Award-winning Children Research Articles

Analysing the subject of peace in award-winning children’s and adolescent novels in Turkey

The purpose of this study is to reveal how the concept of peace is addressed in the national award-winning novels written for secondary school students within the Republic of Turkey. Data for this study was obtained from child and youth literature award organizations, associations and publishers within Turkey. Each group which was researched has been awarding literature prizes for at least five years. Books which were researched were chosen from the award lists from these organizations for the five-year period of 2009–2013. All of the books were utilized in the analyses and all books in this study were examined as written instruments. The data for this research was evaluated through qualitative research methodology using content analysis. For this research, the main category – peace – was analysed based on five sub-categories including; ‘having human rights’, ‘having cooperation, sharing and solidarity’, ‘not having prejudice and stereotypes’, ‘having conflict resolution’ and ‘being sensitive to the environment’. It can be said that award-winning children’s and adolescent novels are written in a way that is sensitive in terms of the ideas of peace and they have the qualities which can generate the ideas of peace in the hearts of children and adolescences Please check whether the abstract and keywords have been set correctly.

Spirits in the Material World: Ecocentrism in Native American Culture and Louise Erdrich’s Chickadee

In the face of the worldwide ecological crisis, ecocriticism, “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” as “an earth-centered approach to literary studies” has become an important part of contemporary literary theory (Glotfelty in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, 1996, p. xviii). Since many traditional Native American lifestyles were based on ecological or ecocentric thinking—the need to live in harmony with the natural world—scholars have turned to the Native American literature that shares this ecocentric focus, which includes writing by Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz, and Laguna Pueblo novelist Paula Gunn Allen, among others. Native American children’s literature has been less examined. Even the acclaimed poet and novelist Louise Erdrich, one of the best-known authors of the second wave of the Native American Renaissance, has received less academic attention for her children’s books. This article aims to explore ecocentrism in Erdrich’s award-winning children’s book Chickadee (2012), the fourth book in her Birchbark House series, consulting discourses on ecocentrism and anthropocentrism, the importance of children’s literature in education, as well as the significance of animals and shamanism in Chickadee, placing the book within the context of traditional Native American culture.

Benefits of a Co-design Model in Healthcare Donʼt End with the New Building

Thankfully, the old, paternalistic model of healthcare design and construction has been turned on its head. Gone are the days when a handful of hospital administrators made decisions in a vacuum. As Michael H. Covert illustrates in his article, the new design model, known as co-design or participatory design, is an iterative, interactive, and inclusive process. It harnesses creativity and sparks new solutions by engaging all stakeholders-patients and families, providers and staff, and the community.Co-design is best started well before the actual design process begins, and it should not end when the ribbon is cut on a shiny new building. Done well, it can support the delivery of exceptional patientand family-centered care for many years to come by breaking down barriers, embedding process improvement practices, encouraging engagement, and fostering a culture of excellence.The manifold complexities of planning, designing, building, and funding a new healthcare facility in today's environment are well articulated in both feature articles. In this commentary, we highlight some of the priorities and practices our organization found to be most useful in constructing our awardwinning children's hospital.To Build or Not to Build?In 2008, Fairview Health Services broke ground for University of Minnesota Children's Hospital (formerly University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital), which opened in 2011. Our children's hospital is part of University of Minnesota Medical Center, which Fairview operates in collaboration with University of Minnesota Physicians. As an academic medical center, we serve a large population of acute patients-many of whom have hospital stays that last weeks or months. The decision to build a new facility was driven by the fact that our pediatric units and programs were scattered among various buildings on the medical center's two campuses, located across from each other on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.Several staff members who worked closely on this project described it as blessed-everything came together, and it was completed on time and slightly under budget. The credit rests squarely with the steering committee; the executive project manager; the clinical and operational planning leads; and the hundreds of stakeholders, including patients and families, who devoted themselves to achieving our overarching principle: Create the best environment to receive and provide children's healthcare.How We Did It Develop Guiding PrinciplesAn essential first step was to develop guiding principles that would set the direction and framework for the planning, design, and construction of our children's hospital. The four-page document that was produced details specific guidelines related to care, research and education, building design, image, community involvement, and capital stewardship. Far from being some pro forma document that sa\t in a file cabinet, it helped shape decisions, large and small, throughout the process.Some of these guiding principles mirror the design principles applied by Palomar Health, as outlined by Covert. Whereas Palomar Health's focus seems to have been divided among a number of considerations, such as maintaining expandability and flexibility and managing costs in addition to creating a more patient-centric culture, our focus was trained squarely on the patient and family experience. It was our first guiding principle-Optimize the patient and family experience through a plan and design that fosters patientand family-centered care-and served as a touchstone in countless decisions throughout the hospital, not just in patient rooms. (See more details in the Focus on Patients and Families subsection.)Another guiding principle was the safety and security of patients, families, staff, and physicians. We brought in a national expert in safe-room design to advise us. Like Palomar Health, we also chose to install same-handed rooms, rather than mirror-image rooms. …

