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Children's picturebooks present meaningful opportunities for thinking through life's important questions. In this article, the authors outline the process and benefits of using picturebooks to support philosophical inquiry amongst preschool and elementary aged children. We discuss how philosophical inquiry can promote critical thinking in children, considerations in the use of culturally responsive and abolitionist feminist curriculum and pedagogy in teaching philosophy, and we highlight the utility of multiple stakeholder collaboration for successful philosophical inquiry projects in schools. The article closes by discussing key recommendations for the implementation of philosophical inquiry programs in preschool and elementary schools.

This three-year qualitative research study examined the knowledge and experiences of 20 early years educators while introducing Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies on Land-Based Learning in10 urban childcare centers. Educators were introduced to Indigenous perspectives and pedagogies through workshops with Indigenous speakers and Indigenous-authored picture books. These perspectives included the importance of supporting children to develop responsive and caring relationships to the Land for their own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of all their fellow creatures. Supported by their educators, the children increased their sense of belonging in the world, expressed gratitude for their fellow creatures, and recognized and enacted their responsibility to care for nature.

Purpose: The paper shows the interpretive impact of different constructions of the point of view available to the reader/viewer in book and animated movie versions of a children's picture book, a novel for pre-adolescents/early teenagers, and a graphic novel for adolescents and adults. Design/Approach/Methods: Excerpts from book and animated movie versions of the same story are compared using multimodal analysis of interpersonal meaning to show how the reader/viewer is positioned in relation to the characters in each version, complemented by analyses of ideational meaning to show the effect of point of view on interpretive possibilities. Findings: Focusing mainly on multimodal construction of point of view, the analyses show how interpretive possibilities of ostensibly the same story are significantly reconfigured in animated adaptations compared with book versions even when the verbal narrative remains substantially unchanged. Originality/Value: The study shows that it is crucial to students' critical appreciation of, and their creative contribution to, their evolving digital literary culture that in this new era of educational technology, attention in literacy and literary education focuses on developing understandings of digital multimodal narrative art, and that animated movie adaptations are not presented pedagogically as isomorphic with, or simply adjunct to, corresponding book versions.

This study reviews the effect of comprehension and perceived text difficulty in promoting reading enjoyment and interest to read more among novice learners practicing extensive and pleasure reading. Sixty-seven college students in their first semester of Spanish were asked to read a children-like story picture book in Spanish and were then given both a comprehension test and a brief perception questionnaire about how much they had enjoyed the story, how difficult they thought the reading had been, and whether they had interest to read more. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses show that (1) students' perception on the level of difficulty of a text align with their actual comprehension of the story, (2) the level of reading enjoyment is strongly related to how much the students understood and how difficult the text was perceived to be, and (3) reading enjoyment and interest to read more are highly correlated when novice learners find the text easy. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

This cross-sectional study examined materials adaptation within an English-Chinese bilingual storytelling curriculum for first graders to identify the potential factors influencing adaptation choice. It delved into the relationship between curriculum objectives, perceptions of picture books, and the use of tense and narrative. A survey (N=352) gathered demographic data of English teachers from China, and the data was analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) structural equation modeling. Findings illuminate how teachers' perception of picture books fully mediate the interplay between bilingual storytelling curriculum objectives and teachers' narrative in a picture book adaptation. Analyzing the results by narrative theory, it found that the essence of storytelling and narrative is making meanings; stories play a leading role in the curriculum for first graders to develop their bilingual narrative through sharing, reading, and telling stories. Consequently, teachers' understanding of picture books' possibilities as teaching materials, benefits for fostering students' bilingual development, and perception of the intertextuality of illustration and words can significantly facilitate teachers' narrative in a picture book adaptation. This study contributes by elucidating the mediating role of picture books, emphasizing the importance of linking curriculum objectives with teaching materials adaptation in practice. Furthermore, longitudinal research is to overcome the limitations of this cross-sectional correlation analysis.

This article examines major themes in 24 contemporary Canadian picture books to identify their potential to support children who are newcomers to Canada. Transition to a new country can be challenging for children and picture books are an effective tool for supporting their cultural and often linguistic transition. Through multimodal content analysis, the authors identify major themes that emerge from the visual and textual data in the books. Analysis identified prevailing themes related to family, food, multiculturalism, and geographic information. Each theme offers valuable insights into the diverse perspectives represented in the texts, providing a foundation for meaningful pedagogical applications for immigrant and newcomer children.

