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The Children's Literature Assembly (CLA) Master Class in the Teaching of Children's Literature session, currently in its 26th year, provides opportunities for those who teach in university settings to share experiences related to teaching children's literature in the university and discuss contemporary trends and issues in the field of children's literature. The 2019 Master Class focused on the importance of viewing cultural experiences through the lens of personal narrative (Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001, p. 55) and addressed using children's literature to provide an opening for cultural narratives and gaining new perspectives. This article offers summaries of each session presentation.

Poets Laura Purdie Salas and Janet Wong have known each other for several years, but mostly in an online, task-driven environment, for example, serving on the board of the Children's Literature Assembly (CLA) and cochairing the 2014 CLA Master Class on Poetry Across the Curriculum (Salas et al., 2015). They strengthened their bond by interviewing each other for this article, and they hope these tips and poems will strengthen the bond of educators and poetry.

Christopher Myers won acclaim at a young age as a vibrant illustrator of children's picturebooks. In this interview, Myers discusses how he has advocated for diversity in children's literature through themes that weave throughout his writing and illustration, collaborations with other artists, and his participation in the communities of artists, storytellers, and readers.

This interview with 2015 Caldecott Medal winner Dan Santat explores matters of influence, familial and cultural background, the creative process, and the children's book marketplace.

In this article, the authors provide a synopsis of the 2014 Children's Literature Assembly (CLA) Workshop. The Workshop explored how fiction and nonfiction children's and young adult's literature create opportunities for in-depth learning in the content areas. Participants had the opportunity to hear the stories of authors and illustrators of fiction and nonfiction children's literature as they talked about creating books that explore science and mathematics concepts. The panel of presenters (Jennifer Brown, Kate Messner, Jon Scieszka, Jason Chin, Susan Stockdale, Melissa Stewart, Leslie Bulion, and Emily Jenkins) led participants on informative and entertaining excursions through their creative, inventive, and ingenious processes. Two master teachers (Kendall Donald and Emily Whitecotton) also shared curricular invitations for bringing these kinds of texts into practice in their fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. Participants at the 2014 CLA Workshop were inspired by the work of these gifted authors and illustrators. While the audience learned about their unique approaches to creating books, they also came to see persistent themes shared in the writing. By the end of the workshop, audience members were able to walk away knowing more about a number of outstanding fiction and nonfiction K-8 titles. The teachers also introduced the audience to curricular invitations and offered valuable classroom strategies for gathering information and inspiration through these beautifully and thoughtfully crafted books.

When teachers work with students to construct a metalanguage that they can draw on to describe and analyze graphic novels, and then invite students to apply that metalanguage in the service of composing multimodal texts of their own, teachers broaden students' analytical frameworks. In the process of doing so, teachers empower students. In this article, Connors states that reading and producing graphic novels with the intention of mapping their multimodal design can heighten students' appreciation for the form's complexity.

Books provide an opportunity through which children can learn what it means to be in the world and to respond flexibly and creatively to a diverse range of situations. Author/illustrator Kadir Nelson creates books that provide these opportunities for readers of all ages. A dominant theme in current conversations surrounding children's literature includes the representation of diversity in books, as well as in the authors and awards for children's books. Nelson writes through his own diverse lens, inviting readers to become insiders in a culture and time that may be different from their own. This article discusses the work of author-illustrator Kadir Nelson, who is the featured speaker for the 2015 Children's Literature Assembly Breakfast.

Wooten and Clabough interviewed editors and an author-scientist of the award-winning Scientists in the Field to gain more background and depth into this series.

Reflecting on 45 years of teaching and research, Lee Galda argues that practice based on transactional theory is essential for the effective teaching of literature.