International Children's Trade Books: Building Blocks for Character Education

The importance of character education has been emphasized since ancient times across cultures and religions as a way to develop morals and values of the younger generations. In this article, the authors highlight several award-winning international children's trade books that reflect the core values recurring in literature and scriptures across place and time: wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Shedding light on the common and recurring aspects of character education, irrespective of time, culture, and religion, the authors reflect on how such universal dimensions could enhance students' understanding, awareness, and respect about diverse social cultures, norms, and values.

Already on the Shelf

This essay explores what it might mean to read children’s literature in elementary school classrooms through a queer lens. The authors argue that because queer theory has a history as a literary theory that destabilizes normative associations among gender, sexuality, bodies, and desire, it provides a set of analytical tools classroom communities can draw on to create alternative readings of a wide range of familiar texts. Such readings of books already on the shelves of elementary school libraries and classrooms can highlight experiences and subjectivities of nonnormative sexualities and gender identities in the hopes of making classrooms more inclusive. Specifically, we argue that four high-quality, award-winning children’s books already included in many schools and classrooms—Sendak’s (1963) Where the Wild Things Are, Woodson’s (2001) The Other Side, DiCamillo’s (2003) Tale of Despereaux, and Patterson’s (1977) Bridge to Terabithia—can be fruitful sites for opening up these more inclusive readings and conversations. The article offers possible queer readings of these texts as well as suggestions for how to encourage elementary-aged students to think about both books and the socially constructed norms of real life through a queered lens. By first queering on-the-shelf texts and then asking students to think about how that queering connects to larger social issues, elementary classrooms can become places where strict identity categories—categories that can marginalize queer students and families—are made visible, are questioned, are stretched, and can even fall apart.

Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms by Sara L. Schwebel (review)