The integration of children's literature, specifically mathematical story picture books, in mathematics education has demonstrated significant benefits. Nevertheless, its actual implementation largely hinges on teachers' beliefs. This exploratory mixed-methods study examines the beliefs of 78 teachers regarding the integration of children's literature into mathematics teaching and learning, with a focus on identifying its barriers and enablers. Data were collected through an open-ended survey and semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis framed by the concept of belief indication. The study identifies 15 barriers (across five themes) and 16 enablers (across six themes) that, teachers believe, affect their decisions to integrate children's literature into mathematics teaching and learning. This paper contextualizes the findings within the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), a framework from social psychology, to provide actionable recommendations and compare findings from studies conducted in Asian and Western countries. Ultimately, this research offers a broader understanding of teachers' behaviors and their receptiveness to educational reforms, such as the integration of children's literature, across diverse cultural and international settings.

Pekrun and his colleagues highlight the significance and diversity of emotion in education. Their analysis suggests that these emotions can be categorised by their stimuli into those related to the classroom: activities, outcomes, relationships, topics and knowledge processes (epistemic). Most research in this area has focused on achievement emotions, with relatively limited research exploring topic emotions. This paper develops a framework for conceptualising topic emotions. It reports on a design-based study that captured children's expressions of emotion in response to a climate change education programme using picturebooks. The data brought together emotional responses to climate change, to learning about climate change and to climate-related picturebooks. Qualitative analysis of these responses highlights how they differ not only with regard to the emotions expressed, but also the structure of the emotional experience. Emotional responses to the broad topic of climate change were expressed as ongoing analytical judgements, where those related to learning about climate change were immersive and finite. Reading climate-related picturebooks involved exploring how emotion is communicated and evoked. This supported quasi-emotional experiences, where the reader imagines the emotions of the characters. The picturebooks are also shown to create vicarious emotional experiences, involving ethical-based responses to the behaviour and circumstances depicted. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes a framework for disaggregating these differing emotional experiences related to topic.

This study explores the factors contributing to the imbalance between fiction and nonfiction materials in primary school classrooms, with a specific emphasis on the perspectives of prospective teachers. Employing a qualitative research approach, the investigation involved 30 student teachers who had completed the Children's Literature course at a Spanish university. Semi-structured interviews, with questions validated by expert judges, were utilized to gather responses, which were subsequently transcribed and analyzed through coding, following a categorical framework refined post-response analysis. The primary findings indicate a restricted exposure to nonfiction picturebooks in familial and educational settings. Despite positive emotional responses from trainee teachers, the study reveals an inadequacy in their training, hindering the development of a comprehensive understanding and the reinforcement of self-efficacy for integrating nonfiction materials into future teaching practices. Furthermore, the research underscores a disparity between the perceived significance of nonfiction picturebooks for enhancing children's multimodal reading and the inclination of trainee teachers to prioritize fiction due to a lack of confidence and previous exposure. As a result, the study proposes a reassessment of teacher training programs, recommending a more thorough focus on nonfiction materials and continuous professional development to address the disparity between beliefs and actual classroom practices.

Purpose: Comprehensive spoken language assessment should include the evaluation of language use in naturalistic contexts. Discourse elicitation and analysis provides the opportunity for such an evaluation to occur. In this article, our overall aim was to describe adolescents' language performance on four elicitation tasks and determine if there are task-related differences across the elicitation tasks. Method: Forty-four typically developing adolescents with ages ranging from 12;2 to 17;11 (years;months; M = 15;2; 21 boys and 23 girls) participated in the study. They completed four spoken discourse tasks: (a) story generation using a wordless picture book, (b) fable retell, (c) six personal narratives in response to emotion-based prompts, and (d) monologic response to two stories that contained a moral dilemma. Responses were transcribed and analyzed for four language performance measures tapping into language productivity, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and verbal facility. Results: Despite individual variability in performance, mean scores were close to median scores for most measures, suggesting a symmetrical distribution. As expected, all four language performance measures were significantly different across the four elicitation tasks. The personal narrative task elicited the longest samples, with the highest verbal fluency. In contrast, both lexical diversity and syntactic complexity were the strongest in response to the fable retell and the moral dilemma tasks. Conclusions: This investigation provides speech-language pathologists with an overview of how task-related factors may impact adolescent language performance. These findings may be used to support their clinical decision-making processes in choosing a suitable discourse task when conducting a comprehensive spoken language assessment. Three hypothetical case examples are used to illustrate the decision-making process.

