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This paper analyzes "production stories," a genre of information literature and media responsible for teaching children how everyday things are made. As nineteenth-century families increasingly consumed tropical commodities produced by slave labor, including sugar, tea, coffee, rum, and tobacco, the production story developed in Britain and the United States as a way to explain to children where everyday household goods originate, making global trade networks visible in the home. These "production stories" developed strategies for raising or eliding ethical questions posed by who makes things, under what conditions, and for whom. Focusing on stories of sugar production, I find that production stories reveal surprising details about technical processes for making things, but conceal the human cost of production. They also end with consumption, when children use the products, symbolically affirming the conditions under which they were made. Drawing on scholarship from the history of technology and the history of the Atlantic slave trade, I contend that problematic representations of manufacturing processes feed into and support whitewashed histories for children. I conclude by analyzing contemporary picturebooks that resist certain genre patterns and encourage positive identification with enslaved black characters, who like child readers, are at once makers, readers, and consumers.

Children enter kindergarten in the United States with large differences in their background knowledge, vocabulary, and early literacy experiences. There is a strong relationship between language development during the early years and reading ability in the primary grade and teachers must understand the importance of developing vocabulary and its relationship to literacy. It is essential that teachers provide time and effort to quality language experiences. One researched based strategy to accomplish this is the use of interactive read-alouds. Teachers have traditionally used fictional literature in the classroom, but there is growing research that nonfiction or informational literature are also needed to provide children with quality vocabulary building experiences in the early school years. This research study examined the results of a survey that was given to childcare providers and preschool through 2nd grade teachers about the amount of time they read aloud to children and the amount of time they spend reading fiction compared to nonfiction text. Results showed that teachers in classrooms (pre- through 2nd grade) reported reading to children almost every day, though the time devoted to this activity was a small percentage of the total time spent in class. Also, nonfiction literature was a small percentage of the literature that was being read to children. The findings in this paper have implications for practice in the field. Because vocabulary development is a key ingredient in the learning-to-read process and is a predictor of success in future reading skills, teachers in the early grades should be aware of the benefits of using interactive read alouds and the genre of nonfiction literature in vocabulary development. (Contains 4 tables.)

Amanda Griffith of Wake Forest University reviews 'The Economics of Tax Policy,' by Alan J. Auerbach and Kent Smetters. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: 'Eleven papers, prepared for a conference held at the Brookings Institution in December 2015, plus commentary, present nontechnical reviews of insights gained from recent economic research that can inform the policy process and provide an overview of the major areas of tax analysis. Papers discuss tax reform in a changing economy; effects of income-tax changes on economic growth; environmental taxation; tax compliance and enforcement-an overview of new research and its policy implications; economic and distributional effects of tax-expenditure limits; tax benefits for college attendance; tax policy toward low-income families; the economics of corporate- and business-tax reform; US capital gains and estate taxation-a status report and directions for a reform; tax policy and retirement savings; and fundamental tax reform-a comparison of three options. Auerbach is Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law and Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California, Berkeley. Smetters is Boettner Chair Professor with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1990, the American Library Association published its Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc. Neither the 1990 Guidelines nor the work's subsequent 2000 edition is terribly concerned with explaining why increased subject access to works of imaginative literature has come to be needed now more than in the baker's century after Cutter first allowed for such access. Inherent to the 1990 Guidelines is the notion that works of imagination have a value such that they deserve to be accessed in more or less the same manner that nonfiction works are accessed, through aboutness as well as whatness. The paper purports that the origins of this change in cataloging policy are far from humble, that they can in fact be located in a broad swath of social historiography and literary criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stephen Turner's book, American Sociology, is valuable contribution to the history of the field. In this comment paper, however, I raise questions about two of its core claims: that the feminization of American sociology prevented its collapse, and that the discipline has a two-tiered status structure, with activist scholarship located primarily in the lower tier. We should be sure that Turner is right about these points before we accept his evaluation of the current state of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Core State Standards' focus on nonfiction texts has prompted middle schools to include more historical nonfiction, including books that focus on the United States' racialized past (and present) such as We Are Not Yet Equal by Carol Anderson (2018) and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You (2020) by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. But books for youth about racism have been shrouded in controversy, anti-critical race theory legislation, and calls for censorship, suggesting that we need a better understanding of the books' content. Thus, the purpose of this study was to use content analysis to examine messages about racism and antiracism in We Are Not Yet Equal and Stamped. Findings indicated the texts suggest racism takes numerous forms, and it is foundational and persistent throughout the United States' past and present, manifesting as scientific racism, institutional racism, racist violence, representational racism, and racist language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses a teacher's efforts to give her students a mentor text for a research-based writing project. Topics discussed include the importance of nonfiction, assigning a year-long writing project to students with focus on nonfiction, reference to the book "Savage Inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol discussing inequality in American education, moving from quality writing to passionate writing.

The article focuses on the literary genres of creative nonfiction in the U.S. Accordingly, the paper cites several essays from different authors and professors in which they share different views of the impact of creative nonfiction on the writing ability of first year college students. Moreover, it also presents his comments on the views that he has cited, and presents his analysis on the effectiveness of teaching creative nonfiction in the composition classroom which might create a new kind of process-centered textbook and a new process-centered pedagogy.

The article reviews the book "American Scots: The Scottish Diaspora & the USA" by Duncan Sim.

