Award-winning Children Research Articles

Understanding literacy as human practice: exploring stories about (people like) us

ABSTRACT This paper examines literacy as a sociocultural, personal and human practice dependent on and derived through relationships between people, settings and culture. Drawing on a recent empirical research study that combines learner, teacher and author perspectives [Curtin (2023) Reading and Writing Pathways Through Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Exploring Literacy, Identity and Story with Authors and Readers. Routledge], I explore how children’s literature may be used to develop meaningful and authentic literacy pedagogies in the primary classroom. The research methodology for this study employed interviews with sixteen international and award-winning children’s literature authors. This paper presents one author's interview from the study in detail in an effort to illustrate the importance of identity and personal resonance in literacy learning. To this end, funds of knowledge [Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez. (1992). “Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms.” Theory Into Practice 31 (2): 132–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534] and light and dark [Zipin (2009). “Dark Funds of Knowledge, Deep Funds of Pedagogy: Exploring Boundaries Between Lifeworlds and Schools.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 30 (3): 317–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300903037044] pedagogical approaches are applied in a discussion of genre study using (auto) biographical text in the primary classroom. Identity affirming and culturally resonant pedagogies developed seek to engage learners in literacy as a human practice. The paper concludes by considering key insights and ways forward.

The Body of the Antagonist in Current Spanish Novels for Children and Young Adults

This article examines the bodies of antagonists in Spanish award-winning children’s and young adult novels between 2018 and 2020. Qualitative analysis using software was used to categorise antagonists’ physical descriptions and identify common types and characteristics. There are attractive antagonists with pleasant physical appearances that conceal an inner malevolence, while others adhere more closely to the traditional prototype with physically unattractive features beyond normative standards of beauty. The predominance of male bodies as antagonists is highlighted, reflecting cultural stereotypes of violence and aggression associated with masculinity. In addition, common features such as reddish hair, facial hair, a penetrating gaze, and a smile that anticipates malice are observed. Although expected features such as androidisation are not evident, the analysis shows how cultural processes of physical normalisation are either reinforced or challenged.

How Far…or Not…Have We Come? Gender Portrayals in Award-Winning Children’s Picture Books: 2018–2022

How Far…or Not…Have We Come? Gender Portrayals in Award-Winning Children’s Picture Books: 2018–2022

Portraits of Fatherhood: Depictions of Fathers and Father–Child Relationships in Award-Winning Children’s Literature

Portraits of Fatherhood: Depictions of Fathers and Father–Child Relationships in Award-Winning Children’s Literature

Group Antagonism as a Social Problem in Award-Winning Children’s Books: Stereotype, Prejudice, Discrimination

From the perspective of language and literature education, children’s and youth books should be sensitive to the culture of human rights and democracy and should not endorse group antagonism such as stereotype, prejudice and discrimination. The main purpose of this research is to determine if there are any messages about group antagonisms in the award-winning children’s and youth stories/novels; and to understand the emotional aspect, style, context and content characteristics of those messages. The data source of this general survey model research consists of a total of 34 books that have received awards from various institutions and organizations in the field of children’s and youth literature. In the content analysis, the main category of group antagonism was divided into three subcategories: stereotype, prejudice and discrimination, which were further divided into sub-categories based on emotional aspect, style, context, and content and analyzed in cross-tables. The findings showed that most messages were in the prejudice category. In addition, it was determined that the messages that foster group antagonism were mostly related to the affective dimension and were conveyed in a blatant style and often without malicious intent. Within the scope of this study, it is recommended that fictional books addressing children and young people should address group antagonism with a critical and problem-oriented approach.

A Ticket To Kalamazoo!

James Carter, an award-winning children's poet, non-fiction writer, musician and an ambassador for National Poetry Day shares his writing journey.

