By Kathy Short, Director of Worlds of Words
One aspect of the Common Core State Standards that has received a great deal of attention is the increased focus on informational texts. The CCSS document calls for 50/50 split between informational and literary texts in kindergarten, gradually increasing to a 70/30 split in high school.
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By Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona
The Common Core State Standards have focused attention on text complexity, arguing that students need to engage with texts that gradually increase in difficulty of ideas and textual structures, based on the belief that schools have not been rigorous in providing difficult texts. This focus on rigor in reading is based on the goal that students understand the level of texts necessary for success in college and careers by the time they graduate from high school. The problem is that decisions about text complexity in schools are often based in misconceptions.
by Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona
CCSS Text Exemplars for K-1 Stories & A contemporary text set of K-1 Stories
The Common Core State Standards are currently having a tremendous impact on materials and instruction in K-12 classrooms. As with any new initiative, a range of interpretations are swirling about, leading to concerns and misconceptions. My focus is on misconceptions related to these standards as they connect to children’s and adolescent literature and each week I will focus on a different misconception. Continue reading
by Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Often I think my English accent is like a cultural microchip that contains my cultural and linguistic DNA. That microchip reflects the local and global contexts from several different U. S. and international environments in which I have lived. My personal aesthetic responses in my literature reviews reflect the salient insights of both my views of diversity and of contemporary global connections as they relate to multiculturalism in the U. S. Continue reading
by Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Korea’s traditional beauty is mirrored in its architectures, symbols, pottery, and ancient palaces and make up most of the common “Korean” postcard faces I encountered when I visited one of the most popular and largest bookstores in Seoul, Kyobo books. I mumbled, “interesting,” and felt and tasted a kind of betrayal. I felt I have fought consistently for a postcolonial non-Eurocentric portrayal of Asian and Korean cultures in my children’s literature studies, yet such traditional subjectivity is produced and consumed internally in Korea as a mark of Koreanness. Tradition is like a double edged sword providing rich cultural facets and, concurrently, glaringly flawed over-representations of a culture, producing a “tunnel vision” (Scott,1998, p.47) of narrow understanding of that culture.
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by Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Following last week’s blog, I reread my WOW Book Reviews, all of which illustrated conflicts with young protagonists and their cultural affiliations. Each protagonist struggled with their cultural identity, though in different ways. Eleven year-old Lucy, a Chinese-American in The Great Wall of Lucy Wu (Shang, 2011), is a proactive basketball player who tends to downplay her Chinese side. Her parents are Chinese-Americans and when a new family member from China upsets the cultural dynamics at home, it challenges Lucy’s perception of herself. Maomao, in A Near Year’s Reunion (Cheng-Liang, 2011), is a Chinese girl that lives with her mom most of the time because her father’s job requires a lot of travel. The Indian-American girl, Dini, in The Grand Plan to Fix Everything (2011), is also eleven. She revels in Bollywood movies, Bollywood celebrities, and dreams of being a movie scriptwriter. Her journey from the small rural community of Swapnagiri, in Southern India, to Maryland is filled with discoveries for her. Continue reading
By Yoo Kyung Sung, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
December is not only the last month of the calendar year, but it also holds a special significance for academia as it marks the end of yet another semester. Most importantly, though, December is a time for reflecting upon the past year’s events and for valuing family, friends, and other acquaintances in our lives. I thought, then, I would ask myself what I recall that was most interesting, delightful, and even troublesome in terms of children’s literature around the world. What stands out for me is cultural authenticity — the trendy hot key phrase of the 90’s that, while seeming to have become a semi-retired hot issue, still remains an unresolved tension in children’s literature today.
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By Holly Johnson, University of Cincinnati
I recently read that “the mashup is the New Black” (Corbett, 2012). Nice way of explaining the beauty of combining genres to create new and exciting stories that allow young people (and the rest of us) to engage in fantasy and atmospheric realism, to follow vampires through high school, and to revisit the classics with a zombie twist. Steampunk, paranormal romances, the genetic thriller, and the historical supernatural are new ways of seeing the world, transacting with literature, and engaging ourselves in a good read. Continue reading
By T. Gail Pritchard, Ph.D., University of Arizona
I began this month’s blog during Banned Books Week discussing one of my early encounters with using challenged and banned books. As October comes to a close, I thought it was fitting to visit some recent banned or challenged books and why they have come under fire.
by T. Gail Pritchard, Ph.D., The University of Arizona
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There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451).
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I started reminiscing about books I’ve read featuring book burnings, book challenges, and book bannings. Two immediately came to mind: Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Le Guin’s Voices.
