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High-quality children's literature, including picturebooks, are important resources in the classroom for students to engage with complex and sometimes concerning contemporary issues. One strategy to involve students in learning about such issues is through the use of metafictive devices, which are literary stratagems that draw readers into knowing more about a topic and helping them understand and interpret them safely. In this paper, we analyse three selected texts that contain important and deliberate metafictive devices used by award-winning authors/illustrators. First, we share brief synopses of each book and then provide detailed analyses of the literary tools used by the authors, including how they support students' meaning-making practices through language and image. Then we consider how these works were used in a primary school classroom to improve children's critical multimodal literacies so that they became more discerning readers who could effectively cope and engage with complex and troubling world issues through literature. Keywords Children's literature * Metafictive devices * Global issues * Learning and teaching * Critical literacy, 1 Introduction Many children's picturebooks deal with serious contemporary issues, including climate change (Axelrod et al., 2020), politics (Johnson, 2020; Sipe & Pantaleo, 2008), grief and loss (Wiseman, 2013), social [...]

Children in our Global Cultures Club browsed picturebooks in Spanish and English, placing sticky notes on books that they connected with. The books include bilingual books in Spanish/English, such as [...]

This article examines how Year 6 students engaged with a postmodern picture book in an Australian classroom to develop knowledge and skills for critical analysis of texts. One aspect of being critically literate is to question the purpose and function of texts, realised through the knowledge and skills of the text analyst role (Freebody & Luke, 1990; Luke 2012b). Using a small-scale, case study approach, this research study examined the extent to which a postmodern picture book, exhibiting a device of multi-stranded narratives, supported students of differing reading levels to develop text analyst practices. Findings suggest that such postmodern picture books could support students to develop text analyst practices, while the practise of some knowledge and skills was more prolific than others, and students across the group did not demonstrate the same depth of understanding of the text analyst role. The study adds to growing research about the uses of postmodern picture books for building students' enjoyment of literature, tolerance for ambiguity, comprehension of complex narratives and critical literacy., Introduction Picture books are instrumental for children's development of reading practices, with these artistic literary texts offering unique opportunities to explore inherent interactions between the visual and verbal modes of [...]

A copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle, 1969) is sold approximately every thirty seconds somewhere in the world. This title, Eric Carle's most widely recognized picturebook, has been translated [...]

Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crece la palma, Y antes de morirme quiero Echar mis versos del alma --Jose Marti, as cited in Otheguy, 2017, n.p. Emma Otheguy's [...]

This paper shares findings from part of a larger project exploring students' interpretations of children's literature during independent reading time. Examined in this paper are interpretations by students in Grade 4 (aged 9-10 years) about the messages conveyed in the almost wordless picture book Mirror by author and artist Jeannie Baker. Mirror shares a multicultural perspective on life through its portrayal through collage of the lives of two families living in different countries. Data were collected as semi-structured interviews and observations recorded as field notes. Chambers' (1994) 'Tell Me' framework informed the question schedule of the semistructured interviews, which were designed to promote opportunities for students to share their interpretations following independent reading time. Emerging themes from data analysis are considered through critical literacy lens (Janks, 2010). Further, implications for the use of almost wordless picture books in classroom reading experiences are identified in connection with the development of children's cultural awareness and sensitivity (Short, 2003)., Introduction Reading is complex and multifaceted both within and outside school and as 'literacy' has broadened from being print centric to multimodal, the teaching of reading has focused on meaning [...]

We have a passion for beautifully illustrated picture books. Maybe it is because we have spent our careers working with children or because we love beautiful artwork. To us, picture [...]

This article synthesizes findings from existing research on inclusive literature that portrays characters with disabilities. They present teachers with a meaningful and easy-to-remember acronym (I AM NOT THE DISABILITY) to [...]

Five 1st-grade teachers read aloud two Caldecott Award-winning picture books to their classrooms of diverse, urban students. In this two-phase study, researchers analyzed teachers' transcripts for common elements, interviewed 1st-graders [...]

Abstract Academic inquiry has focused recently on how to create caring classrooms and school communities--that is, classrooms and school communities that encourage children to continue to develop caring feelings, thoughts, […]