Choice Of Books Research Articles

Do Preschool Children Access Quality Books? Reading Culture of Parents and Teachers and Book Selection for Children

This correlational study aimed to evaluate the reading cultures of preschool teachers and parents of 3–6-year-old children, and their book selection criteria for preschool children. For this purpose, data were collected from 242 preschool teachers and 247 parents who voluntarily participated in the study. Participants were asked to evaluate their own reading culture and book selection criteria for their preschool children through measurement tools. They were then asked to send them to other parents and teachers they knew through snowball sampling. As a result of the analyses, it was found that there was a positive correlation between both parents' and preschool teachers' reading for individual development, basic reading skills, book choices for themselves and reading culture total scores and physical characteristics, language and character, content and total children's book selection criteria scores. In the light of the findings, suggestions were made to parents and teachers about creating a reading culture and selecting quality books.

Columns: Teaching in a Time of Censorship: Fostering a Culture of Reading to Reduce Fear and Build Community

This month’s column shares how one teacher reflected on the root causes of the parental scrutiny of her book choices and chose a path of communication and community building.

Children's literature: reading strategies and receptivity in early childhood

To ensure students' mastery of reading and writing constitutes one of the biggest challenges currently facing Brazilian public schools. Data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls, 2021) estimate that around 40% of Brazilian students in the 4th year of elementary school do not master basic reading skills. Despite the complex nature of the theme, when specifically dealing with young children, literary books play a very relevant role in this process, since research indicates that they constitute a kind of gateway to the world of literature and reading. In this sense, the present article presents the results of an action investigation that aimed to analyze the reception of children's literature books for preschoolers in the age range of 4 to 5 years old, from a preschool, in the city of Presidente Prudente/SP. For the development of the research, we provide children with high-quality literature books – awarded by the Jabuti Prize, which is the most prestigious literary award in Brazil. Group organization was utilized to have a bigger “control” of children's speech and press conferences with the purpose of understanding what criteria the children use when choosing the books. Reading circles were utilized as a methodology to initiate a dialogue within the group and the sharing of impressions about the chosen books. Three elements emerged as central in the choice of books by the children: the cover as the most decisive element, the illustrations and the connections that they made between the book, its characters and the pre-existing knowledge they already had. The work demonstrates that it is necessary to provide opportunities in schools for practices that involve children more, that encourage them to choose what they want to read.

Personalized Reading Path Design and Real-time Recommendation Mechanism Construction of College Library Optimized by Artificial Intelligence Algorithm

Abstract With the development of science and technology, library management informationization has gradually replaced the traditional management mode how to enable readers to efficiently select more suitable books for complicated books. Personalized recommendation algorithms have become particularly important. Our paper focuses on preprocessing borrowing data, analyzing the clustering algorithm and association rules, and exploring the potential laws that are hidden behind a large amount of data. In this way, a personalized reading recommendation model is constructed to provide readers with a more diverse and accurate recommendation model. In this paper, through clustering analysis and association rule analysis, it is found that different readers may have the same reading interests, and more readers will choose to borrow multiple books related to them at the same time when borrowing a certain book. Compared with the four algorithmic models ICF, qs-MAICF, jz-MAICF, and ms-MAICF, this paper recommends the most types of books for readers, which indicates that the model can tap the correlation between different books and provide readers with richer book choices. This paper is a significant accomplishment of artificial intelligence in the library industry, providing strong technical support for the modernization and intelligent development of libraries.

Book selection behaviors of emergent readers

Using an observational comparative case study, this study explored emergent readers’ book selection behaviors within their classrooms. Emergent literacy skills are the forefront of literacy development (Clay, 1982; Ferriero & Teborsky, 1982; Teale, 1986; McNaughton, 1993; Chall, 1996; Neuman, 2000), yet reading motivation and engagement has largely focused on older students (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997; Gambrell et al. 2011; Marinak, 2013), and emergent readers’ motivation and book choice research has relied upon surveys (Saracho, 1986; Sperling, et al., 2013). This study of two pre-kindergarten and two kindergarten classrooms, along with their classroom teachers, utilized observations to examine emergent reader motivation and choice (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 2005; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Clay, 1982, 1991, 2001; Rosenblatt, 1978, 1995). The observational data were analyzed for vertical and horizontal case analysis and findings suggest that emergent and early readers’ text selection behaviors rely on cover illustrations and familiarity with the text.

