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Story telling is one of the most time honored methods for conveying ideas, inspiring action and offering insights into the foibles and ferment of the human condition. This editorial offers a glimpse into what is sparking the imaginations and passions of health promotion professionals by simply asking them 'what are you reading?' Those who shared the books currently sitting alongside their reading chairs were not asked to select books that were related to improving health and well-being. Still, it came as no surprise that contributors to this article uniformly described plots, characters and narratives that illuminate how life circumstances can accost health and jeopardize well-being. What's more, you will see that in fiction, non-fiction and fanciful fables alike, health promotion professionals extract inspiration from these books and find ways to apply the moral of these stories toward the improvement of our profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Koreans have relied on the shadow economy since the collapse of socialism in the 1990s, but little is known about the degree to which informal markets have influenced the country's everyday politics. Based on a large-scale survey of defectors, as well as interviews with almost 100 defectors, including some who had been high-ranking officials prior to leaving North Korea, this article finds that the shadow economy has elicited many changes. First, informal marketisation has affected social practices in the workplace, such as reduced job attendance, decreased participation in mandatory organisational meetings, and a strengthened public perception that official job allocations are unfair. Second, the shadow economy has spread unfavourable views of the official welfare system, leading people to prefer life in the market to their past reliance on the command economy. Third, the shadow economy has led to rampant corruption, strengthening popular perceptions that officials are corrupt and law enforcement is unfair. Finally, the shadow economy has negatively affected public views of the North Korean regime, decreasing loyalty to the leadership and reducing public trust in political institutions. Despite these social transformations, people remain sceptical about the idea of regime change due to tight social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversies about speech on college campuses attract intense popular attention. Three recent books analyze campus speech as one of the ways that academia affects American democracy. In The Channels of Student Activism, Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder argue that college-student activists respond to incentives. Progressive students have opportunities to engage closely with their universities but often end up frustrated, while conservative students get support from national organizations to work off-campus and endorse conservative visiting speakers as a way of influencing their own institutions. Among other recommendations, Binder and Kidder suggest that universities should promote democratic values by adopting more persuasive positions about controversial speech. In Cancel Wars, Sigal-Ben Porath defends one such position: universities should avoid censorship and punitive responses to speech while actively ensuring that all members of their community are valued. In What Universities Owe Democracy , Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels argues that higher education affects democracy in many ways beyond explicit political speech, and he presents recommendations that involve admissions, curricular reform, and research. Levine finds many helpful insights and suggestions in these books but adds reasons to doubt the democratic potential of prestigious colleges and universities. He advocates serious public investment in democratic education for children and for adults who are not students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractNonfiction has long been left out of the discourse on literacy and little is known about the affective experiences that children seek when they choose to engage with facts via reading and otherwise. We have conducted an interview study in which children of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in Czechia (N = 20, age 9–11) reflected on the world of facts as a springboard for affective engagement. Bespoke creative props were developed for the study. First, children made collages of their real-world interests and then reflected on the different activities (e.g. reading, viewing, talking, playing) through which they nurture these interests. Second, children engaged in the design of an imaginary nonfiction book on a topic of their choosing, a process that involved laying out a double page, leafing through sample books, and sorting picture cards representing different book design features. We present the interview toolkit and its holistic rationale and offer two contrasting case studies of children whose engagement was characterised respectively by a ‘learning’ and ‘wonder’ focus. Their differences showcase the interview toolkit’s flexibility for further research and practice and expose the underexplored complexity and diversity of children’s nonfiction experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the reception of Sidonie-Gabreille Colette's works "Les Vrilles de la Vigne" and "Sido" among high school students, examining their engagement with the author's prose and the challenges of teaching her complex narratives. It discusses the perception of Colette's literary legacy within educational contexts, addressing the tendency to focus on her non-fictional writings and the need to appreciate her fiction for its richness and complexity.

The intertwined narratives of realistic fiction and the laws of thermodynamics parallel one another in their shaping of anthropocentric perspectives. The novel, with its human-centered storytelling, forward trajectory, concern with the details of daily life, and satisfyingly closed endings, has powerfully influenced our expectations for narratives in both fiction and non-fiction alike. Examining two ecologically problematic aspects of the novel—its anthropocentrism and its apparent closure—in relation to the science of energy, this study suggests that understanding the biases within novelistic storytelling can shed light on inherent biases in scientific narratives, encouraging a reevaluation of energy discourse to foster alternative perspectives and ecologically conscious worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although philosophers have long claimed that reading fiction has the potential to improve imaginative capacities, empirical evidence on this topic is limited. We report an experiment that aims to conceptually replicate and extend previous work by Djikic and colleagues by testing whether reading literary fiction reduces the need for closure, and by testing for the first time whether it enhances openness to experience, cognitive complexity, imaginability, and divergent thinking. We also examined whether a potential fiction-based impact depends on previous exposure to print fiction or nonfiction. In a between-subjects design, N = 111 higher education students were randomly assigned to read either two literary fiction short stories or two nonfictional essays. Outcome variables were assessed after the reading assignments using a battery of questionnaire-based and behavioral indicators. The two groups of readers did not differ on any outcome measure, and results were not influenced by lifetime exposure to written fiction or nonfiction. Taken together, the current findings do not support the assumption that reading literary fiction increases imaginative capacities or related outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies examine young children's multimodal responses to nonfiction picture books, and even fewer examine teaching practices that encourage these responses. This case study of a kindergarten class illustrates how one teacher regularly conducted interactive whole‐group read‐alouds using nonfiction picture books. After examining the multimodal teaching strategies employed by this teacher, the findings of this study highlight the social and physical nature of reading with young children. A discussion of this teacher's multimodal teaching practices suggests that understanding information from nonfiction picture books for young children requires readers to continually negotiate multiple modes of information over time and with the actions and opinions of those around them. Considerations for teachers reading nonfiction picture books are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]