Children's Storybooks Research Articles

CHILDREN IN MUSIC EDUCATION: CONTRIBUTIONS OF TOYS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

This article is the result of a survey completed which identified as the toy is presented in the teaching and learning in children's music education practices. Participant observation was carried out in two groups of music education with children aged 2 and 3 years, with the use of field diary. The results showed that the process was enriched significantly through the use the toys. Rattles, scarves, wooden horses, stuffed animals, puppets, rag dolls, children's story books were objects that contributed to increasing the participation of children in songs and dances, expand relations between children and adults. They served to play at the reception of the children, living together and musical practices, the expansion of interactions and emotional ties, especially in promoting more pleasant moments in music education practices with children.

READABILITY OF ESL PICTURE BOOKS IN MALAYSIA

Predicting readability of a reading text for second language learners is important for teachers, educators, and other concerned parties to make sure the text matches targeted readers’ proficiency. Suitable reading materials would promote language development among readers, especially children. In Malaysia nowadays, English story books for children which are published locally can be easily found in libraries or bookstores. However, the readability of these reading materials has remained uncovered. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the readability of Malaysian English children story books on five aspects (narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion and deep cohesion) as provided by the computational tool, Coh-Metrix Common Core Text Ease Readability Assessor (T.E.R.A). Ten local English children story books were selected as samples. It was found that the majority of the samples have high narrativity, syntactic simplicity, and word concreteness but average referential cohesion and deep cohesion. The result revealed that there is lack of attention given to the aspect of cohesion in children story books. This study recommends that children book writers consider the readability of ESL children story books to help children’s language development. Keywords: readability, assessment of reading materials, Coh-Metrix, picture books, childrenCite as: Ismail, A., & Yusof, N. (2016). Readability of ESL picture books in Malaysia. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 1(1), 60-70.

Home, School and Gender Differences in Early Reading Fluency among Standard Three Pupils in Primary Schools in Kiuu Sublocation, Kiambu County, Kenya

The intention of the study was to establish the relationship between home and school factors and reading fluency in Kiswahili and English languages among standard three pupils in Kiuu sub location, Kiambu County, Kenya. To achieve this, the study investigated family factors such as family size, number of children attending school, languages spoken at home, parental support such as helping with homework and the frequency of reading story books for children. The study also sought to establish school factors that support reading fluency such as languages of instruction teachers used as well as the number of Kiswahili and English text books children possessed. Bronfennbrener (1979) ecological systems theory was used to ground the study. The study sample consisted of four purposefully selected primary schools two of which were public and the other two privately owned. Data regarding the school and home factors were collected through a paper based questionnaire while the data relating to pupils’ Kiswahili and English reading fluency was collected through one-minute reading passages one in Kiswahili and the other in English. The results revealed that majority of the children lived with both parents and had between 1 and 3 siblings in school and the languages spoken at home, school and among the peers were mother tongue, Kiswahili and English. For majority of the children homework was overseen by the mother while many of them could not recall the last time a parent read to them a story book. With regard to accessing books for reading, the findings revealed that children in private schools had more access to English and Kiswahili books than their counterparts in public schools. With regard to reading fluency, the study established that the maximum number of English words read per minute were 171 while the least were 0 with a mode of 69. The maximum number of Kiswahili words read was 118 with a minimum of 0 and a mode of 61. Children in Private schools displayed better fluent reading than their counterparts in public schools and girls were more fluent readers than boys. The study recommended that the literary environments be improved both at home and in the schools and that the language policy be further interrogated given that the language children are exposed to at home is different from the language of instruction at school and also different from the language used among peers. Another recommendation of this study was that curriculum developers engage in material development both in Kiswahili and the various local languages in tandem with policy requirements. The study further recommended that methods of improving reading acquisition and fluency be sought.

Emotion displays in media: a comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish children's storybooks.

Children's books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children's storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze cultural norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. We expected that all children's storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that US children's storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness) less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the US storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup) may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to US storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children's storybooks (10 for each cultural group) were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed.

