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The constant dehumanization of Black fathers and boys in the media, education, politics, pop culture, and society is traumatic. Deficit perspectives and a racialized political climate often negatively portray the moral, familial, and relational practices that Black fathers and boys engage in with their family members in their homes. Using humanizing research as a framework, we found how photo-elicitation interviews (PEIs) from two separate qualitative studies of a 39-year-old father and a 13-year-old boy helped to evoke deeper meaning and discussions of images of Black men and boys engaging in familial practices and reflecting on school-related events. We argue that humanizing images, especially of Black fathers and boys, can decolonize methodologies between the researcher and participant and provide a complex and unique understanding of Black fathers and boys in educational research. We offer suggestions for using PEI to influence research to build relationships and humanize participants' stories and lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this column, we demonstrate ways to connect four commonly taught poetic genres to better explore the intersectionalities (The University of Chicago Legal Forum;140:139–167, 1989; Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 1990) in the texts and students' own lives through two cultural insider‐created (A map into the world, 2019; Wishes, 2021) Southeast Asian (SEA) children's picturebooks about the refugee experience. In doing so, we show how students can write poetry as maps and wishes with picturebooks about the maps and wishes in the lives of SEA refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This column focuses on the joy of story as it shines toward mathematics. We explore how reading aloud picture books brings math closer to the joy present in the story experience, helping to alleviate math anxiety and strengthen students' learning identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can the affective turn mean for literacy educators who believe their work can lay the foundation for a life filled with meaningful reading pursuits, for students who become readers and do reading? Because reading occurs across and within an elaborate composite of time, space, relationships, histories, discourses, and materials, the centrality of reader and text is insufficient for understanding affect's power on one's reading activity and reader response. To that end, I introduce Juliana (pseudonym), a first grade student who declared, "I don't want to finish this book!", and with tears welling in her eyes, flung herself face down into a beanbag chair in a corner of the room. I posit that Juliana's response was not just a feeling of unsettlement, but an emotional response to an intricate assemblage of socio-cultural–historical practices and identities, and to the human–nonhuman exchanges around reading in school. I therefore seek to complicate the role of affect in Juliana's declaration toward a posthumanist perspective of emotion, reading identity, and reader response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of fostering racial literacy in children through the use of children's literature, emphasizing its role in helping young readers develop critical thinking about power, equity, and justice. Topics covered in the article include the definition of racial literacy, its components and tenets, and the significance of using books to facilitate racial literacy development in the face of political challenges and censorship.

The article presents the power of teaching to create meaningful, memorable, and joyful experiences that communicate to students that their reading lives matter. Teachers can support students as agentive decision-makers in book selection by reconceptualizing power. By reimagining how power works within literacy teaching, students' lives can be transformed towards book joy. The book joy can be seen in the classroom libraries organized with labels children construct for themselves.

The article discusses quality children's literature that supports critical literacy. Topics discussed include individual perspective for cat including being a loving companion for a child, the texts that require social change and inspiring action, and reconstruction of the stories that circulate in schools.

The article focuses on a kindergarten teacher's strategy wherein she incorporated children's literature for dynamic learning frame, growth mindset, and social justice development into her classroom literacy instruction. Topics discussed include the use of language printed materials in classrooms, the inclusion of moral development and social imagination in the dynamic learning framework, and the methods of fostering flexible thinking in different contexts in children.