Christopher J. Waller of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reviews 'The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve,' by Sarah Binder and Mark Spindel. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: 'Explores the political and economic catalysts that transformed the Federal Reserve's development during its first one hundred years, contextualizing Congress's existential role in driving the evolution of the Fed.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

June Carbone and Naomi Cahn argue that growing earnings inequality and the increased educational attainment of women, relative to men, have led to declining marriage rates for less-educated women and an increase in positive assortative matching since the 1970s. These trends have negatively affected the welfare of children, as they increase the proportion of poor, single-female-headed households. Using data on marriage markets defined by state, race and time, and the Choo-Siow marriage matching function, this review provides a quantitative assessment of these claims. We show that changes in earnings inequality had a qualitatively consistent but modest quantitative impact on marriage rates and positive assortative matching. Neither changes in the wage distributions nor educational attainments can explain the large decline in marriage rates over this period. (JEL C78, D63, J12, J15, J16, J31) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of culture in the creation and persistence of racial and ethnic inequalities has been the focus of considerable controversy in the social sciences. In The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, a new book intended for a popular audience, 'tiger mom' Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld argue that relatively successful ethnic, religious, and national origin groups in the United States possess a common set of culturally determined traits that drive this success: a sense of group superiority, individual insecurity, and good impulse control. The book is an unscholarly romp through fields of ethnic stereotypes and immigrant anxiety that relies on anecdote, rather than data, and that ignores the selectivity of immigrant flows. In their insistence on the need for the whole triple package, however, the authors raise issues relevant to current research on noncognitive skills-that there are important trait-environment interactions in the determinants of economic success, and that the source and impact of aspirations deserves greater attention. (JEL D63, J15, J24, Z12, Z13) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group of elementary school reading teachers used their time in a Professional Learning Community to develop a systematic intervention to address the needs of struggling readers in grades 3 to 5. Working as a team, they identified a collection of books that was culturally diverse, high interest, appealing to boys and girls, aligned with curriculum across the grades, and equally representative of fiction and non-fiction. Using the collection of books as a starting place, the group wrote lessons that addressed decoding, vocabulary development, comprehension strategies, and responding to standardized test question stems. The resulting intervention led to growth in reading level as well as accelerated progress on the state mandated end of grade test in reading. The PLC offered this group of experienced reading teachers a district-supported framework for working together to create a locally relevant solution for the students they teach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A question being asked by teachers across the country is, How can I teach students to acquire both the skills and knowledge demanded by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) while simultaneously guiding them to read challenging texts such as those presented in Appendix B of the CCSS? Answering this invites the integration of ideas and the innovation of novel instructional plans. Illustrating close reading procedures in two classrooms- one 1st grade and one 5th grade- this article provides an answer by detailing the manner in which a student might approach a challenging science text using annotated reading, partner talk, text-based questioning and reflective writing to build competence and a capacity for reading, writing, listening, and speaking about informational texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Scotland & America c. 1600-c. 1800" by Alexander Murdoch.

This article describes how one teacher implemented a memoir genre study in her sixth grade classroom using a writing workshop approach. It begins by outlining the author's philosophy and rationale for teaching writing in this manner. This is followed by a discussion of how one could organize one's classroom for a memoir genre study. Several significant mini-lessons are then described which focus on brainstorming, planning, developing effective titles, leads and conclusions, structuring a memoir texts, the use of the senses in memoir writing and strategies for revision. The aim of this article is to equip practitioners with the practical knowledge they need if they are seeking to implement a memoir genre study in their elementary school classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anglo-American westward expansion provided a major impulse to the development of the young United States' narrative tradition. Early U.S. writers also looked to the South, that is, to the Spanish New World and, in some cases, to Spain itself. Washington Irving's "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" (1828), the first full-length biography of the admiral in English, inaugurated the trend, and Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" (1883) transformed it by focusing on the life and lives of the Mississippi River Valley and using an approach informed by Miguel de Cervantes's "Don Quijote de la Mancha." From Irving's "discovery of America" to Twain's tribute to the disappearing era of steamboat travel and commerce on the Mississippi, the tales about "western waters," told via their authors' varied engagements with Spanish history and literature, constitute a seldom acknowledged dimension in Anglo-America's nonfictional narrative literary history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greg C. Wright of University of California, Merced reviews 'How Many Is Too Many? The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States', by Philip Cafaro. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: 'Considers the question of annually limiting the number of immigrants allowed in the United States and presents a progressive argument for limiting the amount. Discusses good people, hard choices, and an inescapable question; immigration by the numbers; the wages of mass immigration; winners and losers; growth, or what an economy is for; population matters; the environmentalists' retreat from demography; defusing America's population bomb-or cooking the earth; solutions; and objections. Cafaro is Professor of Philosophy and an affiliated faculty member in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews web sites related to U.S. history, including "Heading West" and "Touring West" by the New York Public Library (www.nypl.org/west/), sites containing digital versions of Sanborn fire insurance maps, and "Chronicling America" by the National Digital Newspaper Program (www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html).

Presents a study which investigated the use of nonfiction trade books in primary education in the U.S. Rationale for using nonfiction trade books; Observations on inappropriateness of reading level materials in primary education; Factors which kept teachers from using more informational texts in their classrooms.

The article focuses on the work of Langston Hughe's "Jesse B. Semple" columns as literary journalism in the U.S. Tom Wolfe's definition of literary journalism, contains five characteristics common to novel writing including intensive interviewing and observation, extensive use of dialogue, varied point of view. Therefore, recent scholars believed that Langston Hughes column featuring a literary character known as Jesse B. Semple falls under this given criteria. His Simple columns aimed to encourage his fellow blacks to support the World War II despite of the unequal treatment of afforded to them.

Robert A. Becker of Indiana University reviews 'The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance: Professionalization and the Modern American University', by Larry G. Gerber. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: 'Provides a history of shared governance in higher education in the United States. Discusses college governance before 1876; the emergence of a professional faculty, 1870-1920; the development of faculty governance, 1920-40; the developing consensus on shared governance, 1940-75; corporatization and the challenge to shared governance, 1975-present; and shared governance and the future of liberal education. Gerber is Professor Emeritus of History at Auburn University.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]