Ted van Lieshout: Netherlands ⋆ Author

Ted van LieshoutNetherlands ⋆ Author Samantha Christensen Born in Eindhoven in 1955, Ted van Lieshout comes from a family of twelve children, and from a young age he knew he wanted to pursue a career in writing. After finishing secondary school, he began studying at the Art Academy of Amsterdam, and began designing book covers and submitting illustrations to newspapers shortly after graduating. He illustrated De Blauw Geruite Kiel, a Dutch children's weekly, and it was while illustrating important Dutch poetry that he decided to begin publishing his own poems. Since in 1984, van Lieshout has regularly published volumes of poetry, and he has become one of the most celebrated children's poets in the Netherlands. Van Lieshout's poems often deal with conflicting feelings, and his writing has been heavily influenced by the deaths of his father and brother. He experiments with minimalism and word play, and often treads into the waters of the taboo—his volume of poetry entitled Zeer kleine liefde [Very Little Love] includes poetry, letters, and photos of a fictional twelve-year-old boy involved in a sexual relationship with an adult man. Not only is van Lieshout an established children's poet, but his prose storybooks for young children are also beloved among Dutch young readers, often dealing with difficult and realistic issues. His YA novel, Gebr. [Bros.], relates the tragic death of a brother, as the protagonist attempts to move past his death while honoring his memory. As both a writer and an illustrator, van Lieshout understands the complex relationship between text and image in children's picture books, and he uses both literary and visual narrative to tell his stories. While much of van Lieshout's poetry and prose deals with difficult issues, offering his young readers a means by which to deal with their own traumatic experiences, he also shows his lighthearted side by writing songs for the Dutch version of Sesame Street and radio plays for young children. Van Lieshout's unique contribution to Dutch children's literature has not gone unnoticed. In 2009, van Lieshout won the Theo Thijssen Prize, the most prestigious Dutch children's literature award, which is awarded to authors and illustrators every three years. He was also the first recipient of the Charlotte Köhler Stipendium in 1989 for his work as a promising young author. Selected Bibliography • Gebr. [Bros]. 1996. Amsterdam: Gottmer, 2011. Print. Google Scholar • Ik ben een held [I'm a Hero]. 2000. Illus. Sylvia Weve. Amsterdam: Gottmer, 2011. Print. Google Scholar • Ik en de koningin [The Queen and I]. Amsterdam: Gottmer, 2006. Print. Google Scholar • Van Ansjovis tot Zwijntje [From Anchovies to Piglets]. Illus. Sieb Posthuma. Amsterdam: Leopold, 2009. Print. Google Scholar • Wij Zijn Bijzonder: Misschien zijn wij een wonder [We Are Special: Perhaps We Are a Miracle]. Amsterdam: Leopold, 2012. Print. [End Page 38] Google Scholar Copyright © 2014 Bookbird, Inc.

Investigating the Frequently Appearing Grammar Forms in Different Reading Levels of Children’s Storybooks

This paper investigates frequencies and changes in usage for grammatical forms in four different reading levels of children's storybooks. In...

Development and assessment of a multicultural education program using story books for young children

Development and assessment of a multicultural education program using story books for young children

Systemic Strategies to Improve the Readability of the English Version of Indonesian Children Stories

The paper discusses languge exploitation for the children story books and offers several systemic strategies to improve the quality of language exploitation so that the books have a better quality for their readabality. Thirty children story books which are classified as narratives according to the publishers were randomly selected for the analysis. The books are targeted for children from five to twelve years old. The analysis on the text structure shows that all the stories have the three obligatory discourse units, namely orientation, complication, and resolution. Meanwhile, seen from the lexicogrammatical exploitation, most of the books have various grammatical mistakes and difficult words.

"What's wrong with grandma?": depictions of Alzheimer's disease in children's storybooks.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects the entire family system, including young children. Yet there are few resources to help children understand AD. Storybooks are used to educate children about other diseases and may be useful in AD as well. In this study, we examined the depiction of AD in 33 English-language children's storybooks written specifically about AD. As a group, storybooks present AD as a brain disease, but provide little information about the diagnostic process or treatments. Clinical presentations are diverse among characters with AD, and no single book presents a comprehensive depiction of the cognitive, behavioral, affective, and functional symptoms of the disease. In fact, the prevalence of some symptoms in this "population" of storybook characters diverges substantially from epidemiological reports. Books designed to familiarize children about AD should be comprehensive and accurate. Current resources, while useful, could be improved to ensure health literacy about AD in young children.