This column will focus on several standalone titles offered by Marvel/Graphix and DC Kids/YA and their pedagogical potential for exploring transitions with upper elementary and middle grades readers. Because children's lives are inherently in flux, they should have opportunities to read and discuss empowering stories, in a format and featuring characters they enjoy, that are attuned to the various types of transition they experience and encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative case study presents the perceptions of Derrick, a Black urban adolescent male who enjoys reading but believes that inconsistent school discourses hinder his success and enjoyment as a reader. Findings how that Derrick's purposeful work while reading was limited and misunderstood because, among other factors, there was a pervasive effect of test-driven reform. I argue that his critique of formal reading instruction reveals that even progressive approaches to education are not immune to the discursive power of the accountability and standardization movement, and that resultantly, the active and avid reading engagement of this Black adolescent male was ultimately neglected, inhibited, and dismissed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationally and internationally, we face a crisis of misinformation and disinformation (De Jesus & Hubbard, Social Studies, 112(3), 136–145, 2021; Lee & Hosam, Sociological Forum, 35, 996–1008, 2020). Now more than ever, children need to know how authors obtain the information included in nonfiction books. Backmatter simultaneously models informational literacy and engages students more deeply with information, offering them the opportunity to explore further. Through regular explorations of backmatter, students become vicariously immersed in the dynamic processes by which information is created and communicated, normalizing the vetting and utility of information in the public sphere as well as in their own lives. In this article, we offer a brief overview of the evolution of backmatter in nonfiction for young people and propose a typology of backmatter. By highlighting the important, complex roles backmatter serves, we hope to help establish it as an indispensable part of reading a book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of the term 'struggling reader' by reading teachers. The authors argue that the term is a label that negatively brands and excludes students and suggest that reading teachers should use turn-around pedagogies to view students differently. A framework is presented that shows different stages of student reading including understanding sounds and symbols in words, making meaning out of texts, understanding the structures and genres of texts, analyzing texts, and perceiving oneself in relation to the text. A case study is presented in which a second-grader improved her confidence by focusing on books that were easier to read.

As teachers are increasingly being asked and expected to teach across cultural differences and work toward social justice in their classrooms, teacher educators must seriously consider how university course work impacts students in their own classrooms. This article present a four-year qualitative case study investigating the meaning-making of two students in a graduate course focused on literacy and culture during the semester the course was taken and their subsequent entrance into the classroom to teach primary grade students. The authors use Bourdieu's constructs of habitus, field, and capital to better understand when, where, and why teachers take up critical literacy practices across time and context. The authors argue that teacher education pedagogy is merely a point of contact and a point of departure for learners and that nuanced, long-term readings of teacher education students' improvisations of habitus reveal the interplay between their formal learning and their personal, social, political, and other formal educational experiences. The impact of university course work can prompt small or significant changes in habitus and the interactions between habitus and particular fields (graduate course, life, elementary school, and literacy pedagogy) can both reinforce a critical literacy perspective and constrain that perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the mobile app Gorogoa created by Jason Roberts and published by Annapurna Interactive.

The article introduces a series of reviews of children's picture books, audiobooks and apps that appeal to a variety of modalities for storytelling.

The article offers information on helping children in grades K–8 to find inspiration and role models for student agency and activism in troubling times. Topics discussed include standing up against racism, censorship, sexism, religious intolerance, climate change and gun violence; activism range from unpretentious, interpersonal deeds to large-scale political movements; and also mention "Let the Children March" book by Monica Clark-Robinson and illustrated by Frank Morrison.

The article presents the nonfiction titles fostering teacher inquiry about a variety of topics engaging in the learning process meaningfully with the students including books about historical events.

The article evaluates the mobile app Flip Flap Dinosaurs created by Axel Scheffer and published by Nosy Crow.

The article offers information on the changes in children's literature. Topics discussed include transformation in publishing, dissemination and printing technology; students' growth as literate beings; and the development of literature for children and reignites rigorous debate about the roles of reader, author, illustrator, and text.

The article reviews the video game "Old Man's Journey" developed by Broken Rules.

An introduction to a section of a periodical is presented, which discusses publishing various topics including picture book poems, compendia of themed poems, and poems written as reversos form invented by poet Marilyn Singer.

This forum reviews a mix of resources (written texts, graphic novels, documentaries, and mixed-media pieces) to inform pedagogy and related educational practices that foreground representations of youths and their literacy practices within and outside of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most disability research is conducted in high-income countries, despite much of the world's population living in low- and middle-income countries. Given the flexible nature of qualitative research, studies using this methodology have the potential to provide important insights into how disability is perceived across the globe. The aim of the current study was to synthesize the results of disability research in Western Africa to elucidate prominent themes and identify methodological and participant characteristics. Secondary purposes were to evaluate the quality of included studies. A total of 223 studies were included in this meta-synthesis. Findings reveal a diversity of disability-related themes and a need to increase transparency in reporting qualitative research. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers suggestions on how to use historical picturebooks as critical literacy to teach students about historical events. Studying concepts such as line, color, and texture are described as effective ways for students to engage in a text. Suggestions for teaching the lesson include asking local bookstores for relevant titles, searching children's literature databases, and encouraging students to compare and contrast texts.