The underrepresentation of women and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes in children's literature has long been a concern. This study examined the portrayal of women in children's picture books and the potential of interactive read-alouds to promote gender equity in early childhood education, with the aim of shedding light on gender inequality. This study used critical discourse analysis, theoretically informed by Rosenblatt's transactional theory and gender schema theory, to analyse 19 books and interactive read-aloud sessions between preservice teachers and children in six preschools. The results showed that books on women's inequality are discussed in three categories: the absence of female characters, gendered discourse, and the perpetuation of traditional women/maternal roles. Using examples from children's interactions, this study highlights the need for critical thinking about gender stereotypes and promoting gender equity in early childhood education. This study contributes to the literature on gender inequality in children's literature and provides practical implications for early childhood educators by emphasizing their critical role in promoting gender equity in children's learning and development.

The development of 4- to 6-year-olds' narrative skills was investigated in relation to their receptive vocabulary, grammar, and home literacy environment. At Time One, 82 children aged 4 to 6 years completed standardised assessments of cognitive ability, vocabulary, and grammar. Narrative production and comprehension were assessed by the narration of a wordless picture book and questions about the book's content, respectively. Parents completed a questionnaire about home literacy practices. Concurrently, vocabulary explained unique variance in narrative comprehension, but not narrative production. In addition, the teaching of literacy-related skills in the home was negatively related to both narrative comprehension and production, and the frequency with which parents and children engaged in interactive reading was positively related to narrative production. One year later, one aspect of the home literacy environment (print exposure) explained unique variance in later narrative comprehension, after controlling for earlier narrative skills. These data show that vocabulary and grammar skills and home literacy practices are related to different types of narrative skills and suggest that literacy experiences in the home make a unique contribution to the development of narrative comprehension and production.

Augmented reality (AR) technology can enhance picture book reading experience. The present study aimed to explore the influence of reading AR picture books on primary school students' reading comprehension, story retelling, and reading motivation. Eighty second graders, who were from two classes at a rural primary school in a coastal city in East China, were recruited through convenience sampling to participate in this quasi-experimental study. The two classes were randomly assigned to be either the experimental group (AR picture book reading) or control group (print picture book reading), and both groups read three traditional Chinese picture books during reading classes throughout three weeks. T-test analyses revealed that, before the study began, the two groups did not have significant differences in reading comprehension, story retelling, or reading motivation. However, after the three weeks of instructional intervention, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in all three aspects. Furthermore, MANCOVA analysis showed that reading AR picture books was more effective in boosting participants' performance on implicit questions during the reading comprehension tests. They also performed significantly higher on story retelling tests, especially when it came to story structures regarding settings and plots. In addition, AR picture book reading was more conducive to improving participants' level of attention and confidence in reading. This work adds to the ongoing endeavors in incorporating AR picture books into classroom settings, and will inform future development of original Chinese picture books with AR technology.

Using the Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, writing workshop was transformed into composing workshop. The researcher worked with a team of four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study to equally value art and design, guiding their students in creating their own narrative picturebooks. The researcher addresses the following two research questions: 1. What explicit instructional practices did the teachers enact? 2. What influence did these explicit instructional practices have on the second graders' composing work? The researcher applied cross-case analysis, first to create an inventory of explicit instructional practices, and second, to identify illustrative cases and representative samples of explicit practices. The researcher documents the teachers' explicit instruction, harnessing social cognition of the learning community, that resulted in students' application of an expanded semiotic landscape to express their own narrative understandings. Students demonstrated knowledge transformation and development of metalinguistic understandings. The reflexive nature of implementing Learning by Design pedagogy means that curriculum design is always a work in progress, always in need of redesign to be responsive and supportive of the children in front of us.

The authors--a panel of teacher educators: an education librarian, and a high school student activist--share classroom practices, recent research, and scholarship that centers on fostering empathy and activism through picture books as part of culturally relevant-sustaining practices. A variety of new children's literature and practical ways to incorporate these inclusive picture books across the curriculum are shared. Useful strategies for teachers to locate culturally responsive & sustaining children's literature and related resources for classroom use are also provided.

This article examines three picture books: "The Dot" (2003) by Peter H. Reynolds, "Art & Max" (2010) by David Weisner (2010), and "The Shape Game" (2003) by Anthony Browne, to see how ideas about creativity are conceived of and pictured for children. Various ideas about creativity and the creative process are encoded in these multimodal texts: the idea of a creative genius putting their unique stamp or signature on the world, the idea of an apprentice artist learning to use the tools of the trade, and the idea of the artist as a playful manipulator of cultural signs. Each of these picture book encodings of creativity has implications for a classroom pedagogy that seeks to encourage creativity and nurture quality creative output.

