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A remarkable book that addresses the ways in children respond to literature across a variety of everyday classroom situations. The result is a balanced resource for teachers who want to deepen their understanding of literature and literary engagement.
Clearly organized and beautifully written, Interpreting Literature With Children is a remarkable book that stands on the edge of two textbook genres: the survey of literature text and the literary criticism text. Neither approach, however, says enough about how children respond to literature in everyday classroom situations. That is the mission of this book. It begins by providing a solid foundation in both approaches and then examines multiple ways of developing children's literary interpretation through talk, through culture, class, and gender, as well as through creative modes of expression, including writing, the visual arts, and drama. The result is a balanced resource for teachers who want to deepen their understanding of literature and literary engagement. Because of its modest length and price and its ongoing focus on how to increase student engagement with literature, either pre-service or practicing teachers can use this text in children's literature, language arts, or literacy and language courses.
First published in 1983. In this comprehensive volume, Dr. Di Leo once again brings to the reader the fruitful combination of extensive knowledge of children's drawings and an approach to the subject that is intimate and humane, but highly sophisticated. Those familiar with his books have come to expect the lucid style with which Dr. Di Leo leads the clinician toward incisive interpretations of children's drawings, pointing out key features and using, where appropriate, parallels from the world of art and literature. His discussions of over 120 drawings reproduced in this volume cover an astonishing range of topics, including: Interpretation, Formal and Stylistic Features, Mostly Cognition (drawing a man in a boat), Mostly Affect (drawing a house), Projective Significance of Child Art, The Whole and Its Parts, Global Features, Body Parts, Sex Differences and Sex Roles in Western Society as Perceived by Children, Laterality and Its Effects on Drawing, Tree Drawings, and Personality Traits, Emotional Disorder Reflected in Drawings, Pitfalls, Role of the Arts in Education for Peace, and Reflections. In his analyses, Dr. Di Leo skillfully singles out examples of overinterpretation and other pitfalls, and answers questions such as: What does the therapist do when the child refuses to draw the family? Is the drawing a self-image? What are the differences between regressive drawings compared with the immature drawings of normal children? Even such fascinating topics as art brut, creativity, madness, and child art are discussed. The reader will find thought-provoking both the author's astute analyses and his keen awareness of the influence of society on children and the pictures they draw. Therapists in the field will find the book remarkably penetrating, while students in the field will delight in its clarity and thoroughness. Everyone who works with the drawings of children will find it absorbing.
For many of us, our earliest and most meaningful experiences with literature occur through the medium of a translated children’s book. This volume focuses on the complex interplay that happens between text and context when works of children’s literature are translated: what contexts of production and reception account for how translated children’s books come to be made and read as they are? How are translated children’s books adapted to suit the context of a new culture? Spanning the disciplines of Children’s Literature Studies and Translation Studies, this book brings together established and emerging voices to provide an overview of the analytical, empirical and geographic richness of current research in this field and to identify and reflect on common insights, analytical perspectives and trajectories for future interdisciplinary research. This volume will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and students in Translation Studies and Children’s Literature Studies and related disciplines. It has a broad geographic and cultural scope, with contributions dealing with translated children’s literature in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, Spain, France, Brazil, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, China, the former Yugoslavia, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium.
The Meaning Makers traces the language and literacy development of a large, representative sample of children from age 1 to 10, quoting liberally from observations made at home and at school. Setting the findings of the study in the context of recent research, it offers suggestions for improving children's opportunities for learning.
This landmark volume is the first to bring together leading scholarship on children’s and young adult literature from three intersecting disciplines: Education, English, and Library and Information Science. Distinguished by its multidisciplinary approach, it describes and analyzes the different aspects of literary reading, texts, and contexts to illuminate how the book is transformed within and across different academic figurations of reading and interpreting children’s literature. Part one considers perspectives on readers and reading literature in home, school, library, and community settings. Part two introduces analytic frames for studying young adult novels, picturebooks, indigenous literature, graphic novels, and other genres. Chapters include commentary on literary experiences and creative production from renowned authors and illustrators. Part three focuses on the social contexts of literary study, with chapters on censorship, awards, marketing, and literary museums. The singular contribution of this Handbook is to lay the groundwork for colleagues across disciplines to redraw the map of their separately figured worlds, thus to enlarge the scope of scholarship and dialogue as well as push ahead into uncharted territory.
Teachers’ selection of the literature they use in instruction frequently depends on how they interpret, in other words whether or not they accurately take in the authors’ perspectives. This point presents a particular challenge in the selection of international literature. International literature reflects a country’s and a region’s unique cultural values and practices and is usually not written for people outside the country of origin. Therefore, it is possible that readers in other countries may not understand/be aware of those values and misinterpret the stories. Since Asian and the Western countries, including the U.S., hold maximum sociocultural differences and the perceived cultural distance has remained significantly wide, reading and interpreting literature from Asia can present tremendous challenges to Americans. The book addresses the challenges teachers face when interpreting and teaching with international children’s literature from Asia. The book engages readers with comprehensive coverage on theories, concepts, pitfalls, and applications when endeavoring to use international children’s literature from Asia in classrooms. The book should be used to teach how interpretations/worldviews vary by cultures, and how power influences such interpretations/worldviews. Strategies and frameworks will be provided relating to how teachers can be more culturally conscious of their own biases and develop culturally authentic interpretations.
Reading Children’s Literature offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children’s literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, it is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children’s literature. A beautifully designed and illustrated supplement to individual literary works assigned, it also provides apparatus that makes it a complete resource for working with children’s literature during and after the course. The second edition includes a new chapter on children’s literature and popular culture (including film, television, and merchandising) and has been updated throughout to reflect recent scholarship and new offerings in children’s media.
With the growing number of ethnic minority students in public schools, it is very important for teachers, librarians, and all those who work with children to have an understanding of appropriate multicultural literature. This book and the literature selections are designed to develop heightened sensitivity and understanding of people from various cultures and traditions through the selection of carefully chosen literature. It includes a balance of research about the culture and the literature, a discussion of authentic literature for students from early childhood through young adults, and teaching activities designed to develop higher cognitive abilities. The book uses a unique five-phase approach for the study of multicultural literature that has been field tested.