Storybook-Induced Arousal and Preschoolers' Empathic Understanding of Negative Affect in Self, Others, and Animals in Stories

Preschool children listened to a children's storybook about an animal character, with reading being terminated prior to, or after, problem resolution. The children's empathic understanding of how the animal character felt was assessed, and they were then asked to draw, with strength of pressure on the page (as evident on attached carbon copies) serving as the index of arousal. Children then responded how another child or they themselves would feel in response to three short, aversive vignettes. As compared to their control level of arousal, children hearing the storybook evidenced increased arousal when the story was terminated prior to problem resolution; this increase was primarily evident in those children who expressed empathic understanding of the affective reactions of the animal character in the storybook. Children who evidenced empathic understanding also indicated that they and other children would feel bad in the aversive vignettes, but they expected other children to experience more negative affect than they themselves would experience. The results were discussed in terms of children's emergent understanding of fiction.

Intercountry Adoption and the Inappropriate/d Other: Refusing the Disappearance of Birth Families

Dominant social norms relating to families shape the lives of all people. This can have negative effects upon non-traditional families. This is especially the case in terms of adoption, where a focus solely on the adoptive family can often result in the ‘disappearance’ of the birth family. This paper explores the location of birth families in relation to adoptive families by examining a sample of children's storybooks aimed at adoptive children living with lesbian or gay parents as but one example of how policy makers may come to identify dominant cultural norms that circulate about birth families in the context of intercountry adoption. A number of key tropes are identified across these books, namely the ghostly presence of birth families, and the representation of birth parents as deviant (thus warranting the removal of their children).

Design and Development of an Interactive Augmented Reality Edutainment Storybook for Preschool

This paper presents the development of an engaging method for learning numbers via a highly interactive edutainment children storybook based on augmented reality technology and an old folklore story. Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the merging of synthetic sensory information into a user's perception of a real environment. AR enhances the view of the real world by augmenting the real environment with virtual objects to provide additional information to the users. In the current context of an AR storybook, the view of the physical book (or the real world) is enhanced using virtual objects (3D models, animations, text, and sounds) viewed over a computer display device. This paper describe the development of an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) design for providing an augmented reality book enhanced story reading & learning experience. It also highlights the design of an interactive physical book interface design of the augmented reality book. Findings from an initial observational study of the prototype are also presented.

Text features and preschool teachers’ use of print referencing

Storybook features, such as linguistic richness and print salience, potentially influence how a teacher references print. This study addressed two research questions: (1) to what extent does the linguistic richness and print salience of children's storybooks relate to teachers’ use of print referencing? and (2) to what extent is there an interplay between storybooks’ linguistic richness and print salience when predicting teachers’ use of print referencing? Fifty‐seven teachers participated in a whole‐group read‐aloud intervention while including print‐referencing behaviours. Researchers analysed teacher videos in order to (1) document teachers’ use of print referencing and (2) document the storybook's linguistic features and print salience. Results indicated that print salience is highly positively related to teachers’ use of print referencing. Also, the constructs of Print Salience Metric (PSM) and total words predicted teachers’ use of print referencing, and the interaction between PSM and mean length of sentence was significant for storybooks with moderate and high PSM scores.

Perancangan Buku Cerita Anak Pop-Up “Mari Berkebun”

The research purpose is to gather, collect, and analyze data which needed in creating children story book in pop-up technique, with visually interesting gardening theme to interact with children. The research method is by direct survey into the location, such as schools, children story bookstores, and libraries. Besides, the research will be through literature media like books, magazines and journals; also supported by references contain related topic, like internet. The expected result is that education and added value message could be sent and understood by the children through the story books. The children would acknowledge, love, and preserve nature through gardening. In conclusion, nowadays, visual communication media like story books with interesting visual could gain children’s interest. Therefore, by using pictured story book media in pop-up, it will facilitate the education process of introducing and preserving Mother Nature for children.

