Description
Book SynopsisChildren's literature is a contested terrain, as is multicultural education. Taken together, they pose a formidable challenge to both classroom teachers and academics. Rather than deny the inherent conflicts and tensions in the field, in Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children's Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors, Maria José Botelho and Masha Kabakow Rudman confront, deconstruct, and reconstruct these terrains by proposing a reframing of the field. Surely all of us children, teachers, and academics can benefit from this more expansive understanding of what it means to read books. Sonia Nieto, From the Foreword
Critical multicultural analysis provides a philosophical shift for teaching literature, constructing curriculum, and taking up issues of diversity and social justice. It problematizes children's literature, offers a way of reading power, explores the complex web of sociopolitical relations, and deconstructs taken-for-granted assumptions about language,
Trade Review
"This book is particularly useful for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers interested in designing curriculum for reading children’s literature with a sociopolitical context in mind….By thoughtfully integrating both classroom practice and theory across the book, Botelho and Rudman equip readers with valuable reading strategies to "guide children in reading dominant discourses of race, class, and gender and identify how ideology is rendered in the materials they read" (p. 94)."--Language Arts
Table of ContentsForeword, Sonia Nieto
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 The Metaphors We Read By: Theoretical Foundations
Chapter 2 The Historical Construction of Children’s Literature
Chapter 3 Reading Literacy Narratives
Chapter 4 Deconstructing Multiculturalism in Children’s Literature
Chapter 5 Theorizing Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature
Chapter 6 Doors to the Diaspora: The Social Construction of Race
Chapter 7 Leaving Poverty Behind: The Social Construction of Class
Chapter 8 Genres as Social Constructions: The Intertextuality of Children’s Literature
Chapter 9 Cinderella: The Social Construction of Gender
Chapter 10 Shock of Hair: The Endurance of Hair as a Cultural Theme in Children’s Literature
Chapter 11 Teaching Critical Multicultural Analysis
Further Dialogue with Mingshui Cai, Patrick Shannon, and Junko Yokota
APPENDICES
Appendix A Children’s Book Awards
Appendix B Children’s Book Publishers
Appendix C Power Continuum: How Power is Exercised
Appendix D Critical Multicultural Analysis
Appendix E The Publishing Practices of the Mexican American Migrant Farmworker Text Collection
Appendix F Children’s Literature Journals
Appendix G Online Resources