Reviewed by: Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms by Sara L. Schwebel Elizabeth D. Blum Child-Sized History: Fictions of the Past in U.S. Classrooms. By Sara L. Schwebel. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011. xi + 255 pp. $34.95 paper. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter left quite an impression on young Sara Schwebel. She and her friends reenacted bits and pieces of the dramatic pioneer story after their third-grade teacher read the story aloud to them. Certainly, Schwebel, now the author of Child-Sized History, is not alone in remembering the impact and connection of these books on a child’s impression of history. Schwebel’s carefully researched, meticulous book documents the pedagogical problems of historical fiction for children, and also presents solutions to encourage historical thinking and analysis. Child-Sized History skillfully traces the threads of historiography, pedagogy, and education policy in the late twentieth century, focusing on the decades since 1980. Trade books became “safe” pedagogical choices in the 1980s, due to the possibility of multiple interpretations and conservative values. In addition, they seemed to fulfill the necessity of promoting multiculturalism within schools, a requirement for federal funding. Praised for their ability to help students identify with characters and causes in the past, these books were also singled out by librarians as containing reliable historical information. Unfortunately, teachers consequently neglected the fact that the “historical narrative [in these stories] has been constructed by a particular person at a particular moment in time,” often for a particular reason (p. 12). Since historical fiction fills a niche in multiculturalism education, Schwebel focuses on three topics frequently associated with those pedagogical goals: Native Americans, war (specifically the American Revolution), and African Americans (especially slavery). Portrayals of Native Americans abound in children’s literature, yet Schwebel notes that authors tend to rely on stereotypical tropes and use Native Americans more as a way to comment on the present rather than as a way to focus on their culture in its own right. For example, Conrad Richter’s The Light in the Forest (1953) fits squarely in with Cold War attitudes emphasizing Native Americans and the West as antidotes to prevailing [End Page 399] fears about communism. In the 1980s, John Reynolds Gardiner’s Stone Fox (1980) reflects white fears of politically engaged tribes and loss of property just as it tells the story of a boy who competes in a dogsled race. Stories of slavery and African Americans face similar issues with stereotyping. In addition, Schwebel notes that even books describing racism as a societal problem locate the solution within white agency and action, minimizing African American self-determination. It is difficult to find points of contention with Schwebel’s work, although a longer look at the themes in children’s literature and historical fiction complicates her post–World War II picture. Schwebel found three thematic periods with the American Revolution books: The first, during the 1940s and 1950s, stressed war as patriotic and moral and pressed for “American egalitarianism.” In the second, following the Vietnam War, authors stressed the misguided nature of war entirely, while the third, seemingly following postmodern theory, criticized the nature of war as well as the “deviousness of leaders promulgating them” (p. 84). But anti-war messages in children’s literature certainly do not begin with the 1970s. The Newbery awards have been given since 1922, and authors presented anti-war messages in several books in the wake of World War I and the raging isolationism of the 1920s. Schwebel, of course, clearly has not written a book claiming to examine exhaustively the trends in all award-winning children’s literature or historical fiction, yet a longer look gives her findings a clearer context. In addition, although Schwebel focuses on race as a category of analysis in two chapters, she omits probably the most thorny and contentious issue in children’s books—that of gender. Nowhere is the conservatism of historical fiction and award-winning literature more visible than in issues of gender. Teaching historical fiction that depicts times when women’s oppression was “normal” without some level of gender analysis can certainly reinforce stereotypical views of both...

John Burningham: United Kingdom ★ Illustrator

John BurninghamUnited Kingdom ★ Illustrator Lydia Kokkola Born in Surrey in 1936, John Burningham received an unusual education in numerous different schools including the alternative educational establishment, Summerhill. A conscientious objector, he filled his military service requirements by serving in an ambulance unit, and went on to work in a series of other community related projects such as school building in Italy, slum clearance, and forestry work. His formal education took place at the Central School of Art in London, where he met his wife, the award-winning children’s illustrator, Helen Oxenbury. With a fifty year history of publication behind him, Burningham’s production is considerable. The vast majority of his works are picture books which he has both written and illustrated, but he has also produced a number of books for adults and illustrated classics by Jules Verne and Ian Fleming. Burningham’s works are characterized by a respect for children, but rarely at the expense of the adults in their lives. For instance, his two books about Shirley: Come Away From the Water, Shirley and Time to Get Out of the Bath, Shirley use the gutter to separate the mundane world of the adult from the imaginative interior world of the child’s imagination. So whilst Shirley’s parents focus on the prosaic concerns of the coldness of the sea water or bath water on the floor, Shirley imagines herself into a fantasy world where she can fight pirates and find treasure. Her parents are to be pitied for their lack of education rather than sneered at for their inability to empathize with their daughter. The loving bond between adults and children becomes more poignant as the age gap increases. Granpa depicts a particularly tender illustration of a young girl’s relationship with her grandfather. Narrated through the things the adult and child do (or do not) say to one another, this picture book, like the Shirley books, maximizes the power of absence as a way to communicate without limiting the imagination or forcing a single didactic message. Similarly, the affection between the elderly Mr. Gumpy and the animals and children in his boat or on his outing is far more important than the minor characters’ momentary bad behavior. Burningham’s illustrative style contrasts sparse, airy sketches in ink with thickly layered, textured paintings. The forms do not aim at realism, but rather at resembling aspects of children’s own paintings. He is particularly adept at capturing the varied moods of his characters through a few deft strokes depicting the facial features. Selected Publications Borka: The Adventures of a Goose with No Feathers. London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. Print. Google Scholar Mr. Gumpy’s Outing. London: Cape, 1970. Print. Google Scholar Come Away from the Water, Shirley. London: Cape, 1977. Print. Google Scholar Granpa. London: Cape, 1984. Print. Google Scholar Oi! Get OffOur Train. London: Cape, 1989. Print. [End Page 59] Google Scholar Copyright © 2012 Bookbird, Inc