A Study on the changing aspect of same reader's appreciation through analysis of children's story book report - focus on times when the elementary school students and the college students

A Study on the changing aspect of same reader's appreciation through analysis of children's story book report - focus on times when the elementary school students and the college students

Images of Heaven and the Spiritual Afterlife: Qualitative Analysis of Children'S Storybooks about Death, Dying, Grief, and Bereavement

Many parents turn to picture books and storybooks to help explain issues surrounding death and dying to their young children. In addition to dealing with topics such as death, funerals, memories, and grief, a number of the books also mention the concept of heaven and what our loved ones might experience after they die. This article uses qualitative research methods to analyze 49 children's storybooks that touch on the existence of heaven or a spiritual afterlife. Results show that heaven is portrayed in a simplistic fashion, as a place high in the sky with bright lights, angels, and clouds. Even as heaven is presented in a relatively simple way, there are also patterned differences in depictions of the spiritual afterlife depending upon whether the decedent in the book was a family pet, a child, a parent, or a grandparent. The article concludes with a discussion of how these depictions of heaven and the afterlife might help young children cope with death-related grief.

The Development of shyness and social withdrawal

Part 1. Introduction. R. J. Coplan, K. H. Rubin, Social Withdrawal and Shyness in Childhood: History, Theories, Definitions, and Assessments. Part 2. Constructs and Conceptual Approaches. L. A. Schmidt A. H. Buss, Understanding Shyness: Four Questions and Four Decades of Research. W. R. Crozier, Shyness and the Development of Embarrassment and the Self-conscious Emotions. R. J. Coplan, M. Weeks, Unsociability and the Preference for Solitude in Childhood. N. A. Fox, B. C. Reeb-Sutherland, Biological Moderators of Infant Temperament and its Relation to Social Withdrawal. Part 3. Personal and Interpersonal Processes. P. D. Hastings, J. N. Nuselovici, K. H. Rubin, C. S. L. Cheah, Shyness, Parenting, and Parent-child Relationships. K. H. Rubin, J. Bowker, H. Gazelle, Social Withdrawal in Childhood and Adolescence: Peer Relationships and Social Competence. J. B. Asendorpf, Long-Term Development of Shyness: Looking Forward and Looking Backward. Part 4. Contexts. M. Ann Evans, Language Performance, Academic Performance, and Signs of Shyness: A Comprehensive Review. X. Chen, Shyness-inhibition in Childhood and Adolescence: A Cross-cultural Perspective. B. H. Schneider, Y. Amichai-Hamburger, Electronic Communication: Escape Mechanism or Relationship-building Tool for Shy, Withdrawn Children and Adolescents? R. J. Coplan, K. Hughes, H. C. Rowsell, Once Upon a Time There Were a Blushful Hippo and a Meek Mouse: A Content Analysis of Shy Characters in Young Children's Storybooks. Part 5. Clinical Research, Practice, and Treatment. R. M. Rapee, Temperament and the Etiology of Social Phobia. M. P. Mychailyszyn, J. S. Cohen, J. M. Edmunds, S. A. Crawley, P. C. Kendall, Treating Social Anxiety in Youth.

The Environment and Its Place in Children's Picture Story Books

Children receive many messages about real world concepts from picture story books. In Turkey, there is not enough research and literature about the available picture story books which include environmental themes, concepts and motifs. The aim of this research is to examine the environmental themes in picture story books, for 2-12 year-old children, published in Turkey. Quantitative research methods were used in this descriptive study. Eighty picture story books published between 1995 and 2010 were selected and evaluated. A Book Review Form developed by the researchers was used to evaluate the books. According to the analysis results, in general, 80 percent of the books have the environment theme as a main topic in their contents. These books, in particular, contain topics on tidiness (7.5 percent), seasons (3.8 percent), nature and nature concepts (22.5 percent) and the importance of the water (2.5 percent). Environment related concepts were found in picture books for ages six and over; the main figures in the books were animals and humans. As a result of the study, it is recommended that preschool children's picture story books should have environmental concepts as well.

