Books & Resources

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Childern’s Books & Diverse Cultures in an Undergraduate Course

by Marilyn Carpenter, Eastern Washington University

One of the benefits of attending the IBBY conference was discovering new friends. It was a special delight to meet authors from other countries. The conversations we had during breaks, at lunch, at evening receptions and at dinner offered enriching ideas to take back to share with my students and colleagues. Devika Rangachari is an author from India who became a new friend. Attending her session and learning about her research regarding the role of women in Indian history was informative. She gave me one of her books, Harsha Vardhana.
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Visual Journeys with Immigrant Readers

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Book cover for The ArrivalThe IBBY Congress offered multiple opportunities for learning about the reading experiences offered to children in different parts of the world. One of those experiences that was the focus of lively discussions involved children reading wordless texts in the project, “Visual journeys: Understanding immigrant children’s responses to the visual image in contemporary picture books.” Dr. Evelyn Arizpe, from the University of Glasgow, coordinator of the project, Dr Cecilia Silva-Díaz and Brenda Bellorín, from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and myself from The University of Texas at Austin, shared the power of the visual image in the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006) with linguistically different audiences in two workshops. We engaged the participants in reading and responding to the images of The Arrival and shared what we have learned about children’s responses to the text.
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Resilient Children in International Literature

by Janelle Mathis, University of North Texas, Denton, TX

Book cover for The BreadwinnerThe realization that other young citizens of the global community have messages of empowerment, or agency, to share with children of the western world is perhaps one of the most important roles of international literature. The literature, in which the main characters reveal agency through identity, voice, decision-making, and taking action according to their learned perceptions of a situation, is one way to accomplish that exchange of ideas. That was one of the outcomes for individuals who attended the IBBY Congress last month as active participants in IBBY’s role of building bridges across global cultures. Continue reading →

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Connecting Text and Illustrations

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

During September we have explored how learning to read mulitmodally by integrating the pictorial text with the written text in picturebooks relates to young children’s reading development. We’ve examined children’s responses to picturebooks when they learn to read multimodally and also discussed classroom experiences that support that learning/reading.
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Learning to Read the Written and the Pictorial

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

This week I’ll provide an example of the kinds of curricular experiences my co-researchers and I designed for the first graders to help them learn to read the pictorial text in picturebooks. As I shared last week, at the end of the school year most of the children were making sophisticated observations and reading meanings in the illustrations, in addition to the written text, which enhanced their understandings.
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Reading Multimodally

by Prisca Martens, Towson University, Towson, MD

In last week’s blog we reflected on the various modes or semiotic systems through which our culture communicates meaning. These include visual (i.e., art, moving images), linguistic (i.e., language), auditory (i.e., sound, music), gestural (i.e., movement, dance), and spatial (i.e., layout, design). Picturebooks are multimodal, drawing on the linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural systems. Schools and society, though, tend to emphasize the written text for constructing meaning at the expense of the others.

My colleagues and I are in the second year of a three year study exploring how, in picturebooks, learning to read meanings through a variety of modes relates to beginning readers’ reading development. We worked with 37 first graders in two classrooms last year. At the beginning and end of the year we asked the children to read a picturebook and retell it and then respond to questions about the illustrations without the book in front of them.
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Resources on the Life and Work of Francisco Jiménez

Sandy Kaser, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Francisco Jimenez’s homepage:

This site has some general biographical information, a list of all his publications, his educational and professional background, study guides specifically helpful for students and educators in reading his books and information on the best way to contact Professor Jiménez at Santa Clara University.

www.scu.edu/cas/modernlanguages/facultystaff/jimenezhomepage.cfm
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Part 4 – His words to you: quotes from Francisco Jimenez

Sandy Kaser, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

In my university classes, I sometimes use a strategy called “text rendering,” in which we read aloud a passage from a text or article that we found to be particularly meaningful. Although it is all right to discuss the passages, I personally prefer simply to hear the words and let them stand. I invite you now to hear the words of Francisco Jimenez taken from some of the multiple sources I reviewed in which he speaks in a public forum.
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Part 3 – Students’ Correspondence with Francisco Jimenez

Sandy Kaser, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Dear Mr. Francisco Jimenez,

    I’ve read all of your books and they are all so great! It made me disappointed how some of the people treated you and your family. Like when your girlfriend took you home to meet her parents and they were angry because you were a Mexican.
    I liked the part when you asked Roberto if he’d dance with you because you wanted to learn how to dance. And Roberto was afraid that someone would see you dancing together.
    I admired how you didn’t care what other people thought of you. You were brave and devoted and kept going even after someone insulted you or put you down.
    I also liked how your books were so descriptive, everything stood out in my mind. I could picture the people you described and the places you went in my mind like I’d actually seen them before.
    I loved your books. They were all so wonderful.
    Sincerely,
    Madeline

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Part 2 – Reading the words of Francisco Jimenez

Sandy Kaser, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

Gordon Wells makes a case for spontaneous dialogue and its relationship to community and to society in the March 2009 issue of Language Arts,. He states that “the beliefs, values, and knowledge that are attributed to society remain abstract and disembodied until they are brought to bear in particular interpersonal situations.” He argues that “dialogue within a classroom helps to create community while simultaneously building a bridge between individuals and the society of which they are members.” As we read the books of Francisco Jimenez, our class engaged in dialogue that brought us together as a community, and that also enabled us to reflect on current issues and values in society.

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