Tea with Juan Quezada: An Afternoon at Rancho Barro Blanco

It’s spring, and the Palanganas River flows leisurely and low. Juan Quezada, at the wheel of his pickup, shepherds a group of American women up the rocky riverbank toward his ranch house overlooking Mata Ortiz. One of the women, a Romance language teacher named Kay, sits next to Juan. She’s carrying on a lively conversation with him in Spanish. Cathleen rides next to Kay, easily joining in the discussion. Like Kay, Cathleen is fluent in Spanish, in her case from years of work in agribusiness. The rest of us—Nora, Patricia, Remedios, and myself—are far less proficient in Juan’s native language. We’re relegated to the truck bed. From that hot, dusty vantage point we enjoy a majestic panorama that stretches from El Indio Peak down to Mata Ortiz and west to the Sierra Madre range that marks the boundary between the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. Through the gritty windshield, Kay and Cathleen take in the view of Rancho Barro Blanco, Juan’s White Clay Ranch. “No,” Juan tells them, “I didn’t first find white clay here on the ranch. The name ‘Barro Blanco’ is to honor the pottery.” After all, it is his pottery that affords Juan this second home a mere ten minutes from his house in Mata Ortiz. Rancho Barro Blanco is populated, we see, with a wild variety of exotic cattle, goats, sheep, and fowl, including a teeming flock of chickens and their hatchling pollitos. The barnyard is immaculate and the outbuildings well kept. “Those fences are coyote-proof,” Juan says, gesturing to the metal netting that safeguards the fowl. “I lost a baby ostrich, and then another, to the coyotes. So I put up this special fencing to protect all the rest.” A congenial javelina trots over to greet us as Juan brings the pickup to a stop and swings his cowboy-booted feet out of the cab. Although well into his sixties, Juan strides to the back of the truck with the clip and grace of a young man, and helps us over the tailgate. He tentatively N A N c y A N d r e w s wrote the award-winning children’s book, The Pot That Juan Built.

Representations of Material Culture and Gender in Award-Winning Children's Books: A 20-Year Follow-Up

This study tested the hypothesis that children's books accurately reflect the gender-based division of labor in the culture and historical period in which they were published. A content analysis was performed on illustrations in books that won the Caldecott Medal or Honor between 1990 and 2009. The final sample included 490 illustrations in 68 of the 85 books. Character gender and type of material cultural artifact used (household, production) were coded. Larger proportions of female characters in the books used household artifacts, whereas larger proportions of male characters used production artifacts outside the home. The authors discuss the relationship of these representations to the real world of gender, tools, and work, as well as implications for the socialization of children.