Ann Bausum is an award-winning author who has published more than eight books with National Geographic Society. Passionate about the pursuit of social justice, Bausum channels much of her energy into researching and writing books that help educate young readers about injustices and corruptions that have plagued the country. Her book, "Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement," is the product of a 4,000-mile research journey and multiple years of reflections and work. Although the majority of her books focus on dark issues found in American history, she leaves the reader well informed and full of hope for tomorrow. National Geographic Society is approaching its 125th anniversary, and its reputation, especially in the world of visual media, is one of esteemed integrity. Jennifer Emmett, Editorial Director for Children's Books, has been chief editor of all of Bausum's projects. Their collaboration spans more than a decade exemplifying National Geographic's notoriety in the areas of visual imagery and literary scholarship. In this interview, Bausum and Emmett shared their thoughts and perspectives concerning the publication of "Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement."

No matter how long teachers have been out of school, or how many children's literature classes they have taught, when summer comes, most of them long to "go back to class." It is because of the intriguing, exciting, reinvigorating institutes and conferences their colleagues offer in summer. In this interview, two veteran planners of summer literature conferences, Professors Linda Pavonetti and Karen Huff, share their perspectives, successes, and advice for planning summer literature events.

David Wiesner's 2007 Caldecott Medal-winning "Flotsam" blends the events of everyday life with the surreal. As he often does in his picture books, Wiesner plays with size and scale, opening "Flotsam" with a full-page illustration of a sand crab and the enormous eye behind it before pulling back on the second page to reveal the creature's actual size and the human eye belonging to a boy holding a magnifying glass. Curious about the history behind Wiesner's wordless picture book and longing to learn more about how the story and art evolved, this article presents an interview with the author/illustrator to pursue this line of inquiry.

In this article, the author shares a current analysis of data that complements findings from earlier, related research that confirms the emotional aspects of reading experiences. The data from the earlier study is based upon comments by graduate students in online discussion groups, where they share their thoughts about the professional readings from the course. The data that the author focuses upon in this article is based upon the graduate students' writing as they share their personal responses to literature. Excerpts from the written responses of six teachers are also presented.

The National Council of Teachers of English awarded the coveted nonfiction prize to "Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea." Written by Sy Montgomery, with photographs by Nic Bishop, the book was further honored as a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Honor recipient by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). Kate O'Sullivan, the pair's Houghton Mifflin editor, notes that, "Sy's writing--filled with humor, grace, and unforgettable description and insight--is perfectly matched by Nic's stunning photos, and it's through this precise balance of words and images that kids easily learn about geography, natural science, conservation, and anthropology." This article focuses on the collaboration of author (Sy Montgomery), photographer (Nic Bishop), editor (Kate O'Sullivan), and book designer (Lisa Diercks) that culminated in the publication of "Quest for the Tree Kangaroo." It presents an interview with these four individuals to garner the inside story of an Orbis Pictus Medal winner and the team effort that resulted.

With her recent book, "Paint the Wind" (2007), hitting the shelves this fall, author Pam Munoz Ryan delivers a welcome addition to the 25 plus books she has written for young people, including her award-winning novels "Esperanza Rising" (2000) and "Riding Freedom" (1998) and picture books "Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride" (1999) and "When Marian Sang" (2002). With "sense of place" as the focus, this article presents an interview with Ryan about her thoughts on the place of imagination in her writing and in the lives of the readers she writes for; the place of history and research in her writing; the place of culture and identity in her life and in the lives of her characters; and a place for her books in the classroom and in the world of children's literature.

As a storyteller, the author reminds her readers that she adorns, ornaments, enlarges, engorges, and elevates the truth. However, she relates that there are ten things she no longer enjoys about the world of children's books and publishing but she's still willing to endure. She endures them for the sake of story, and for the sake of her readers. In this article, she elaborates on these ten concepts.

