experience with a variety of genre. The more genre children are familiar with the more they will have to draw upon when making literacy choices for particular situations and purposes” (Academia, 2013, p.47) . The concept of genre has been found as vital to literacy learning and development.

Kindergarten Newsletter

This week are reading literature about the butterfly. We will be using books to teach the students about character, setting and plot, the alphabet, phonemic awareness, rhyming and how to identify the beginning, middle and end of a story. Some of the books we will be using are listed below. It would be very helpful if you would join us in reinforcing these skills at home. Please remember to read to your children 20 minutes a day. Reading helps children learn about language. As you point out and name letters children learn to recognize letters in both capitals and lower case. Rhymes are another unique child-friendly means of introducing children to the wonder of narratives and the imaginative potential that the stories found in books can offer. Here are the books we are reading this week. These books can be found at your local library.

Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Monarch and Millweed by Helen Frost

The Butterfly Alphabet Book by Frank Pallotta and Brian Cassie

References

Academia. (2013). Genre knowledge and young children. Retrieved from

http://www.academia.edu/518090/Genre_Knowledge_and_the_Reading_and_Writing_of_Young_Children_A_Methodological_Literature_Review

Coats, K. (2013). Children’s literature & the developing reader. Retrieved from:

https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUECE335.13.1/sections/sec1.4

I HAVE UNDERLINED WHAT CAN BE USED AS A TOPIC PLEASE USE THESE ALL THE INFO YOU NEED IS HERE.

Language development

Language Development refers to emerging abilities in receptive and expressive language.

This domain includes understanding and using one or more languages. Language development is among the most important tasks of the first five years of a child’s life. Language is the key to learning across all domains. Specific language skills in early childhood are predictive of later success in learning to read and write. Also, children who are skilled communicators are more likely to demonstrate social competence. In the domain of Language Development, programs need to ensure that children who are dual language learners can demonstrate their abilities, skills, and knowledge in any language, including their home language.

The domain elements for language development for 3 to 5 year olds are:

KEY r = Domain u = Domain Element • = Example

Receptive language THIS CAN BE USED AS A TPOIC

The ability to comprehend or understand language.

• Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.

• Comprehends increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.

• Comprehends different forms of language, such as questions or exclamations.

• Comprehends different grammatical structures or rules for using language.

Expressive language THIS CAN BE USED AS A TOPIC

The ability to use language.

• Engages in communication and conversation with others.

• Uses language to express ideas and needs.

• Uses increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.

• Uses different forms of language.

• Uses different grammatical structures for a variety of purposes.

• Engages in storytelling.

• Engages in conversations with peers and adults.

Literacy Knowledge & skills

Literacy Knowledge & Skills refers to the knowledge and skills that lay the foundation for reading and writing, such as understanding basic concepts about books or other printed materials, the alphabet, and letter-sound relationships. Early literacy is the foundation for reading and writing in all academic endeavors in school. It is considered one of the most important areas for young children’s development and learning. Early literacy learning provides children with an opportunity to explore the world through books, storytelling, and other reading and writing activities. It is a mechanism for learning about topics they enjoy and acquiring content knowledge and concepts that support progress in other domains. It is critical for supporting a range of positive outcomes, including success in school and other environments. In the domain of Literacy Knowledge & Skills, programs need to ensure that children who are dual language learners can demonstrate their abilities, skills, and knowledge in any language, including their home language.

The domain elements for literacy knowledge & Skills for 3 to 5 year olds are:

KEY r = Domain u = Domain Element • = Example

Book appreciation and Knowledge THIS IS THE TOPIC FOR TUSEDAY LESSON PLAN(DO NOT USE THIS ONE ALREADY USED ON TUESDAY’S LESSON PLAN)

The interest in books and their characteristics, and the ability to understand and get meaning from stories and information from books and other texts.

• Shows interest in shared reading experiences and looking at books independently.

• Recognizes how books are read, such as front-to-back and one page at a time, and recognizes basic characteristics, such as title, author, and illustrator.