Significant traumatic events affect communities and schools. Teachers need tools to help navigate challenging conversations with their students. Consequently, we utilized our children's literature course on the use of picture books that would invite dialogue supporting children responding to traumatic events. Specifically, we reconceptualized an existing read-aloud assignment to focus on selecting and using literature that facilitates children's responses to challenging life experiences. This article describes the read-aloud assignment, providing a content analysis of the books the preservice teachers selected, and examples of both preservice teachers' responses and K-12 students' responses to the literature.

Teachers of beginning readers have choices in the books they select. A careful look at the features of books provides an informed basis for choosing books that engage young readers. In this article we share insights from a comparative content analysis of leveled readers and Geisel award books that can motivate children to read and prepare them for entry into the world of authentic children's literature. We end the article with descriptions of diverse award winning and honor books that can be used in interactive read alouds with beginning readers and provide recommendations for preparing for an interactive read aloud using one of the books.

In this study, the aim is to explore what genres can be found in applications used in preschool as a way to facilitate preschool teachers' informed choices and raise awareness concerning the importance of choosing digital content carefully. In particular, applications that facilitate communication beyond a verbal majority language are in focus in this study. The research questions concern what the affordances are of applications used in preschool in relation to children's agency and multilingual competencies and which kinds of genres that emerge from the applications' affordances. Analyses of the applications were based on a social semiotic approach, in combination with the notion of translanguaging, taking into account many modes of communication, as well as different languages. The results illustrate how affordances include possibilities to listen to several spoken languages, opportunities to create documentation and produce stories in many different modes, including the verbal language of choice, but also restraints such as lack of opportunities for children's agency in some applications with more closed composition. 10 genres are proposed which consist of three monolingual app-genres: talking picture books, storytelling and games, and seven app-genres that allow for several languages: talking picture books in more languages, multilingual storytelling, storytelling with recording possibilities, boardgames with recording possibilities, communication apps, draw-and-record apps and documentation apps. Conclusions highlight the importance of careful selection when choosing digital content in educational settings for younger children and that some of the app-genres proposed could be seen as facilitating digital pedagogical translanguaging.

Character is a fundamental literary element and it is defined as the act of describing characters in literature, particularly their physical attributes as well as personal traits. In multimodal texts, the visual and textual sign systems are interlaced together to exemplify meaningful characters. In this study, two picture books were examined to determine how semiotic meaning-making systems work together to develop the literary element 'character' based on an adaptation of Painter et al.'s (2013) multimodal discourse analysis framework. The findings showed a lack of detailed characterisation elements in the textual meaning-making systems for character attribution and affiliation between characters, but the visual depiction of characters in both the picture books addressed this shortcoming effectively. The textual mode helped to confirm the identity of characters especially when the visual manifestation is metonymic or incomplete. In short, knowledge of visual meaning making systems is necessary as it will enable young readers to attain a deeper understanding of the literary element 'character' and fully comprehend multimodal texts.

In the present case study, we aimed to explore whether there were any differences between monolingual Turkish and Turkish-Italian bilingual children in terms of their use of language structures in Turkish while narrating a story from a picture book titled "Frog, where are you?" by Mayer (1969). Four monolingual Turkish and three Turkish-Italian bilingual children narrated the story. The data from the recordings indicated some differences in terms of preference for certain language features like tense differences in their story narration. While younger monolinguals reported the events in the story with past tense markers like "-mIs" and "-Iyor," bilingual children displayed a marked tendency for the past tense "-mIs" marker. The older children in both groups chose to use the "-Iyor" marker used by monolingual teenagers and adults. We argued that such differences in preferences might indicate an effect of Italian, or the interlanguage varieties might be responsible for the discrepancies. Explanations as to why these differences might have occurred and some practical suggestions for educators are provided in the study.

Background: Given the ongoing literacy crisis in South Africa, there is a need for teachers, as well as teacher education programmes, to explore various means to enable learners to develop reading comprehension. This study sought to examine the intricacies of a series of small group literacy activities that hinged on the in-depth and repeated engagement with a contemporary picturebook. Furthermore, it aims to evaluate whether children can develop an affinity for these books. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore the ways young readers engage with a contemporary picturebook by way of their oral and painted responses. Setting: The study was a qualitative case study, which took place at an urban public school in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg. Methods: The research design followed that of a case study. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews during two paired readings, as well as a focus group discussion (FGD). Additional data were collected through children's painted artefacts and their subsequent individual interviews on these paintings. Results: The findings indicate that learners initially had superficial verbal engagements with the picturebook, which was complemented by more creative responses on further readings. Another finding was that the facilitation by the researcher and the interaction with peers improved the learners' depth of engagement. Lastly, the learners' initial basic descriptions of what was visible was complemented by a more nuanced appreciation of the aesthetic features of the picturebook. Conclusion: Based on the findings, it is concluded that full depth of picturebooks and their affordances in classroom literacy programmes be introduced in detail to pre-service and in-service teachers in order to foster rich and meaningful reading experiences for learners. Contributions: This research functions to contribute to the limited body of literature surrounding children's reading experiences of picturebooks and overall learning specifically in South Africa.