American Adam, American Cain: Johnny Tremain, Octavian Nothing, and the Fantasy of American Exceptionalism

����� ��� Each summer, during Boston’s annual Harborfest, tourists and native Bostonians alike can take a guided tour of key historical sites that figure prominently in Esther Forbes’s award-winning children’s novel, Johnny Tremain (1943). The purpose of the tour, according to the Harborfest brochure, is to allow sightseers the opportunity to walk “the steps of Johnny”—the novel’s eponymous protagonist—in order to learn the “larger tale of America’s fight for freedom.” In preparation for the tour, participants are encouraged to read (or reread) Forbes’s novel, so that they may better appreciate the historical significance of such sites as Copps Burial Ground, Paul Revere’s home, and Old North Church—and so they might most fully relive a beloved childhood classic. Participants can take this excursion in tandem with other similarly literary-themed tours, such as those based on the lives and works of Louisa May Alcott and Henry James, or alongside other Revolutionary War-based tours on Boston’s “Freedom Trail.” 1 The primary purpose of the Johnny Tremain theme tour is didactic, intended to instruct school children (and their nostalgic guardians) in Revolutionary War history. Ironically, however, Johnny Tremain is not, strictly speaking, a Revolutionary War narrative. Indeed, as Eric Tribunella has noted, Forbes’s novel is frequently misread as a story “‘about’ a boy who fights in the Revolution, something Johnny never actually does” (88). Although the novel concludes with Johnny’s decision to take arms against the British, the bulk of its narrative is concerned with his moral development and his maturing political consciousness. Moreover, while the novel is frequently praised for its rich depiction of colonial-era history 2 —Forbes was a historian who also published a biography of Paul Revere—its endur

Music Teacher Education Students as Cross-Age Reading Tutors in an After-School Setting

A class of music teacher education students ( N = 18) served as tutors in a cross-age reading program for fourth and fifth grade students enrolled in an after-school program. The qualitative study progressed in several phases: (a) Two experts with over 60 years collective teaching experience at the elementary school level were asked to recommend the “best book available for a cross-age tutoring project that would have the greatest appeal for this age category of student.” The selected book was The Pinballs by award-winning children’s author, Betsy Byars (Byars, 1977). (b) College-age tutors were asked to read the book, write a reaction to its content and give their opinion concerning how it could be used by classroom teachers. (c) Tutors were randomly paired with after-school children who were mostly identified as being low in reading skills and/or reading fluency. (d) Each dyad participated in a one-on-one session once a week for 30 to 50 minutes lasting for 10 weeks. (e) At the end of the 10 week period, each child was asked to write a short paragraph describing their reading experience. (f) Similarly, each college student was asked to write a lengthier description of their experiences. During the study, these college tutors were under the daily supervision of the regular after-school elementary teacher who supervised the entire program. Additionally, a university music education faculty member met weekly with the elementary teacher to discuss the project. This feedback loop provided an important aspect of the study.

The Reading Level Paradox: Why Children's Picture Books Are Less Cohesive Than Adult Books

Three experiments explored how pictures in award-winning children's storybooks contribute to their cohesion. In Experiment 1, one group of college students read storybooks with pictures, and another group read them with the pictures removed. Both groups answered questions inserted periodically. The source for about one half of the questions was the pictures, and the source for the remaining questions was the written text. The answers to one half of the questions from each source were explicitly contained in the immediately preceding text or pictures, and the remainder required inferences that went beyond the immediately preceding information. Not surprisingly, questions based on the pictures could not be answered without the pictures. In Experiment 2, the texts without pictures were rewritten to provide the essential storyline information that the pictures had supplied. Cohesion of both the original and rewritten texts was assessed with Coh-Metrix indexes. The changes resulted in increased cohesion for referential and semantic information, with relatively little change in syntactic cohesion indexes or readability levels. In Experiment 3, the pattern of college students' responses to questions on the revised texts was very similar to responses in Experiment 1 to the texts with pictures.