Developing Mental Models for Examining Diversity in Children’s Literature

ABSTRACT Teachers need tools to build mental models of what makes a book diverse, how a book impacts the classroom community, and what contribution it makes within a classroom library. Beyond this, teachers need a resource that will offer cogent arguments and support for their book choices to administrators, parents, and colleagues. This article includes a rubric that can help guide and inform diverse literature selections. We share how we taught preservice teachers to use the rubric in their literature choices. We also provide a discussion of the rubric’s potential in empowering teachers to make purposeful, informed literature selections that reflect and embrace diversity for equitable classroom communities. To examine how the rubric might support the expansion of cultural models and multimodal interpretations of diverse texts, we used the rubric with 20 preservice teachers from one section of an undergraduate children’s literature course. The use of the rubric facilitated the development of mental models of diverse literature in preservice teachers. As these preservice teachers transition into their roles as classroom teachers, these mental models have the potential to actively transform the typical literature selections found in today’s classrooms, leading to more equitable classroom contexts inclusive of all children.

Book Choice and the Affective Economy of Literacy

This article examines the familiar imperative for educators to cultivate affective attachments between students and reading—to foster love or ward off hate, for books. It considers the interplay of this affective economy with other “economies” of reading long theorized in literacy studies: the moral economy, promoting dominant social norms; and the political economy, prioritizing workers skilled to meet the needs of the state. We examine the relations among these economies through a study of “book choice”—practices intended to give students greater autonomy (and pleasure) in their reading. Using interviews and artifacts from three middle-school classrooms in the U.S. south using varied configurations of “book choice,” we report findings that suggest the affective aims of such programs often intermingled with moral and political economic directives. In conclusion, we suggest that attunement to these contradictions offers an alternate, and more capacious, orientation for literacy education and aesthetic response.

Mr. Active and Little Miss Passive? The Transmission and Existence of Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Books

Do popular children’s books tend to reflect gender stereotypes, and do parents prefer their daughters to read books reflecting this pattern? We explored these research questions using the popular Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men and Little Miss collection of children’s storybooks, which is a series of individual stories all titled with and based on a binarized gendered character (e.g., Mr. Greedy, Little Miss Sunshine). Using a deductive content analysis approach, Study 1 revealed that the characters in the series’ 81 books tend to behave in gender stereotypical ways, with male characters more adventurous and active and female characters more domestic and passive. Books that had female leads were also more likely to have male secondary characters. In Study 2, participants rated the masculinity/femininity and positivity/negativity of the traits of each of the book series’ titular main characters without knowing the (gendered) book title. The traits used in Little Miss stories were associated with femininity, and the Mr Men story traits with masculinity. In Study 3, when faced with the prospect of selecting a Little Miss book to read to their daughter, parents preferred counter-stereotypical book choices (e.g., Little Miss Brainy). Perceived consistency with what parents wanted to teach their daughters about women predicted this book choice. Overall, although these books tended to reflect traditional gender stereotypes (Studies 1, 2), and people held these beliefs (Study 3), we found that parents wanted a counter-stereotypical book for their daughter. Implications for the transmission of gender stereotypes via children’s literature and parental choices are discussed.