Children with intellectual disabilities (CID) are born with incomplete development of intellectual capabilities. This deficit in intellectual competency is said to affect, to some extent, their language development. The present study aimed to investigate CID's communicative development, namely plot understanding, from their produced narratives. Participants were 29 9- to 15-year-old Thai CID from Chiang Rai Punyanukul School. The story-retelling technique (Reese et al., 2012) together with the picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1967) were used for data collection. Building from Freytag (1894), Berman & Slobin (1994), and Rungrojsuwan (2019a), a modified version of narrative macrostructure including onset, problem, problem-solving, and resolution was used as the analytical framework. Results showed that CID of younger ages, 9 to 11 years old, tended to have a wide range of plot understanding. Some could effectively communicate through narratives as early as 9, while others started their journey as late as 11 or 13. However, 15 years of age seems to be a significant period when CID who were once at different developmental paces, converged. In other words, their developmental gaps reduced and most of them could narrate effectively. Compared with normally developing children, CID are later at the beginning stages, but could finally reach the expected goal of narrative communication.

This article discusses findings and implications from a research study using content analysis to investigate one question: How is bullying portrayed in selected picture books? The question is important because bullying has been, and continues to be, a pervasive problem in and out of school. This research study is needed because it investigates portrayals of the bully, bullied, and bystanders, unlike previous research that focused only on the bully. This article provides a review of research on bullying, highlighting international and national research that used content analysis to analyze picture books on bullying. It discusses content analysis as the research methodology, and describes data sources, data categories, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures. It ends by identifying major findings, discussing implications of findings, and describing limitations of the study.

The study was conducted to create awareness about environmental literacy as part of the 17 sustainable development goals and mitigate environmental challenges at the primary school level. To achieve this, the study examined primary school teachers' perceptions of picture books and animated cartoons as learning resources to create awareness; investigated the learning resources available and employed in primary schools for teaching/learning environmental-related topics; and highlighted the inhibitors of learning resources of picture books and animation cartoons. The study adopted a descriptive research of the survey type using quantitative method. A total of 60 primary school teachers in Ekiti State, Nigeria participated in the study. A questionnaire and a checklist were used for data collection. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that respondents have positive perceptions of picture books and animated cartoons. The findings showed learning resources that were available, unavailable, utilized, and unutilized in teaching and learning of environmental-related topics. The findings also revealed inhibitors to the use of picture books and animation cartoons. It was suggested that primary school teachers should employ picture books and animated cartoons as learner-friendly learning resources to broaden pupils' horizon about environmental sustainability in classrooms at the primary school level.

Learning and innovation skills such as creativity, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and collaboration can be fostered through learning about STEAM role models. Using selected picture book biographies, teachers can help their elementary students visualize the experiences of these individuals as they developed and refined ideas or products that addressed needs. The nature of picture book biographies, the unique vocabulary of each STEAM content area, and the use of language arts strategies can promote access and equity as students examine issues and challenges faced by previous generations. They can question and begin to form their own STEAM identities as they consider the contributions they can make during their lifetime.

There are a few empirical studies that examine the portrayal of the Middle East and its people in young children's picture books. Many of these books depict Muslim life and celebrations without delving into the specificities of each Middle Eastern country. This study, which focuses on Iran as a non-Arab Muslim majority Middle Eastern country, investigates how Iran and its diverse cultures are represented in children's picture books published in North America. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 27 picture books written in English between 2000 and 2021, targeting children aged three to nine. The findings reveal that a significant number of these books revolve around Nowruz celebrations (the Persian New Year) or ancient Persia, often presented through popular folktales. These findings underscore the need for books that depict the contemporary lives of Iranians, both within and outside the country, through narratives and illustrations.

This article looks past the gifted classics of children's literature to explore the incredible opportunity that is missed all too often: an opportunity to intentionally choose books in which diversity is not the point but showcase much-needed representation. Drawing on the concepts of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors this article explores how shifting titles for better representation is a seemingly small choice but one that classroom teachers can make to better engage the identities and possibilities for early childhood engagement.