Práticas de narrativas escritas em estudantes do ensino fundamental

Promotion of a written narratives production program in the third grade of an Elementary School. To analyze two written narrative practice proposals in order to verify which resources are more efficient in benefitting the textual productions of third grade Elementary School students. Sixty students were selected from two third grade groups of a public Elementary School in São Paulo (Brazil). For the analysis, students were divided into two groups (Group A and Group B). Fourteen children's storybooks were used. In Group A, the story was orally told by the researchers in a colloquial manner, keeping the narrator role and the original structure proposed by the author. In Group B, the story was fully read. The book was projected onto a screen and read aloud so the students could follow the reading and observe the corresponding illustrations. Voice changing resources in the characters' dialogues were used. In the overall comparison, statistically significant results were found for moment (initial and final assessments) and for interaction between groups. It was observed that both groups presented substantial development from initial to final assessment. The Written Narratives Promotion Program based on the shared reading of children's storybooks constituted a more effective strategy than telling the stories using a single reader.

Maestro Mateo (review)

Reviewed by: Maestro Mateo María Fernandez Babineaux González Viaña, Eduardo. Maestro Mateo. Lima: Ediciones SM, 2009. Pp. 128. ISBN 978-612-4040-05-4. Fiction and Film González Viaña is a prolific Peruvian author who has published more than a dozen books and critical articles as well as stories and novels that explore reality and a wide variety of social, political, and philosophical issues. His latest book for adults, Vallejo en los infiernos (2009), narrates the imprisonment of one of Latin America's most influential poets, César Vallejo. Maestro Mateo is González Viaña's first children's storybook. Maestro Mateo recounts the childhood of the main character, twenty-nine-year-old Martín, on his return to his hometown in Northern Perú. Upon his arrival he finds that his beloved pet dog, Mateo, has been mortally injured in an accident. The narration time oscillates between the past and the present. This stylistic recourse triggers Mateo and Martín's regression in time, where both encounter a number of situations that explore certain philosophical issues. The book is divided into sixteen chapters. Throughout his travels, Martín questions established truths about life, death, and the idea of eternal life. Early on, in chapter 2, González Viaña [End Page 515] mentions Dante's The Divine Comedy, and the discussion between Martín and his deceased grandfather about heaven, hell, and purgatory parallel Dante's Divine Comedy dialogues with the dead. Martín's conversations with the barber, the blind fisherman, and Soledad in chapters 6, 7, and 9 raise the question of the brevity of life; after these encounters the image and environment of each interlocutor vanish in the air, just like a mirage or a life dissolved and recovered only in memories: "Todo se borró" (59). One leitmotiv in the book is the question about death. Martín's memories keep his deceased relatives and friends alive. His dream reenacts episodes of his life and makes them assume reality one more time in his mind. The story's image as a dream involves Calderonian undertones as in La vida es sueño, embodied in the dying dog, Mateo. In chapter 4, Martín's father calls Mateo "the ghost dog" (perro fantasma) since he is only seen by Martín. Mateo, the text suggests, is the protagonist's invention to enable Martín to relive the past. Martín's life/dream is enriched by these encounters. In chapters 7–10, 12, and 13, the idea of the story as Martín's dream is more patent, particularly in chapter 7, where the conversation between Martín and the blind Tejada is focused on the idea that life is a dream of a blind person, or a mirror. Blindness in this sense is a metaphor for the lack of ability to examine the inner self and reality: "El futuro se te hace más claro con los ojos cerrados" (63). The repeated reference to mirrors in chapters 7, 8, and 14 contributes to the idea of quest. The mirror also constitutes an illustrative and characteristic symbol of physical and emotional displacement. It is a placeless dimension in which one wants to see oneself. Martín, however, encounters only virtual spaces similar to those found in a dream. Chapters 11 through 13 introduce Martín's life in the United States as an illegal immigrant. This part of the book seems somewhat out of place. Its only relation to the rest of the theme is the personal quest represented by the protagonist's trip to the North. Even though there is a slight connection between this topic and the rest of the story, it seems that it is introduced without much transition and diminishes the metaphorical meaning of the metaphysical journey. The three final chapters reinforce the idea of the story as somebody's dream, or a dream of a dying person/dog. In chapter 15 the voyage ends. Mateo disappears in the middle of the forest, where he later is found lying on the ground, dead. Martín describes Mateo's eyes and skin as "un espejo negro" (121). The scene...