The art of William Steig

Known for his brilliant cartoons and award-winning children's books, William Steig (1907--2003) leaves a legacy that spans much of the twentieth century. This lavishly illustrated book features over 280 of Steig's drawings, many of them previously unpublished, and examines every aspect of his work, from the Small Fry cartoons--his earliest submissions to the New Yorker-- and haunting symbolic drawings of the late 1930s and 1940s, to his later, bitingly funny cartoons and celebrated books for children. In the seventy-three years that Steig worked for the New Yorker, the magazine published over 120 of his covers and more than 1,600 of his drawings in a wide range of styles, including classic cartoons, psychologically fraught pen-and-ink renderings, and Picasso-esque representations. He brought a new voice to the magazine by creating cartoons that drew on his experience as a son of immigrant Eastern European Jews. In his sixties, Steig embarked on a second career as a writer and illustrator of children's books, including Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Shrek! These remarkable projects bring together numerous key elements of Steig's work: his evocative use of reverie, his interest in cranks and complainers, and his belief in the redeeming power of love, nature, and art. The story of Steig's work is told by Claudia J. Nahson and the cartoonist's fellow artists and writers, and his family members. Together they create a portrait of a penetrating social observer with a restless imagination and a love for his craft.

An exploration of sex-role stereotyping in Australian award-winning children’s picture books

A content analysis of 25 award-winning Australian picture books was conducted to examine whether the incidence of sex-role stereotyping had decreased in Australian picture books since the mid 1970s. Comparing a sample of books from the mid 1970s to a sample from the 2000s, three potential areas of stereotyping were assessed: ratios of male to female characters in central roles, titles, illustrations, and as animal characters; activities the central characters were depicted engaging in; and an exploration of the text for traits that central characters exhibited. No significant differences were detected between the ratios of male to female characters across the two time periods, however, trends towards equality were found between the early and the recent sample in the categories of titles and animal characters. Further, no evidence of stereotyping was found with regard to activities, with male characters not participating in instrumental-independent activities and masculine traits any more often than their female counterparts, and female characters not engaging in passive-dependent activities and feminine traits any more often than male characters. Finally, no evidence was found to suggest that male characters were any more rigidly stereotyped than female characters. It was concluded that, in the current sample, little stereotyping was present, and that such areas of disparity as were evident showed a trend towards equality. The difficulties and pitfalls involved in this sort of study are discussed, with an emphasis on the necessity for, and importance of, broadening the research. This article was originally conceived as an honours thesis.

Really Advanced Technology

IN last month's column, Earth on the Web, I argued that schools should have specialized computer labs for geography and Earth science. This month, I examine several advanced technologies whose availability also argues for specialized high-tech facilities in schools. Over the years, I have frequently harked back to the theme of the power of technology to engross and enthrall. I once did a column on high-definition education that argued that educators deserved higher-resolution media. This month I will push that theme even further. When I started doing the research for this column, I searched the Web for environments. Related terms include virtual reality and theaters. A planetarium is a familiar example of an immersive environment. Though there are several ways to create such an environment, the simplest is to construct a room with projection screens on two adjacent walls. A room like this has nearly the same effect on its occupants, if they are close to the center or corner of the room, as a room with screens on four walls. I created a room like this some years ago using four 35-mm slide projectors--two per wall. With two projectors per wall, you can use transitions such as a wipe from right to left across the two walls. The effect is quite impressive. For a true 360-degree immersion room--like a planetarium--you obviously need a dome. Construction of a large architectural domed space is expensive, but believe it or not, there are about 100 of them in U.S. schools. A viable alternative is an inflatable dome, available from a company such as Learning Technologies, Inc., which sells STARLAB (www.starlab.com/index.html)--a complete planetarium kit with a 360-degree digital projector and an inflatable dome that will accommodate about 25 people. The cost is $54,000; a dome that will hold about 50 people is $59,000. Unlike older planetarium projectors, such as those made by the well-respected Spitz company, the new digital projection systems can be used to project digital slides and video. This turns a planetarium into a domed theater. You can explore planetariums and domed theaters on the Web at www.skyskan.com/Links/index.html. If you are thinking that I have gone mad suggesting that schools should invest this kind of money in a fixed or portable planetarium/ theater, just compare the cost of these items to that of the exercise equipment in a high school fitness or weight room. Furnishing such a room costs between $50,000 and $100,000. If you take the time to watch the faces of children as they leave an immersive theater, you will begin to understand the benefits of having such technology in schools. After doing the above research, I surfed over to Apple's QuickTime website. It seemed like a logical next step, since Apple has the premier digital video technology. Even if you are a Windows PC user, you should be interested in QuickTime because it is the gold standard of digital video and is available for your PC. At the QuickTime site, I learned that my version of QuickTime needed to be upgraded, so I downloaded and installed the free player software. I then went ahead and purchased a QuickTime Pro license for $30. With QuickTime Pro you can save most of the videos you find on the Web directly to your hard drive, where they will often play better than they do over the congested Internet. The big news at the QuickTime site is HD (high-definition) video. After you install the latest free version of the Quick-Time player, you can experience HD video in all of its splendor at www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd. The video from WildlifeHD is particularly impressive. Incidentally, WildlifeHD is the producer of several Emmy Award-winning children's videos. You can see video clips from them at http://wildlifehd.com/childrens.html. With any new technology, there can be glitches. If you have trouble playing the QuickTime HD videos, you will need to do the following. …

