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Part 1 – Discovering the words of Francisco Jiménez

Sandy Kaser, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Many teachers look for ways to make books meaningful to students. Sometimes we go about this in a deliberate way. Perhaps we have a unit of study coming up and so we look for books that offer different perspectives on this particular topic, or we have “umbrella” themes that cover an entire year and find books that support students in making connections and asking questions all year. In pulling books, we are careful to have a range that reflects the identities of the students entrusted to us.

But sometimes, we happen across a book that has an unexpected effect for both our students and ourselves. When that happens, we want to climb up on a roof top somewhere and shout, “This one! Read this one!” But then we discover that other folks have been shouting on that roof top and we just didn’t hear it. And we are all the more amazed. How did we miss it? This is what happened in my classroom with the books of Francisco Jiménez, specifically The Circuit, Breaking Through and Reaching Out.
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Visual Symbolism as Meaning-Making

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover for My Little Round HouseThe final book we will share is My Little Round House written and illustrated by Bolormaa Baasansuren with an English adaption by Helen Mixter, published by Groundwood Books, 2009. Boloramaa Baasansuren graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Mongolia and also studied children’s book illustration in Italy and Russia. She has won numerous awards including Distinguished Best Book of Mongolia and prizes at the International Competition of Illustration (Teario/UNICEF) for her illustrations in Tales on Horseback, the Grand Prize at the international book competition of the National Cultural Festival in Fukuoka, Japan for The Legend of Wives’ Hair, and The Grand Prize at the Noma Concours for the Japanese edition of My Little Round House. She lives in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Boloramaa Baasansuren’s extensive firsthand knowledge of Mongolian culture radiates throughout her extraordinary illustrations.
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Conveying Meaning through Visual Elements

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover from The Imaginary GardenThis week we want to share the picture book, The Imaginary Garden, written by Andrew Larsen, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher, and published by Kids Can Press, 2009. The author and illustrator are both from Toronto where the illustrator lives in an art-filled apartment, an important context for this Canadian picture book. Reviews of this book need to discuss the use of color and texture as connected to the themes of imagination and relationships.
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Cultural Issues in Reviewing Illustration

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Book Cover from Alego

Our focus this week is a picture book from Canada, Alego, written and illustrated by Ningeokuluk Teevee and published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2009. Ningeokukluk Teevee is an interesting young artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), home to the great tradition of Inuit art. The book provides an authentic introduction to the life and world of an Inuit child. Our analysis of the illustrations in this book raises issues about illustration styles that are specific to a particular cultural group and how those styles might be read by viewers outside that cultural tradition.
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Evaluating Illustrations in Reviews of International Picture Books

Cheri Anderson, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

This July blog highlights the need to include more in depth discussion of the illustrations within picture books in published book reviews. The blog entries will each discuss an award-winning international picture book as an example of the kinds of discussion that should be occurring more frequently in reviews.

Illustrations create a depth of meaning within picture books that are essential to the reading experience for that book. Unfortunately most picture book reviews give only basic information about the illustrations, usually just the medium or technique. Although the medium used by illustrators and the techniques for how they create the art is important, many other visual aspects elements are equally as interesting. The complexity of illustrators’ decisions as they go about their creative processes is fascinating. Some of these decisions are also made by the art directors at the publishing companies. Visual decisions such as the book format, size of the book, font selection, and scale add to meaning making for the reader. Through skillful use of visual elements, such as color, line, space, and perspective, the illustrator engages the emotions of the reader and directs the reader’s attention. Just as important as the written text in establishing authenticity in picture books is a close examination of the illustration style and whether it indicates a particular location of where the story takes place and whether the style and the details in the images are authentic to the culture depicted in the book. Further, the illustrations need to be examined for possible stereotypes or inaccuracies.
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Families Matter: Combining Literacy Reflections – Part IV

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA

    “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of the world that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange… A window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.” (Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990).

Sharing family stories with children and their families offered eight classroom teachers a window into students’ most powerful literacy environment – their homes. Weekly written conversations in Family Message Journals helped teachers consider the potential for combining home and school literacy communities. In this fourth and final post, I return to our dual goals of valuing families’ life experiences (windows) while also looking outward to the larger world of diverse families (mirrors).
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Families Matter: Reaching Out to Reluctant Parents –- Part III

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA

Although celebrating student success comes naturally to teachers, tackling student struggles and facing tensions takes a unique kind of willpower. My first two posts considered the usefulness of journals where students dialogue with family members about family stories. One teacher, Anne, noted, “When families participated through regular correspondence, it sent the message –- Parents valued their child’s work.” Family participation also sends a subtle message to teachers that this family values teachers’ work.

Out of the eight teachers using Family Message Journals, five experienced considerable family response. Three, Alicia, Joanna, and Alisa, struggled with a lack of response from their urban families. This week’s post focuses on how these teachers dealt with the resulting tension and made necessary shifts to their journals. Continue reading →

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Families Matter: Expanding Our Community of Readers –- Part II

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA

This week, we journey inside a third grade classroom to explore how Anne, a Westminster College graduate student, started using Family Message Journals in spring. Her goal focused on developing more dynamic home-school partnerships with students’ families. She first sent home monthly newsletters and home surveys to share her beliefs and gain an understanding of her families’ home interactions. Her rural school in western Pennsylvania consists of families from predominantly lower socioeconomic backgrounds with over half of the children receiving free or reduced lunches.

During weekly after school sessions, Anne and a small group of reluctant third grade readers collectively explored six different family story books and wrote about the books in their journals. Following each session children shared the book and journal with a parent, grandparent, or sibling at home, who then wrote a response in the family journal before sending both back to school.
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Families Matter: Family Stories and School Literacy — Part I

By Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, Westminster College, PA

Their story, yours, mine — it’s what we carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.

– William Carlos Williams

“Reading is life!” Laura began as she outlined her view of reading for a colleague. This succinct declaration from a literacy coach in western Pennsylvania contains marvelous implications for teachers, especially those intent on understanding children’s distinct ways of understanding their world. When teachers value students’ resources developed through family and community life, they use these insights to make well-informed literacy decisions. Thus reading events, evolving not from curricular mandates but our student’s rich life experiences, hold the most relevance for children as readers.

Building on Laura’s expansive view of reading, this month’s four blogs focus on building connections across our students’ home and school literacy lives. Throughout this past school year, classroom teachers, graduate students, student teachers, and I explored Family Message Journals (Wollman-Bonilla, 2000) as one possible avenue for creating conversations between children and families. During several weeks in February and March we focused these weekly written exchanges around children’s books depicting family stories. Our intent was to invite students’ first literacy partners, their families, into our conversations about books.

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Invitations and Negotiations: Reflections on a Month of Mondays

By Marie LeJeune & Tracy Smiles, Western Oregon University

This month in WOW Currents we explored theoretical intersections and instructional challenges to using multicultural and international children’s literature with students of all ages. We began by creating a framework that articulated the theoretical frames that inform our practice and reflection, and provided examples from our teaching experiences in schools, in “out of school spaces,” and with preservice teachers. We heard from a variety of readers who have pushed us as teachers and researchers, and engaged in discussions with each other on the complexity of teaching literature, and our personal journeys as literacy educators. For this last blog entry we’d like to reflect back and respond to some of the issues raised for us around multicultural and international literature as we wrote for WOW Currents this month. Continue reading →