Researchers and educators have explored representations of people with marginalized identities in children's picturebooks for over 30 years. Disability has not been widely acknowledged as a marginalized identity nor explored as an aspect of diversity prevalent in classrooms. In the United States, over seven million students are identified with a disability, and most will spend the majority of their school day in general education classrooms. Like other diverse students, they may not see their identities mirrored in classroom literature. Picturebooks featuring main characters with a disability are rare, and some still foreground medical models, limiting individuals with narrow, ableist notions that focus on what a person cannot do rather than what they can. The authors describe the development and teacher validation of the Strong Stories Framework, a brief, research-based evaluation tool designed for teachers to use to select picturebooks that exemplify high-quality literature while foregrounding strengths-based depictions of disability.

This study analyzed how people with disabilities are portrayed in picture books with the Coretta Scott King Award (CSKA) to address the intersectionality of African/African American racial identity and disabilities. Disability critical race theory was foundational for this study. The pool of 134 picture books that received the CSKA from 1971 to 2020 was used as the data for the systematic content analysis. For analysis, the researchers utilized a qualitative approach that guided axial coding and selective coding in looking for emerging themes. They found that 13 picture books portrayed African/African American characters with disabilities. The majority of these books did not necessarily emphasize the disabilities of these characters. When focusing on other dimensions of identity such as gender, age, disability type, and so on, the researchers found underrepresentation, invisibility, and marginalization issues, which led them to discussions of power relations. This study calls for future studies that can discover more portrayals of African/African American people with disabilities and that can deepen scholarly discussions about their representation in children's literature.

English-language teachers are increasingly recognizing the pedagogical value of using children's literature that authentically represents diverse multilingual learners, including children who have sought refuge. This study analyses representations of children who have experienced displacement and sought refuge in picture books. Framed by a critical multicultural perspective of children's literature, critical refugee studies and critical race theory, the study investigates how children's emotions and agency are represented in focal stories. Our findings suggest that, contrary to the complex intellectual and emotional ways children and youth process displacement, picture books about seeking refuge tend to represent child protagonists as incurious about why they are forced to flee. Such representations construct legally scripted narratives associated with refugee status that normalize war and violence. These narratives ultimately mask colonialism, imperialism and racism that contribute to refugee flight around the world. We discuss how policies for seeking refuge influence picture books and invite educators to critically evaluate literature for their classrooms, directly engage families to foreground generative perspectives and develop comprehensive multilingual environments that affirm learners' agency.

The scope of digital children's books is increasing rapidly; however, the quality of these books needs consideration in view of the educational context in which they are to be read. In this article, we present seven key strands to support early childhood teachers in selecting high quality for shared dialogue-based reading with groups of children. The purpose of the key strands is two-sided: first to provide a tool for assessing the aptness of a digital book for use in shared dialogue-based reading in an early education setting. Second, the purpose is to strengthen the educational competence of professional teachers. The key strands are based on 48 video-filmed reading sessions and educational reflections by participating early childhood teachers after each reading session. This research is part of the project books and apps: evaluating e-books for use in dialogue-based reading in kindergarten (VEBB). The seven key strands identified are (1) Theme, (2) Duration, (3) Verbal text and illustrations, (4) Play with language, (5) Conversation and dialogue, (6) Medium flexibility and (7) Interactivity. The first five strands are also relevant for educational reflections on print books.

Narrative language development is one of the early literacy skills necessary for proficient reading and writing achievement. The correlation between narrative skills and later writing ability indicates that more advanced and complex narrative generation and recall is linked to later writing output. In this experimental study, 47 preschool students participated in an intervention focusing on the impact of high-quality illustrations on narrative ability. Results show a significant effect of intervention participation on narrative language measures in language complexity, narrative retelling, story comprehension, vocabulary usage, and episodic components. These findings suggest that attention to artistic devices used in illustrations paired with picture book study can increase student narrative ability

Early childhood Jewish education provides an opportune moment to teach about race and Black-Jewish relations as young children grapple with concepts like justice. This article argues that picture books containing interactions between Black and Jewish characters or a Black Jewish character are a powerful pedagogical tool for this purpose. We created the first inventory of picture books that contain these characters, finding 188 of them which we believe can be invaluable in introducing the vital topic of race and racism to young children in early childhood Jewish classrooms through the historically important lenses of Black-Jewish relations and Black Jewish individuals.