Book Recommender System Using Matrix Factorization with Alternating Least Square Method

In this digital age, we are faced with countless choices of books. Finding books that match our interests and desires becomes a complex challenge. However, the existence of a book recommender system is useful to help provide the best decision-making experience that users can have. This research develops a book recommender system using Collaborative Filtering (CF) Matrix Factorization with Alternating Least Squares method which is compared with Singular Value Decomposition method to see an accurate recommender system. This research uses datasets from Goodreads in the form of book data and rating data. This research uses several evaluation metrics, namely RMSE and MAE for regression metrics and F1-Score and Precision for classification metrics. Based on the research that has been done, SVD gets a better accuracy value with an RMSE value of around 0.86822, for MAE values around 0.6903, for F1-Score values around 0.827923 and for Precision values around 0.568347. Meanwhile, the ALS algorithm gets an RMSE value of around 1.09320, for MAE value of around 0.86479, for F1-Score value of around 0.000304 and for Precision value of around 0.000596.

Notes on the Body and Corporeality in Dystopia

The article is devoted to the body and corporality in the genre of dystopia (literary and audiovisual works). The study is an extract from an unpublished monographic work on body images, manipulations, procedures, processes, and marginal, specific objects that shape the interiors of dystopian worlds. Analytics and conceptual generalizations are carried out on the example of specific cases – classic novels by Stanislav Lem, George Orwell, Evgeny Zamyatin and relatively new works by James Dashner and Andrey Dashkov. The arbitrary choice of authors and books is determined by the specifics of the cultural and philosophical approach and the desire to avoid the dominance of totalizing logic and ideas. The general and arbitrary logic of cases is constituted by a conditional sequence of various objects – operations, procedures, body locations (topology) and marginals. Together, these objects, directly related to the physicality of the characters, form a specifically dystopian interior.

‘A superb library at bargain cost’

Offering access to low-cost authoritative literature, the Jazz Book Club was a successful and influential venture, publishing 66 subscription titles and 11 occasional volumes between 1956 and 1967. The Club was created to meet the demand for information by the rapidly growing post-war jazz audience in Britain. Extending the intellectual discourse of the 1930s, an educated, socially diverse generation coming to jazz in the 1940s and 1950s was serious about the music and earnest in their pursuit of information. Although the new fans were often fiercely partisan in their preferences, the Club believed its book choices would appeal broadly across the emerging jazz community. Surprisingly, the Jazz Book Club has been little researched. Using previously unexamined archival records and Jazz Book Club publications, contemporary journals and personal recollections alongside recent scholarship, this article provides the first full account of a small but important moment in British jazz history. Drawing on Karl Mannheim’s epistemology of generations, I argue that the Jazz Book Club was created to meet the demands of a young post-war generation for whom jazz assumed an unexampled measure of cultural saliency. The Jazz Book Club’s moment passed as a later generation turned away from jazz after the early 1960s.

Saudi College Students' Arabic & English Reading Attitudes

The study examined Saudi college students' Arabic and English reading attitudes and considered the influence of gender on reading attitudes. A correlational quantitative approach was used to study 115 participants' reading attitudes in both languages. Participants displayed uncertain attitudes toward Arabic reading practice, and more positive attitudes towards English reading. Females demonstrated more positive attitudes towards reading practice in both languages than males. Females' social communities had less positive reading attitudes toward Arabic and English reading than males’ social communities. In the absence of family encouragement to practice pleasure reading at homes, students did not read widely. Siblings’, friends’, and peers’ choice of books highly influenced participants' choices of reading materials. Study participants reported that Saudi schools, especially males’ schools, did not profoundly impact on their reading attitudes. Pleasure reading was not encouraged. Neither were students taught how to find books that suited their interests or encouraged to spend time in the schools' library.

