Table of Contents

Part 1. Understanding Literature and the Child Reader.                                                            

1. Children’s Books in Children’s Hands.

2. Literary Elements of Children’s Literature.                                                                                  

3. The Child Reader Responds to Literature.                                                                                   

4. Literature Representing Diverse Perspectives.                                                                           

Part 2. Exploring the Genres of Children’s Literature.                                                              

5. Picture Books.                                                                                                                                  

6. Traditional Literature.                                                                                                                      

7. Poetry for Children.                                                                                                                         

8. Contemporary Realistic Fiction.                                                                                                    

9. Historical Fiction.                                                                                                                             

10. Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction.                                                                                        

11. Informational Books and Biography.                                                                                          

Part 3. Creating the Literature-Based Classroom.                                                                      

12. Inviting Children into Literature: Classroom Libraries, Read Alouds, and Storytelling.

13. Encouraging Response to Literature.                                                                                         

Promotional Information

This highly lauded text, with a "reader-response" approach and extensive inclusion of culturally diverse literature, has been updated to include coverage of such important topics as technology in the classroom, visual literacy, and the influence of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2000 on reading instruction in the public schools. Framing the content within a perspective of cultural diversity, renowned authors Charlie Temple, Junko Yokota and Miriam Martinez take the reader inside the workings of children's literature, focusing on ways in which literature elicits responses from young readers, genre by genre and book by book. The text provides a full range of thoughtful and practical suggestions for sharing and exploring literature with children. Thus, there is a natural connection between the presentation and exploration of good books for children (including more than 2,000 annotations) and the rich repertoire of reader-response-based techniques. This connection prepares the reader not only to choose good literary works for children, but to understand their dynamics and be able to engage young readers.