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Involving children in planning health care: the Derby experience

This paper describes the approach of the Derbyshire Children's Hospital to gaining children's participation in planning health care. It draws upon a long and successful track record of planning with children, evidenced by their award-winning children's hospital designed in partnership with children and opened in 1996. The service has now gone on to work with children in different ways and on issues large and small which affect them in hospital. Examples are given of successful change which arose in this way. The author counsels caution about the ways in which children should be involved in healthcare planning and the need to obtain an appropriate range of views from children to consider in conjunction with evidence-based information held by professionals. User involvement is now central to all healthcare modernization initiatives. It is rightly seen as being the key to making services appropriate and acceptable to their users and, in that way, more effective. For children's services this concept is not new: at least at the microlevel. Paediatric practitioners normally follow a very democratic model of care which involves children and families in designing and delivering their own plans for care. Extending this principle to a larger scale when planning new services may, however, seem a daunting prospect and one which may seem to be outside the experience or competence of the health professional. This article offers the experience of one acute paediatric centre, Derby, in working with children in planning.

Russian Folk-Tales

Written by award-winning children's author James Riordan, this book is a beguiling collection of stories set among the wide rivers and snow-covered forests and steppes of Russia--a land still shrouded in mystery in the eyes of the Western reader. The incomparable beauty of untamed nature and the Slavic gift for storytelling make for a captivating combination. Meet boyars and cossacks, kings and queens, merchants and minstrels, robbers and angels, witches and peasants. Ships fly through the air, princesses turn into frogs, a snowmaiden longs for a human heart, the mighty Firebird steals the golden apples. Folk tales, heroic sagas, legends and myths from villages and towns all across Russia--they are all here in this fascinating anthology. Evocative full-color illustrations accompany each story.

Gender Roles in Children's Literature: A Review of Non-Award-Winning “Easy-to-Read” Books

This study replicates the work of Crabb and Bielawski (1994), who analyzed gender differences in character representation found in Caldecott award-winning children's literature, in relation to the utilization of production, household, and leisure artifacts. This study examines non-award-winning “easy-to-read” books. The data showed that both female and male characters are most likely to be pictured in a leisure activity. Otherwise, male characters are apt to be seen with a production artifact, while few are shown with a household artifact. For female characters, if they are not in a leisure activity, they are equally likely to be seen with either a household or production artifact. The real difference in character depiction lies with male characters not being featured in household activities. These findings were different from Crabb and Bielawski's study. They found that female characters were most likely represented utilizing a household artifact, while male characters were primarily depicted with production artifacts.

'Science Guy' Makes The Rounds In Washington, D.C.

Television personality Nye, creator and host of the Emmy Award-winning children's science program Bill Nye the Science Guy, celebrated Global Science & Technology Week (GSTW), May 6-12, by p...