An argument for using the Earth Charter Principles as ideological framing in award winning children’s literature

As long as literature has been specifically aimed at children questions have been raised about ideological representations in children’s literature. Award-winning children’s literature generally upholds contemporary standards of moral ideologies in the text. Ideological representations of sustainability and justice are yet to be fully accommodated in the judging criteria of children’s literary awards. The Earth Charter proposes a framework of responsibility for ‘a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace’. This paper proposes an argument for adopting the sixteen principles of the Earth Charter as an ideological framework for selecting award-winning children’s books. The 2018 Australian Children’s Book Council Award for Early Childhood is used as the case for analysis. The award-winning book is analysed using an Ideological Framework for Earth Charter Principles. This framework is adapted from McCallum and Stephens’ (2011) model of Ideological Framing in Children’s Literature. Our analysis revealed that this award-winning book both upholds and violates Earth Charter principles. This paper provides an argument for excluding books from award honours if they violate the principles of the Earth Charter without redefining or resolving the violations. For award-winning children’s literature to stand the test of time, the selection of texts could be referenced to an aspirational document like the Earth Charter that advocates justice for a sustainable future.

What Would Janeway and Roslin Do?: A Sci-Fi–Watching Library Historian Confronts COVID-19

What Would Janeway and Roslin Do?: A Sci-Fi–Watching Library Historian Confronts COVID-19

‘We Need Diverse E-Books:’ Availability of Award-Winning Children’s and Young Adult Titles in Today’s E-Book Platforms

The COVID-19 pandemic has made librarians responsible for children’s book collections in academic libraries acutely aware of the need to acquire children’s and young adult materials in electronic formats. This research project compared the availability of 1,600 award-winning and professionally-recognized PreK–12 titles within the e-book platforms of EBSCO, Follett, Hoopla, Mackin, Overdrive, ProQuest, and Tumblebooks. In addition, the authors examined the availability of children’s e-books pertaining to racial/ethnic, gender, LGBTQ+, and disability diversity from these vendors. The results of this study indicated that there were substantial disparities in the availability of e-books by grade level and by publisher. The availability of titles pertaining to people of color, women, LGBTQ + persons, and people with disabilities was usually (but not always) similar or better compared to the availability of all titles in the dataset.

A Limited Portrayal: Depictions of the American Civil Rights Movement in Award-Winning Children’s Picture Books

This article explores depictions of the American Civil Rights Movement in award-winning children’s picture books published between 2010 and 2018. Specifically, we focused on 25 books chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) for inclusion on their yearly book lists. We included books about events or figures of the long Civil Rights Movement as well as notable African-American “firsts” or famous cultural figures whose experiences with racial discrimination and/or engagement with activism during this time period were depicted. Using qualitative content analysis, we explored the extent to which books expanded or limited six common and inaccurate narratives of the movement. Ultimately, we found that the majority of award-winning books we analyzed present a limited portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement, often depicting racism as confined solely to the South, failing to depict sexism against women within the movement, reducing the demands of the movement to solely desegregation, and presenting heroes of the movement rather than collectives. While we see many of these books as limiting, we close with suggestions for using these texts in ways that can expand students’ understandings of the Civil Rights Movement.

Disrupting the educational racial contract of Islamophobia: racialized curricular expectations of Muslims in children’s literature

ABSTRACT When racialized knowledge is built into curricular expectations in schools, children are susceptible to beliefs that lead them to a hierarchical understanding of social relationships with particular groups. This article seeks to illuminate orientalist ideologies underpinning award-winning children’s literature. Utilizing racialized curricular expectations as an analytical tool, the article deconstructs Muslim stereotypes and their racial, gender, and religious representations in the following ways: (1) educational racial contract, (2) racial othering as racial selfing, and (3) racist empathy. This article calls upon district personnel, principals, and teachers to deeply interrogate curricula that racialize students and teach them ways to be raced.

Can Children of Different Races “See” Themselves in Audiobooks? A Comparison of U.S. Library Systems’ Offerings

Culturally responsive librarians must provide high-quality children’s literature featuring characters of color via multiple formats, including audiobooks. This study examined the accessibility of audio versions of award-winning children’s novels in U.S. public libraries. Chi-Square analyses were used to determine whether offerings in six locales were distributed proportionally using a significance level of p < .05. Findings revealed an availability deficit in audio versions of novels primarily featuring characters of color. Therefore, book publishers and librarians must strengthen efforts to provide audio versions of high-quality novels written for youth audiences. Particularly needed are books reflecting Latino/a, Asian/Pacific, and American Indian populations.