How others see the United States will always be influenced by its actions abroad, but through well-written books, children in other countries can gain a more balanced view of America. Translators play a crucial role in transmitting a more realistic and balanced view of the United States to other parts of the world. In Japan, the role of the translator is recognized as significant for introducing the literature of other countries to Japanese children. The authors of this article met in 1990 at the International Board on Books for Youth (IBBY) World Congress in Williamsburg, Virginia to discuss their enthusiasm for Katherine Paterson. Through an interview with the first author Judith Lechner, translator Hamae Okamoto explores her experiences as the Japanese translator of Katherine Paterson's work. She discusses: (1) the themes in Paterson's books that she found appealing; (1) the issues with the ever-changing world of words; (3) how language expresses the way she interprets characters; (4) ways she clarifies allusions to the Bible or to children's books; and (5) adapting humor in Paterson's books by turning Paterson's word jokes into Japanese jokes. Okamoto also relates how readers have responded to Paterson's books. In concluding this article, Judith Lechner writes that Hamae Okamoto succeeds in her goals of achieving literary translation that has the qualities of credibility, inevitability, and authority, and gives the impression of having been written originally in the language of the reader.

This article presents an interview with South Asian children's book and young adult fiction writer, Uma Krishnaswami. The interviewer states that "in all her creative endeavors Uma's keen sense of detail, narrative voice, and characterization complicate and humanize portrayals of multicultural peoples worldwide." In this interview, Krishnaswami discusses her beginnings and influences as a writer; her views of today's children's book publishing market; her writing style and approach, especially as she changes from writing picture books to young adult novels; the verbal/visual art collaborative process in writing picture books; where her ideas come from; and her editing and revision process.

The author describes his approach to retelling Arthurian legends, where he wrote two stories in tandem: one a historical novel in which a boy, eager to serve as a squire and to go on crusade, is given a piece of obsidian, the other of stories, the Arthurian legends, that this boy sees in the obsidian. These became a trilogy. He states that while it may sound obvious to say that in writing his Arthurian trilogy, he researched thoroughly, yet gave free reign to his imagination, it isn't entirely obvious, because he aimed to be so deeply in a time and place that his own ideas became truly consistent with it. In the course of writing his Arthurian trilogy, the author grappled with the following serious issues, seeing parallels between those times and the present: (1) the umbrella presence of a fundamentalist Church preaching that the Muslims were vile pagans who should be driven out of Jerusalem and exterminated, and offering pardon without penance to any man who took the Cross and joined the crusades for one year; (2) hatred of Jews; (3) social inequality and the lack of social mobility; (4) dislike and distrust of women; and (5) the legitimized and glorified violence in Arthurian legend. Certain recurring and topical values helped shape the story: leadership, or the lack of it; a sense of duty versus the lack of it; and compassion, or the lack of it. Rather than give away any intellectual or emotional currency by being an absolutist or fundamentalist, the author sought to create a character who, without stepping outside the boundaries of his own time, questions and keeps questioning (as Merlin has encouraged him to do) and never accepts the easy hand-me-down. In a world scarcely less divided and scarred than his own, the Christian Arthur recognizes "we all need each other;" and, like Muslims and Jews, he concludes that "each one of us makes a difference." This article contains a list of works cited and mentioned, the titles in the author's Arthur Trilogy, and additional titles by the author.

The author of this article, who writes a series of Arthurian books, states that Arthurian retellings for children often fall into one of two extreme categories: (1) they are prim, romantic, reverential tales with soft-focus illustrations and soft-headed heroes; or (2) they are overt spoofs of the literature, a la Mark Twain and Monty Python. He ponders how best to adapt the Arthurian literature for contemporary readers who may have trouble getting past the accompanying silliness. The author states that, to address this problem, he retells the stories from a single character's perspective, not omniscient narrators. His stories are narrated in the third person, but he only describes events that take place within the perception of his chosen point-of-view character, and only a character's private thoughts and emotions are revealed. For the sake of ironic distance, he never chooses one of the great traditional heroes of Arthurian literature for this central role. The article provides examples of his enjoyment of writing "counter-tellings" in how he completely changes the Arthurian narrative technique, entirely reinvents the Arthurian characters, and, while sometimes faithfully presenting the plot of his original, he with minor changes gives each incident in the plot an opposite significance from what was originally intended. While some of the details of the original Arthurian legends may seem silly today, these are not insurmountable problems. Characters can be given real personalities, and silly plot details can be either expunged or exploited for comic effect, all without doing the slightest damage to the original stories. "There is something majestic and eternal about the Arthurian world that begs to be rediscovered," the author writes.