• Asks and answers questions and makes comments about print materials.

• Demonstrates interest in different kinds of literature, such as fiction and non-fiction books and poetry, on a range of topics.

• Retells stories or information from books through conversation, artistic works, creative movement, or drama.

Phonological awareness THIS CAN BE USED AS A TOPIC

An awareness that language can be broken into words, syllables, and smaller pieces of sound.

• Identifies and discriminates between words in language.

• Identifies and discriminates between separate syllables in words.

• Identifies and discriminates between sounds and phonemes in language, such as attention to beginning and ending sounds of words and recognition that different words begin or end with the same sound.

Alphabet Knowledge THIS CAN BE USED AS A TOPIC

The names and sounds associated with letters.

• Recognizes that the letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named.

• Recognizes that letters of the alphabet have distinct sound(s) associated with them.

• Attends to the beginning letters and sounds in familiar words.

• Identifies letters and associates correct sounds with letters.

Print concepts & conventions THIS CAN BE USED AS A TPOIC

The concepts about print and early decoding (identifying letter-sound relationships).

• Recognizes print in everyday life, such as numbers, letters, one’s name, words, and familiar logos and signs.

• Understands that print conveys meaning.

• Understands conventions, such as print moves from left to right and top to bottom of a page.

• Recognizes words as a unit of print and understands that letters are grouped to form words.

• Recognizes the association between spoken or signed and written words.

Early writing THIS CAN BE USED AS A TOPIC

The familiarity with writing implements, conventions, and emerging skills to communicate through written representations, symbols, and letters.

• Experiments with writing tools and materials.

• Recognizes that writing is a way of communicating for a variety of purposes, such as giving information, sharing stories, or giving an opinion.

• Uses scribbles, shapes, pictures, and letters to represent objects, stories, experiences, or ideas.

• Copies, traces, or independently writes letters or words.

REFERANCE

The head Start Child development and early learning Framework . (2010, December). Retrieved November 11, 2017, from https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf

USE ON TUESDAY IN THE FINAL LESSON PLAN

Content Area or Developmental Focus: Book appreciation and Knowledge

Age/Grade of Children: Head Start

Topic: Character, Plot and Setting

Length of Lesson: 45 min

Goal	The goal is to teach head start children how to understand the Character, Plot and Setting of the story
Objective	The objective is to enable the children to identify the Character, Plot and Setting of the story on their own
Standards Included	The Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework Literacy knowledge and skills development (Book appreciation and Knowledge) With guidance recognizes the Character, Plot and Setting of a story
Materials	The Hat by Jan Brett Pencils Plot Story Map ( one for each student)
Introduction	Hi class, today we will be identifying the Character, Plot and Setting of a play. “What are some of the reasons why plays are important to us?” Wait for different responses from the students and summarize the ideas for them. Proceed, “Today, we are going to learn about several elements of a play and that is the Character, Plot and Setting. It will be interesting, and at the end of class you will be eager to identify Character, Plot and Setting in various story books.”
Lesson Development	The first step will include introducing the lesson. Here, the children will be briefed on what to expect at the end of the lesson. Then, a play will be read out loud for the children. Thereafter, they will the asked to read on their own. In-order to test their understanding of the play, they will be asked to explain what they understood about the story. Finally, the children will be taught how to comprehend a play i.e. understanding the Character, Plot and Setting of the play.
Differentiation	Students in their early years will be allowed more time to understand the lesson Fast Learners: I will give them a book and let them pick out the Character, Plot and Setting
Assessment (Practice/ Checking for Understanding)	Initially, children will be asked in class after reading a story book to explain what the Character, Plot and Setting of the story is all about. Later on, individual assessment will be done whereby they will be assigned a story book individually and asked to describe Character, Plot and Setting orally. Finally, all the children will be provided with different story books and asked to write the Character, Plot and Setting of the play.
Closing	Summarize the lesson by giving a summary of what the Character, Plot and Setting is and why it is important to understand the Character, Plot and Setting. Explain to them how the activity you did about identifying the Character, Plot and Setting in the story was useful in reading and understanding the story. Clarify that, to read and understand a story, everyone should be able to identify the Character, Plot and Setting in that specific story. This identification of the Character, Plot and Setting helps us in fully benefiting from the advantages of the story.

Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan Template – Overview

For a more detailed explanation, including examples, of each section within the Lesson Plan Template, please view the Lesson Plan Handbook.

Content Area or Developmental Focus:

Age/Grade of Children:

Length of Lesson:

Goal	The goal is the purpose of the lesson.
Objective	The objective is what students will be able to know or do at the end of the lesson.
Standards Included	Standards are the knowledge or skills that students will be expected to demonstrate. Head Start Framework: If you work in a Head Start program, please click HERE to choose a standard from the Head Start Early Learning Framework. HEAD START IS THE GRADE I WOULS LIK ETO USE FRO THIS ASSIGNMENT. https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf If the HERE above doesn’t work click on the link.
Materials	The materials section lists all items needed throughout a lesson.
Introduction	The introduction is how you will introduce the activity so your students are interested, engaged, and have the opportunity to think about any background knowledge/experience that they may have.
Lesson Development:	The lesson development section includes the steps that you will take to teach the lesson including any modeling, direct instruction, centers, etc. that will be utilized. Sometimes this is also referred to as the “procedures” section of the lesson plan.
Differentiation	Often times you will have students that you will need to include modifications for when you are developing a lesson. In this section you will need to explain how you could modify your lesson to meet the needs of the different children you are working with. These modifications may apply to the lesson development section, the practice/check for understanding section, or both.
Assessment (Practice/ Checking for Understanding)	Students are given the opportunity to apply what they have learned in a formal or informal way. You will need to describe what you will do to assess student learning. It can be through guided practice and/or independent practice. Guided practice allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the material while the teacher is present and can provide needed assistance. Independent practice might be group work, projects, or homework.
Closing	Here the ECE teacher/provider reviews the highlights of the lesson and brings closure to the activity.

References

Head Start. (2011). Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework. Retrieved from: http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/Assessment/Child%20Outcomes/HS_Revised_Child_Outcomes_Framework(rev-Sept2011).pdf .

Developed by Kristina Bodamer and Jennifer Zaur, Full-Time Faculty, College of Education, ECE/CD Department

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Exam 2

Name _______________________________________ Student No. _______________________

Read the articles:

“Molson Coors Profit Flat; Sales Rose on Acquisition”

“Molson Coors CEO Doesn't Rule Out Buying MillerCoors if Available”

1. CHAPTER 4: MANAGING FIRM RESOURCES

a. What are the four characteristic of resources that provide sustainable competitive advantage (1.6 points – each characteristic 0.4 point)

b. Through mergers and acquisitions Molson Coors has increased its size, and achieved better “Economies of Scale”.

i. What are economies of scale (0.5 point)

ii. Give three reasons why economies of scale are an important strategic resource (2.1 points – each reason 0.7 point)

c. Do a SWOT analysis of Molson Coors (4 points – each element 1 point).

2. CHAPTER 5 – SELECTING BUSINESS LEVELS STRATEGIES

Molson Coors offers two broad types of beers.

· Traditional beers like Molson Canadian, Coors Light and Carling

· Craft and imported beers like Blue Moon and Leinenkugel

Each one of these divisions has a different business-level strategy.

a. What is the business-level model of the “traditional beers” division? List and explain at least 3 integrated tactics to succeed using this business level strategy. (2.4 points. Each reason 0.8 point)

b. What is the business-level model of the “Craft and imported beers” division? List and explain 3 potential pitfalls of this business-level strategy. (2.4 points. Each reason 0.8 point)

c. Combining different business level strategies creates many challenges with integrating different cultures, values, and activities. Why would a company like MillerCoors decide to combine 2 different business-level strategies? List and explain at least 2 reasons. (2 points – each reason 1 point)

2