An analysis of Spanish use in award-winning children’s picturebooks

ABSTRACT This study reports how authors use Spanish in award-winning Latinx children’s picturebooks in the USA. Teachers, families, and librarians use these books to support heritage language and culture or to broaden children’s understanding of cultures other than their own. Thus, how these books use Spanish matters because of the potential of these books to promote cultural and linguistic diversity to children. This study investigated how authors used Spanish, which characters spoke Spanish, and what language ideologies texts explicitly communicate. Across 9 books (award winners between 2010 and 2015), there were 78 instances of Spanish use, and 21 of these were complete sentences or exclamations. The books provided a high level of support for understanding Spanish. Supports include immediate translation, appositive explanations, contextual cues, and picture cues, with little use of fluid translanguaging, which more approximates the communicative practices of bilingual communities. The paper concludes with implications for teachers to develop critical language awareness among students in response to literature and suggestions for authors and publishers to represent Spanish-speaking communities in children’s literature.

Gone: Satirical Poems: New &amp; Selected by Stephen Oliver

Reviewed by: Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected by Stephen Oliver Stephen Conlon Satirical and elegiac Stephen Oliver. Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected. Canberra: Greywacke Press, 2016. Illustrated by Matt Ottley. A$18.95 ISBN 978-0-473-36004-7 My first encounter with Stephen Oliver was to see and hear him reading his poems at the Sandringham Hotel at the then-grungy [End Page 184] lower end of King Street, Newtown in the late 1980s. It was a Saturday afternoon, on a stage usually occupied by bands, and he was in his element as he engaged with the punters, giving as good as he received from them. This was no "Poets in the Park" gig, no audience of "peers" politely responding to one of their own. He, along with Vicki Viidikas, was reading to what most of the then poets around town in Sydney may have disparagingly referred to as swine before which their pearls were not to be spread. They were both relishing the incongruous situation as they were reading their work to a hostile or at least an unappreciative audience. Several decades later, reading Oliver's Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected, I realize how grotesque this "half forgotten, half remembered" (to use his image from the title poem of Oliver's combination of some of his old and new voices) past I share with the poet in that hotel may have been. Oliver is willing to immerse himself in the low as well as the high, and fittingly so for a poet with a taste for the grotesque. Satire, at least the kind that Oliver writes, could not be written any other way. There is nothing precious or prissy about the language of the poems. Again, from "Gone": Time accumulates like dust on a mat—old gas works by the tavern block the view,a popular spot for the post-pub screw;but in the end we grew quite sick of that. The images cut in many ways—the highs and lows of cultural cross-currents. Oliver's command of this code-switching technique is one of the secrets to the metamorphic power of these satires to bring the past back to life while also charting the ways that past has passed away. The poet's voice must be big enough to hold all of these times, places, people in it, as it reaches for those shocking cadences that only great art may achieve. Matt Ottley, the Australian award-winning children's book illustrator, adds even more depth to the resonances of orality in the poems with his black-and-white drawings. Ottley's dark visions in Gone give a complementary and sardonic response to many of the pieces. Satire itself may be a dead art, though in the current political climate, the announcement of such a death may be premature. Oliver's poems keep this voice alive, as he dialogues with Larkin, Auden, Byron, and Horace from the distant past and with Baxter and more contemporary poets in the present. The channels are there, in the prosody of the satires: the rollicking rhythms of ballads, the rhyme royal from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde appropriate for a poem in which his breaks with his own poetic influences are partly embodied in the rhyme scheme's allusion to the originator of that scheme. The notes at the end of the volume in a mock-academic tone demonstrate Oliver's knowledge of the forms he uses. Oliver's voices, as I recall them over the decades, are the same voices heard through a different amplifier in these satirical poems. In Montaigne's words about how he hears his own voice and wants his son's to be "a speech succulent and sinewy, brief and compressed, not so much dainty and well-combed as vehement and brusque," Oliver's tones could come from sixteenth-century provincial France as much as from Wellington, Dunedin, or Sydney. Montaigne would have recognized his voice as kindred. The reader of Oliver's satires needs to be well versed in the traditions of satire, the grotesque, parody, modern, classical, and ancient poetry, as well as the concrete details of the two worlds of New Zealand...

Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children's Book Awards ed. by Kenneth B. Kidd and Joseph T. Thomas, Jr

Reviewed by: Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children's Book Awards ed. by Kenneth B. Kidd and Joseph T. Thomas, Jr Quintin R. Bostic II (bio) Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children's Book Awards. Edited by Kenneth B. Kidd and Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. New York: Routledge, 2017. Kenneth B. Kidd and Joseph T. Thomas's study explores the prizing practices of children's literature in Australia, Canada, and the United States. As Kidd and Thomas note in the opening line of this anthology, "the prizing of children's books has a long history" (1). At least since the establishment of the Newbery Medal in 1922 and the Caldecott Medal in 1937, there has been ongoing debate in our field about the merits and value of literary prizing and the cultural ideologies that motivate the selection of award-winning children's books. Noting that there are now more than three hundred awards for English-language texts and authors, the editors explain that this collection was born out of their desire to advance professional conversations beyond individual prizes toward a broader examination of prizing. Kidd and Thomas's combined expertise on the subject is extensive and almost unrivaled among scholars of children's literature. Kidd's resume includes two often-cited (and award-winning) journal articles on the history and cultural politics of prizing in children's literature, and among Thomas's related work is his role as The Lion and the Unicorn's first Poetry Award Editor. The fourteen essays included in this volume offer perspectives on a range of literary prizes (their histories and functions), with particular attention focused on [End Page 338] English-language awards and many of the debates that surround them. The collection opens with what Kidd and Thomas title "A Prize-Losing Introduction." As its name suggests, the introductory essay is filled to the brim with the clever language, playful turns of phrase, and nuanced insights characteristic of the work of these two scholars. Across eighteen pages, the introduction outlines the history of prizing, some of the criticism and complexities that surround literary awards, the differences among prizes (and their function) for children's and adult literature, the rhetorics and ethos of prizing communities, and issues of identity and representation in awards. Although they note that "most of the contributors [to this volume] have mixed feelings if not strong doubts about prizing" (3), the editors concede that "for better and for worse, none of us is independent of prizing or its consequences" (10). The book is loosely organized into four major sections. The chapters constituting the first section "address[] the ideological work of prizes in enforcing norms and ideals beyond and alongside their stated purpose" (10). In "Prizing National and Transnational: Australian Texts in the Printz Awards," Claire Bradford demonstrates quantitatively the lack of diversity in Michael L. Printz Award winners and honor books from 2010 to 2014. After arguing that the Printz Award is dominated by winners from the United Kingdom and the United States, Bradford focuses her attention on the winning/honor books from Australia in order to explore the ways in which this award privileges some deployments of certain types of cultural references at the expense of others. Referencing James English's observation about the effect that children's literature awards have on sales figures, Bradford concludes her essay by underscoring calls for critical understandings of discourses about prizing the "best" books and the need to "be conscious and critical of how commercial systems influence the literary production and reception, and the role of prizing in these commercial systems" (30). Next, in "Prizing the Unrecognized: Systems of Value, Visibility, and the First World in International and Translated Children's Texts," Abbie Ventura builds upon Kidd's arguments about claims of universality by the Newbery Medal in order to examine prizes for translation (she touches on awards such as the Hans Christian Andersen Award, but focuses primarily on the Batchelder Award). Unique to Ventura's chapter is her use of data regarding the popularity of specific texts to support her argument that, ultimately, "more under dominant Western publishing trends, international is a limited and singular concept...