The author of this article relates how she presents a lesson she termed as "Arthurian Information Quest" to her college-level children's literature class. To have an idea of how books on King Arthur affect her students, the author asks them to read one of the numerous books on the topic and asked them write their personal responses prior to coming to class the following week. Her students are then required to answer the questions on an Arthurian Legend Information Sheet, a paper she created to gather her students' knowledge about King Arthur's story. Students are then required to classify their books, discussing how best to determine which type of tale they have read, and learn what a retelling or adaptation involves. Finally, the students then address the importance of the Arthurian legend for today's children and young adults. This article also includes an extensive list of titles of Arthur's Legend. (Contains 2 figures.)

Discusses the author's experiences in controversial and non-controversial children's and adult literature. Describes how he developed and shaped a line of books for teenagers that would explore many kinds of edges/borderlines - from family to world, self to others, native to immigrant, familiar to forbidden. (SG)

Presents an interview with Chris Raschka that explores his creative process. Notes he is the author of over 20 picture books. Focuses on controversial children's books. (SG)

Describes the author's interactions with prospective teachers' resistances to books in the "Harry Potter" series and how she dealt with these situations. Recognizes that her role as a teacher educator includes honoring her students' beliefs, upholding the integrity of the academic discipline of children's literature, and adhering to the responsibility of preparing students to be reflective, thoughtful teachers. (SG)

Presents an interview with Janet Hickman. Notes that she is a highly respected scholar in children's literature and a recognized and much lauded author of novels for children. Discusses disparate topics from her earliest encounters with print to mandates surrounding scientifically based reading research (SBRR). (SG)

Notes that the author was struck by the "self-centered" readers she encountered in her classroom and at professional conferences--readers who respond to reading by thinking of their own life and experiences. Argues that reading is so much more than a trip into the self. Presents two brief responses, by Lauren L. Wohl and Daniel Hade. (RS)

Concludes that the author's study of the once-popular but now largely forgotten periodical "The Youth's Companion" shows how children's literature can call forth in readers a powerful response--a personal, literary, critical and active response that is shaped by a text's purpose, promise, positioning of readers, and the enduring passion it imparts. Includes a response by Fatima Shaik. (RS)

Presents an interview with Glenna Sloan, winner of the 2001 Arbuthnot Award. Discusses what triggered the writing of her "watershed" book "The Child as Critic"; experiences that helped her become a good listener; her experiences as a teacher; and what she sees as the future of children's literature. (RS)

Summarizes the presentations of Ginny Moore Kruse and Lois Lowry at a Master Class in the Teaching of Literature conducted at the 91st annual meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English (Baltimore, MD, November 17, 2001). Notes the class addressed censorship and intellectual freedom, challenge and choice, the right to read and the right not to read. (RS)

Presents a "conversation" with Penny Colman (adapted from her remarks at a panel discussion at a recent convention). Considers that nonfiction is dominated by male writers, especially for young adults and adults, and by true stories that feature boys and men. Discusses her exploration of the world of nonfiction by women. (SG)

Describes Ashley Bryan who is a scholar, a storyteller, a poet, an artist, an illustrator, a folklorist, and a humanitarian. Examines the layers of his work one at a time in order to hear the story of Ashley Bryan--through his own words and what others have written about him. (SG)

Presents a conversation with picture book creator Emily Arnold McCully. Acknowledges her frequent focus on strong women in her picture books. Shares ideas about using history in her writing. (SG)