This paper aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of studies on the relationship between reading and writing skills and digital literacy at the K-12 level, following the PRISMA statement. The analysis included examining subjects, aims, digital materials, methodologies, and learning outcomes of relevant studies. Data were collected from the Web of Science database based on specified inclusion criteria. In total, 23 empirical studies were analyzed: 6 articles exploring the relationship between writing and digital literacy skills, and 17 articles examining the relationship between reading and digital literacy skills. The relationship between reading skills and digital literacy was explored in several contexts: the impact of digital texts on reading processes, comprehension and interpretation skills, effects of digital technologies on traditional reading methods, the influence of digital graphic novels on reading processes, and early literacy education. Findings indicated a relationship between writing skills and digital literacy, covering topics such as digital technologies in traditional writing, critical discourse analysis, writing skills in new media, and writing practices. Various digital tools were employed to enhance reading, writing, and digital literacy skills, including digital tablets, computer software, comics, educational videos, e-books, picture books, digital novels, voice recorders, and mobile devices. The majority of studies utilized qualitative and mixed methods; no studies employed quantitative methods. Overall, these findings highlight the interplay between reading, writing, and digital literacy skills at the K-12 level, providing a foundation for future research.

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate children's literature that focuses on body size issues for elementary readers. Design/methodology/approach: The paper used an evaluative tool based on three categories: content, audience and other considerations. Findings: The evaluative tool was used to evaluate six children's books identified as critical literature supporting body image. The books evaluated focused on body image but were also tied to other themes such as body positivity, body neutrality, self-love, acceptance, diversity and inclusivity. All books acknowledged and celebrated the uniqueness of varied body types. Research limitations/implications: Because of the number of books evaluated, the evaluative results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to evaluate other critical children's literature focused on body image. Practical implications: The paper offers recommendations for parents, teachers and schools. Originality/value: This paper encourages the need for parents, teachers and schools to help children embrace body positivity and neutrality so that they would love their skin.

Purpose: Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children's literature around fatness. This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children's books featuring fat protagonists. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext. Findings: This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children's literature with fat protagonists. Research limitations/implications: The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters. Practical implications: The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists. Social implications: These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures. Originality/value: There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children's picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

The benefits afforded to young children through shared reading are well-documented, but few studies have focused on what contributes to enjoyment of shared reading, especially as it pertains to caregivers' enjoyment. This study explored child and caregiver enjoyment of shared reading through an online survey. Caregivers named books their 0- to 3-year-old child had recently enjoyed reading with them and gave information about their experience, including a rating of how much they and their child enjoyed each book. Variables about the children, caregivers, and the reading experience were analyzed to better understand what promotes enjoyment of shared reading. Child and caregiver enjoyment, while related, were not equal and were not influenced by the same factors. Children's enjoyment is related to their own characteristics and their caregiver's enjoyment, whereas caregiver enjoyment is related to their scaffolding of the reading to best suit their child's abilities and the characteristics of the reading environment.

The importance of effective teacher-child interactions in preschool classrooms has been well documented; however, very few studies examined the difference between novice and experienced teachers. The aim of this study was to quantitatively compare the characteristics and patterns of teacher-child interactions during preschool picture book reading activities between novice and experienced teachers. Video observation data were collected from nine novice teachers and nine experienced teachers from a Chinese preschool, and were coded using the Flanders Interaction Analysis System. A total of 7,642 codes of experienced teachers and 6,444 codes of novice teachers were obtained. Aside from some commonalities, results indicated that there were several major differences between novice and experienced teachers. The indirect and positive influence on children, and the rate of positive influence to negative influence of experienced teachers were higher than that of novice teachers; the proportion of teacher talk, positive integration grid, steady-state grid, open question, and indirect response of novice teachers were higher than that of experienced teachers. The findings shed light on how novice and experienced teachers interact with their children, and how professional development supports should be delivered differently to novice and experienced teachers.

Based on critical content analyses of picturebooks about children who have sought refuge, we outline a scaffolded method for social studies teachers and teacher educators to historicize forced displacement in children's literature. The method integrates critical literacy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and inquiry-based social studies frameworks to work toward anti-racist decolonizing stances in education. Drawing from excerpts of representative picturebooks, we share generative questions and instructional resources that invite both teachers and students to investigate the historical and sociopolitical contexts of these narratives, and to deliberately construct counter-narratives, challenging underlying values and assumptions that reproduce persistent hierarchies of power. A generative method of historicizing forced displacement in children's literature aims to nurture critical understanding of geopolitical interconnectedness of countries and cultures, and to develop a sense of shared responsibility for preventing and addressing forced displacement as a collective humanitarian injustice.

In this article, the authors discuss a month-long research study where sixth grade students researched three women for the half-century after the U.S. Civil War War that worked to change their respective communities to address public issues: Jane Addams, Clara Lemlich, and Ida B. Wells. The sixth graders read a picture book for each of the three women, and examined primary and secondary sources to explore how each worked to overcome obstacles and advocated for change. They completed a variety of graphic organizers and writing activities using evidence from the primary sources and trade books. We share the findings from students' graphic organizers and writing activities and provide needed next steps based on the findings from our research study.