Unmasking the Red Death: Introduction

During the so-called High Lockdown in the UK (March to June 2020) a group of staff and students from University College London’s School of European Languages and Cultures (SELCS) gathered weekly for a Summer Book Club (SBC) to discuss works as diverse as Thomas Mann’s epic tale of convalescence and philosophical exploration The Magic Mountain and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s captivating comparison of the experience of race in Nigeria, the UK, and the US in Americanah. Among the true “pandemic-lit” that we chose to focus on was Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. In discussing this tale, we could not help noticing the parallels between ourselves and Prince Prospero and his courtiers, who—in the face of devastating disease sweeping the realm—devoted themselves to aesthetic pleasures within their castellated abbey, just as we too found refuge in (closed) community and culture. Another of our book choices revealed a similar and uncanny parallel: in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven a band of actors and musicians roam a devastated America, putting on Shakespeare for the survivors of another deadly pandemic. Their motto, “Because survival is not sufficient”, a quotation from Star Trek, chimed with our sense too that, in the face of the pandemic, culture had a central role.

THE INFLUENCE OF PRICE AND SERVICE QUALITY ON THE DECISION TO PURCHASE OF REFERENCE BOOKS IN STUDENTS OF ECONOMICS EDUCATION PROGRAM 2020-2021

Students as consumers will be faced with the many choices of reference books needed, so students must be able to decide on purchasing reference books according to their needs. During the process of making a purchase decision, students are influenced by prices and also the quality of bookstore services . This study aims to find out how price and service quality influence the decision to purchase reference books in bookstores for students of the economics education study program class of 2020-2021. In measuring a sample researchers used a purposive method sampling is taking samples with certain considerations. Data collection was carried out by distributing questionnaires to 129 economic education students. The approach used in this research is a quantitative approach. To test the validity of the data researchers used validity and reliability tests. The data analysis technique used in this research is multiple regression test (partial test with T-test and simultaneous test with f-test) and model test with coefficient of determination (R2) assisted with SPSS statistics 16 software. The hypothesis results of this study indicate that price and service quality have a significant and positive effect on the decision to purchase reference books in bookstores for students of the economics education study program class of 2020-2021.

PNLD 2020 and the teaching book of the final years of Portuguese language: a critical analysis on the inclusion of LIBRAS

The objective of this article is to analyze enunciative elements referring to the criteria for choosing the textbook from the Call for Proposals for the Registration and Evaluation Process of Didactic Works for the PNLD 2020 National Book and Teaching Material Program (BRASIL, 2018) , in a critical perspective regarding the effective inclusion of the Deaf and Deaf in the Brazilian educational political-pedagogical context, observing what has been produced as school material to support Portuguese Language classes. The hypothesis of this analysis is that the choice of the textbook will be permeated by the discourse of diversity, the inclusive look, the respect for identities through the bias of compliance with Law 10.436 / 2002 - Libras Law - in elementary school books II, 6th to the 9th year, as well as the recognition of the “Deaf Bodies” and their places as social subjects of law, proposing critical discursive reflections on the spaces historically denied in textbooks, at school, in the classroom, even reflecting on the BNCC / 2017 - diversified part. The methodology used is presented through bibliographic analysis dialoguing with national official documents, in order to broaden new horizons in the Brazilian educational construct, pointing out other ways for new selection criteria and choice of books, in addition to hegemonic impositions. Therefore, a dialogue is proposed between Foucault (2013; 2004), Azevedo; Piris (2016), Piris; Azevedo (2018), Pennycook (2003; 1998), Bakhtin (2003, 1998, 1999), Volochinov (2017); Orlandi (2003); Strobel (2009), Grigoletto (2011) and other bibliographies referring to the conceptions of voices, speeches, bodies and power, whose final perspective is to open reflections for new discussions.

Don’t say “They are just babies...”!

Üsküdar University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Child Development, Assist. Prof. Demet Gülaldı informed about the habit of reading books and the choice of books for children.