Satirical and elegiac

Reviewed by: Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected by Stephen Oliver Stephen Conlon Satirical and elegiac Stephen Oliver. Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected. Canberra: Greywacke Press, 2016. Illustrated by Matt Ottley. A$18.95 ISBN 978-0-473-36004-7 My first encounter with Stephen Oliver was to see and hear him reading his poems at the Sandringham Hotel at the then-grungy [End Page 184] lower end of King Street, Newtown in the late 1980s. It was a Saturday afternoon, on a stage usually occupied by bands, and he was in his element as he engaged with the punters, giving as good as he received from them. This was no "Poets in the Park" gig, no audience of "peers" politely responding to one of their own. He, along with Vicki Viidikas, was reading to what most of the then poets around town in Sydney may have disparagingly referred to as swine before which their pearls were not to be spread. They were both relishing the incongruous situation as they were reading their work to a hostile or at least an unappreciative audience. Several decades later, reading Oliver's Gone: Satirical Poems: New & Selected, I realize how grotesque this "half forgotten, half remembered" (to use his image from the title poem of Oliver's combination of some of his old and new voices) past I share with the poet in that hotel may have been. Oliver is willing to immerse himself in the low as well as the high, and fittingly so for a poet with a taste for the grotesque. Satire, at least the kind that Oliver writes, could not be written any other way. There is nothing precious or prissy about the language of the poems. Again, from "Gone": Time accumulates like dust on a mat—old gas works by the tavern block the view,a popular spot for the post-pub screw;but in the end we grew quite sick of that. The images cut in many ways—the highs and lows of cultural cross-currents. Oliver's command of this code-switching technique is one of the secrets to the metamorphic power of these satires to bring the past back to life while also charting the ways that past has passed away. The poet's voice must be big enough to hold all of these times, places, people in it, as it reaches for those shocking cadences that only great art may achieve. Matt Ottley, the Australian award-winning children's book illustrator, adds even more depth to the resonances of orality in the poems with his black-and-white drawings. Ottley's dark visions in Gone give a complementary and sardonic response to many of the pieces. Satire itself may be a dead art, though in the current political climate, the announcement of such a death may be premature. Oliver's poems keep this voice alive, as he dialogues with Larkin, Auden, Byron, and Horace from the distant past and with Baxter and more contemporary poets in the present. The channels are there, in the prosody of the satires: the rollicking rhythms of ballads, the rhyme royal from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde appropriate for a poem in which his breaks with his own poetic influences are partly embodied in the rhyme scheme's allusion to the originator of that scheme. The notes at the end of the volume in a mock-academic tone demonstrate Oliver's knowledge of the forms he uses. Oliver's voices, as I recall them over the decades, are the same voices heard through a different amplifier in these satirical poems. In Montaigne's words about how he hears his own voice and wants his son's to be "a speech succulent and sinewy, brief and compressed, not so much dainty and well-combed as vehement and brusque," Oliver's tones could come from sixteenth-century provincial France as much as from Wellington, Dunedin, or Sydney. Montaigne would have recognized his voice as kindred. The reader of Oliver's satires needs to be well versed in the traditions of satire, the grotesque, parody, modern, classical, and ancient poetry, as well as the concrete details of the two worlds of New Zealand...

The Fly; The Rat; The Slug; The Worm: Disgusting Critters Series by E. Gravel

Gravel, Elise. The Fly; The Rat; The Slug; The Worm: Disgusting Critters Series. Tundra Books, 2016.These paperback reissues of Governor General’s award-winning children’s author Elise Gravel’s Disgusting Critters series – one that includes further volumes devoted to the spider, the toad, and head lice[!] – serve to bring to an even wider audience Gravel’s whimsical illustrations and sense of humour. Translated from the original French, the captions offer a soupçon of homely scientific information about each critter’s contribution to global ecology. Gravel is also known for her cartoons and graphic novels, and her critter illustrations are mainly sight-gags. Thus, while these books are ideally suited for reading to children from 3 to 6, older children learning to read can/will understand and appreciate the jokes. Recommended for all public, school, and academic curriculum library collections.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill Distad Historian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.