Young children read wordless books as an important early literacy learning activity. This study explores oral narrative construction and image reading of a wordless book by six K-2 children. Through a cross-case analysis, the results indicate growth of coherence and cohesion building in the verbal narratives across grade levels, as well as a complexity of image reading as children make connections to their lifeworlds and actively use their social imaginations.

Teaching literacy skills that require critical reading and linguistic output can feel like an insurmountable challenge when presented with students of varying language proficiencies. One valuable but often unused tool to surmount these challenges is wordless picture books (WPBs). WPBs can be used to develop literacy skills more equitably among learners with varying language proficiencies, even when in class with native-speaking peers. They transcend language and cultural barriers often found in traditional literature and can be a tool for exploring multicultural perspectives. However, WPBs are often underrated and misunderstood by teachers and students, and frequently relegated to classrooms with young, pre-emergent readers. We argue for the power of WPBs for literacy development among English learners (ELs) of all ages by addressing common misconceptions, highlighting unique benefits of WPBs to ELs, and suggesting practical pedagogical implications.

Student engagement in the process of transduction concomitantly affords them with opportunities to develop and express their critical and creative thinking competences. Reconfiguring or remaking knowledge or meaning in modes other than those of the original sources of information requires affective, imaginative and cognitive activity by sign-makers. In this article, I present examples of elementary students' transduction work and discuss their semiotic meaning-making with reference to the concepts of critical and creative thinking. During the study featured in this article, Grade 4 students engaged in the process of transduction when participating in activities about elements of visual art and design and conventions of the medium comics, when exploring picturebooks and graphic novels and when composing and explaining their own multimodal texts. The students' transmodal meaning-making showed how, in the context of the research classrooms, the purposefully designed pedagogy and activities both required and nurtured students' critical and creative thinking, which simultaneously provided the students with opportunities to extend their knowledge and deepen their understandings of the concepts and curriculum content under study.

Using the transactional theory (Rosenblatt, 1995, 2001) and translanguaging pedagogy (García, 2009) as guiding lenses, this study explores how 1st-grade Korean-English bilingual students engage in storytelling and meaning construction using two languages when they encounter one of the chosen wordless picturebooks. The findings indicate that although visualizing is the main strategy to create the plot from the wordless picturebook, the students incorporate other reading comprehension strategies (i.e. using prior knowledge, making connections, predicting, revising and verifying their predictions, and inferencing) to construct the meaning of the story. Since storylines are delivered through illustrations only in wordless picturebooks, the bilingual students flexibly translanguage by deploying their linguistic resources from both languages during their story creation. The findings imply that using wordless picturebooks can be an influential pedagogical instrument to help bilingual students employ a broader language repertoire in their oral narrative production so that their responses from different perspectives and experiences are valued during literary activities in the classroom.

This pilot project analyzed 185 children's picture books, published 2018--2020, that feature members of the LGBTQIA + community as primary, secondary, or background characters. In developing a framework that builds upon classifications from Diverse BookFinder, the Cooperative Children's Book Center, and the Rainbow Book List, the purpose of the study was to determine which members within the LGBTQIA + community are most frequently represented in picture books and what types of stories are being shared about this community. Additionally, this content analysis explored the representation of intersecting social identities by tracking how often LGBTQIA + characters were also depicted as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) or as having a disability. While the analysis revealed a surprising breadth of representation, it also highlighted the prevalence of biographies and stories of resilience in picture books featuring LGBTQIA + characters as well as the continued erasure of some LGBTQIA + identities and orientations, including nonbinary, bisexual, intersex, two-spirit, and pansexual representation. Although more than 60% of the sample included LGBTQIA + BIPOC characters, there was limited representation of LGBTQIA + characters who were depicted as having a disability. This study also revealed some challenges and inconsistencies in labeling LGBTQIA + content and characters, particularly in respect to gender nonconformity.

Culturally authentic literature is widely recognized for its efficacy in developing children's multicultural awareness and intercultural understanding. Through systematic examination and analysis of 53 Children's picture books featuring China and its culture published in North America, this study investigated the extent to which the selected books were culturally authentic, and how these books would exert their functions as multicultural literature for readers. The results revealed that most books portrayed cultural elements authentically, while a number of books contained incorrect, stereotyped or outdated information. The mismatch of some cultural elements in illustrations with the storylines was especially notable. The ways in which the selected books would play their roles as windows and mirrors for multicultural education, and the implications drawn for writers, illustrators, and publishers of multicultural children's books were discussed.