Considers how image becomes the issue when authors, illustrators, editors, reviewers, teachers and librarians passively accept rather than question the illustrations and content of new books. Concludes that through literature, children can begin to develop a sense of their humanness and can develop new insights into the behaviors of others and themselves. (SG)

Notes that a rich body of Canadian children's literature exists that reflects the country's literary and socio-cultural values, beliefs, themes and images, including those of geography, history, language and identity. Discusses how Canadians tend to identify themselves first by region or province and then by nation. (SG)

Notes that Kathy G. Short, winner of the International Reading Association's Arbuthnot Award for the year 2000, began her relationship with and love for books during childhood. Presents an interview in which she shares the sources of her passion for children's literature, insights into its place in the curriculum, and concerns for the present role of children's literature. (SG)

Presents an interview with the illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon. Concludes that they hope their illustrations will bring to children a feeling of pride and understanding that they are all important and are all part of one world. (SG)

Analyzes three novels by three authors and conducted interviews to gain insights about their work. Explores with the authors their perceptions of their protagonists as role models or heroes. Discusses with the authors whether or not they would describe their protagonists as conformists or non-conformists. Gains insights from the authors regarding their conceptualization of families in their novels. (SG)

Uses Orbis Pictus Award Committee criteria (accuracy, organization, design, and style) to examine an informational book, "Rice Is Life," by Rita Golden Gelman. Subjects the book to a deeper critical analysis. Suggests that it is important to help students become critical thinkers about everything they read, including informational books. (SG)

Considers the blending of different cultures to produce a rich artistic environment. Notes that discussions about multicultural children's literature often become messy because the places where cultures meet always make those grating, scraping sounds of two unlike substances rubbing against each other. (SG)

Presents three interviews with the 2000 CLA (Children's Literature Assembly) Breakfast Speakers. Discusses how Osborne has written for virtually every genre for all ages and discusses the new Magic Treehouse book. Talks about Wells' two Mother Goose books, McDuff books and books to come. Considers where Giff gets her ideas for books and discusses her reaction to her book "Lily's Crossing." (SG)

Presents a tribute to Eileen Tway, one of the most admired and respected professors in the Department of Teacher Education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Notes that Eileen believed strongly in the power of literature to promote sensitivity to human relations. (SG)

Notes that children's literature in which characters engage with music opens the door for readers to identify parallels of musical experience with the art of creative reading. Considers parallels between responding to literature and music. Concludes that texts that invite readers into the world of music are plentiful and well-written. (SG)

Notes negative responses of contemporary Americans to fantasy literature. Notes that as the prejudice against fantasy literature diminished, more American children's authors began working in this area. Suggests that perhaps the real reason so many Americans have attempted to suppress fantasy literature for children is because they fear the possible consequences of granting children the freedom to exercise their imaginations. (SG)

Discusses the creation and popularity of Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit." Concludes that today, Potter's quiet stories offer young children a glimpse into the naughtiness that innocence fosters within the security of a family's love, and show children an idyllic time when towns were small enough that friends knew each other well and understood each person's attributes and faults. (SG)

Attempts to predict trends and changes that will accompany children's books into the 21st century and beyond. Hopes that readers will recognize how difficult it is to detach from the context of one's own lifetime experience with children's books. Suggests that the need of the human spirit to belong and be accepted will always give literature the edge over technology. (SG)

Presents an interview with Dianne Monson, 1994 winner of the International Reading Association's Arbuthnot Award, a woman of many talents and enthusiasms, all of which are apparent in the way she approaches both teaching and children's books. Discusses her career as a reader, a critic, and a teacher of children's literature. (SG)

Discusses the challenges of finding "voice" as a writer. Considers how a writer's voice is more than character and style. Notes that a writer's voice is the thumbprint of his or her whole person--his or her idea, wit, humor, passions and rhythms. Concludes that the discovery of voice is the real beginning of a writer's life as a writer. (SG)