Frog and Toad’s ongoing journey: Cooperative acquisition of award-winning children’s and young adult titles at a multicampus university

Two years ago, we reported the beginnings of a collaboration between Education librarians at two locations within Pennsylvania State University Libraries (PSUL): the Education Library at University Park and the Penn State Harrisburg Library. We described our methods of cooperative purchasing of PreK–12 textbooks and instructional materials, which represented substantial costs and challenges to both locations.2 Since then, we have explored additional ways of sharing collection development tasks, while retaining much of the autonomy that librarians within PSUL prize. This article focuses on our efforts with our juvenile literature collections.

Snail &amp; Worm: Three Stories about Two Friends by T. Kügler

Kügler, Tina. Snail &amp; Worm: Three Stories about Two Friends. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.Author, illustrator, and perhaps the friend of snails and worms in her backyard, Tina Kügler introduces readers to this hilarious book with three little stories of two best friends—a lovely Snail with a droll sense of humor and imagination, and a friendly Worm with a generous heart. In the first story, when Snail joyously plays with the rock, Bob, and the stick, Ann, we can see our lovely and naïve toddlers, and even our inner child. In the next story, when Worm warmly encourages Snail to climb to the top of a tall flower, we can recall how our families, teachers, and friends firmly support us even when we do silly things. And finally, when Snail and Worm have the interesting conversation about their pets, no one can refuse but smile sentimentally. They are not invertebrates anymore, but are as lively as our children, our friends, and ourselves.The dialogic text as well as the storyboard-style illustration adds a flavour of children’s comic-strip to this picture book. The fresh yet soft colour of the drawings creates a snug feeling like spring for readers. Its funny plot, vivid illustrations, and simple vocabulary will definitely be loved by pre-school and kindergarten children. The text and the illustrations are perfectly married with each other. The hilarious dialogues can be easily memorized by young students and even pre-readers, but would also fit well for a drama performance in the classroom.This book will make you giggle with your toddlers or even with your adult family and friends; I can’t wait to read more Snail &amp; Worm adventures!Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Jing JinJing Jin is a doctoral student at University of Alberta, studying and working in the fields of language and literacy in elementary education. She received her M.A. degree in children’s literature from Ocean University of China, and her M.Ed. degree from the University of Saskatchewan. Her master’s thesis is a comparative study of selected award-winning Canadian and Chinese children’s picture books.

Gerbil, Uncurled by A. Hughes

Hughes, Alison. Gerbil, Uncurled. Illus. Suzanne Del Rizzo. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry &amp; Whiteside, 2015. Print.Gerbil, Uncurled is the latest in Fitzhenry &amp; Whiteside’s ‘Tell-Me-More! Storybook’ series and the 2nd title to use award-winning children’s book illustrator Suzanne Del Rizzo’s unique plasticine dimensional illustrations, the 1st being Skink on the Brink. The ‘Tell-Me-More! Storybook’ series is a set of fictional picture books that tell a tale about our natural world and include additional activities and brief informational text.This is award-winning writer Alison Hughes’ first foray into picture book territory, and she succeeds. The storyline is sweet: Little Gerbil is trying her very best to fit in with her gerbil family by following the Gerbil Mottos. The Gerbil Mottos are the basic life rules that her extended family follow daily, and include keeping one’s whiskers clean and ‘celery tops come to those who wait,’ among others. Little Gerbil is having a hard time with a specific motto, though; ‘curl up nose to toes’ while sleeping, as she finds it too restrictive and enjoys sleeping stretched out. Little Gerbil confides in wise Grandpa Gerbil who is ‘five whole years old’ and while he is sensitive to her predicament, she still can’t sleep curled up nose to toes though she certainly tries. But our Little Gerbil is brave, and in her willingness to stand up for herself and question the world, others are able to question the mottos, too.This delightful and visually appealing book encourages young readers to be themselves, ask questions and respond positively to suggestions if it can make you happier. The factual information about gerbils and other rodents as well as the instructions on making a clay gerbil are great endings to the book.Recommended: 3 stars out of 4Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.