Examination of Parents' Selection of Children Books

The research was conducted to determine whether the education and income status of the parents made a difference in the selection of books. The study group of the research consisted of 151 parents who had children aged 3-6 years. These children attended independent public preschools in the city centre of Istanbul, which were selected by a random sampling method. Data were collected in two steps. First, a “General Information Form” was delivered to collect generic information on the parents. Then, Saçkesen’s (2008) “Children’s Book Selection Criteria Scale” was utilised to determine the consideration of parents for choosing a book for their children. The research is a causal-comparative study that aims to determine the causes or consequences of differences between groups. A Two-Way ANOVA was performed in the 3x3 model, as there were three categorical independent variables belonging to income level, three categorical independent variables belonging to education level, and a dependent variable in the continuous variable structure in the study. The findings indicate no significant difference between the book choice criteria of parents according to the income level when the education levels of the parents are not taken into consideration. However, when the income levels are not taken into consideration, a significant difference was found between the education level scores of parents for their book selection criteria. After a significant interaction between the income and education levels was found, simple effect analyses for the subgroups reveal significant differences between the secondary school-high school graduation levels of the parents in the low-income group and the secondary school-university graduation levels of the parents in the middle-income group. Focusing on parents with lower education and income levels can be a good starting point to increase parents' awareness of book selection.

Personalized Expert Guidance of Students’ Book Choices in Primary and Secondary Education

In many schools, independent silent reading of self-selected books is used to promote reading. However, self-selection may be insufficient to counter negative reading experiences, particularly when students choose books not attuned to their reading level and interest. Two studies experimentally tested whether personalized expert guidance when selecting books could prevent a reading attitude decline. Study 1 focused on readers in prevocational secondary education (Grades 7 and 8; N = 136). Study 2 included younger readers from primary education (Grades 4–6, N = 99). Students in the experimental condition met with a librarian to discuss book choices every two weeks for three months. In both studies, the intervention stabilized the reading attitude decline, although, in Study 1, only for more advanced readers. In Study 2, reading comprehension of the most proficient readers also improved. This indicates that guidance in selecting books can preserve students’ reading attitude and increase reading proficiency growth.

INDONESIAN PARENTS’ CONSIDERATION TO SELECT CHILDREN BOOKS IN CONSTRUCTING MORAL IDENTITY

Parents believe that books are the media to enhance children’s knowledge enrichment, language development, and linguistic competencies. However, there are limited studies that envisage the involvement of parents in selecting books for their children. Current research that considers parents’ background as one of the literacy resources remains rare. This narrative inquiry explores Indonesian parents’ consideration in selecting children’s books as a means of constructing moral identity. Parents of a second-grade elementary student in Yogyakarta were the participants in this research. A semi-structured online interview sparked a discussion on what factors they consider when choosing children's books and why. The responses of parents revealed some key concerns about book choices: their experience, child’s contextual needs, and child’s interests. Furthermore, it is found that Indonesian children’s books tend to have moral fallacies that did not fit well with parents’ moral identity. As a result, parents’ book selection for the child was more into foreign publishers because they had more precise Islamic moral value representation.

AN AGGRANDIZED FRAMEWORK FOR ENRICHING BOOK RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM

In this era of information overload, Recommender Systems have become increasingly important to assist internet users in finding the right choice from umpteen numbers of choices. Especially, in the case of book recommender systems, suggesting an appropriate book by considering user preferences can increase the number of book readers in turn having an aftereffect on the users’ lifestyle by reducing stress, stimulating imagination, improving vocabulary, and making readers smarter. The majority of book recommender systems in the literature have used Collaborative Filtering (CF) and Content-Based Filtering (CBF) methods. Even though CBF methods have shown better performance than CF methods, they are mostly confined to shallow linguistic features. The present work proposed an aggrandized framework having three concurrent modules to improve the recommendation process. NER module extracts the Named Entities from the entire book content which are the key semantic units in providing clues on the possible choices of reading other related books. The Visual feature extraction module analyzes the book front cover to detect objects and text on the cover as well as the description of the cover which can bestow a clue for the genre of that book. The Stylometry module enhances the feature set used in the literature to analyze the author’s literary style for identifying similar authors to the present author of the book. These three modules conjointly improved the overall recommendation accuracy by 18% over the baseline CBF method that indicates the effectiveness of the present framework.