Category: The Arts

Exploring Heart & Hope with Biographies: The 2024 CLA Expert Class

10/21/2024

By Mary Ann Cappiello, Sara K. Sterner, and Kathy Short

Saturday, November 23, 2024 from 5:45 PM - 7:00 PM EST Room 102 A, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

Official Session Link: Children’s Literature Assembly Expert Class: Exploring Heart & Hope with Biographies

The Children’s Literature Assembly (CLA) has sponsored a Master Class at the annual NCTE Convention since 1994. This guaranteed session provides K-12 teachers and teacher educators with the opportunity to gain insight about the use of children’s literature through interactions with leading scholars, authors, and illustrators in the field. In 2023 at our 30th Annual session, we debuted our new name: the Expert Class.

In collaboration with The Biography Clearinghouse, an affiliated project of The Children’s Literature Assembly, the 31st annual Expert Class, “Exploring Heart & Hope with Biographies,” showcases the many ways in which picturebook biographies can be used across the curriculum for a range of purposes. This is an exciting opportunity to expand engagement with biographies as well as increase participants' biography related repertoire in their classrooms.

The concept of “a biography clearinghouse” began at the 2018 NCTE convention in Houston, when author Barb Rosenstock asked what could be done to go beyond genre study and elevate the role of biography in classrooms across the curriculum. Ideas began to percolate amongst Barb, former members of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Committee, and fellow author Tonya Bolden, and while sheltering at home at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team created “The Biography Clearinghouse.” Readers of the CLA blog may already be familiar with the work that appeared here 2020-2023.

The Biography Clearinghouse believes that:

High-quality, well-written biographies are multidimensional and multi-layered. As students explore the ways in which the book operates, and the decisions the author and illustrator made, they also use the biographies as vehicles for learning about the world.
Because of the increasing diversity of subjects, biographies are one of our best tools for diversifying the curriculum K-8.
Biographies can infuse the language arts, science, social studies, math, and integrated arts curriculum with models of agency and perseverance.

To help facilitate this work in K-8 classrooms, the Clearinghouse created a three-part framework: Investigate, Explore, and Create.

This year’s class provides a unique opportunity for rich discussions about and experiences with picturebook biographies. After an initial introduction to the Investigate-Explore-Create framework, participants will rotate between four roundtables to experience activities and conversations rooted in each component. At one table, Barb Rosenstock and Scott Riley will focus on “Investigate,” and engage in conversation about the process of researching and writing biographies. Participants will “Explore” content and disciplinary thinking with Amina Chaudhri at one table and socio-emotional learning with Jenn Graff at another. At the fourth roundtable, Erika Thulin Dawes will engage attendees in the final part of the framework, “Create.”

We’ll conclude the session by sharing a Library Thing database of over 350 picturebook biographies (with tags)! This process will allow attendees to engage in dialogue about the power of biography and consider new ways to conceptualize how to bring the genre into their classes with more heart and hope. Everyone will leave the 2024 Expert Class filled with the wonder of biographies and ideas for new opportunities to bring biographies into the lives of children and tweens.

We are excited to share this biography party with you! While building connections and learning together, we’ll share some vegan and gluten-free snacks (it’s late afternoon, and everyone might be a bit peckish). The Expert Class will close with the awarding of biography-based door prizes to bring home along with your new ideas and expertise.

Mary Ann Cappiello, Sara K. Sterner, and Kathy Short serve as the 2024 CLA Expert Class Committee.

Mary Ann is a Professor of Language & Literacy at Lesley University
Sara is an Associate Professor of Elementary Education at Cal-Poly Humboldt University and a CLA Board Member
Kathy is a Professor of Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies at The University of Arizona and a CLA Board Member

Other CLA offerings during NCTE 2024

Looking Back with Biographies

12/18/2023

By The Biography Clearinghouse

As we come to the end of another calendar year, we reflect upon how much the world can change in just a few short months. Political turmoil, violence, and war threaten the lives of millions. Climate scientists tell us that 2023 was the hottest year on record. Devastating fires and floods ravaged cities, towns, and forests alike. These catastrophes may feel unique to our life experience, so it helps to remember that people before us have faced hardships too.

Again, we turn to biographies to learn from the people among us and those who came before us. What lessons in leadership can we find? How do artists, faith leaders, scientists, activists, educators, and others work towards goals? Handle setbacks? Cope with prejudice? Persevere while facing devastation? Work collaboratively to create change?

In this year-end blog entry, we share a few picture book biographies from 2022 and 2023 that were inspiring to us, as well as preview a 2024 biography.

With best wishes for peace in the New Year,

The Biography Clearinghouse Team

A Song for The Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington
by Carole Boston Weatherford & Rob Sanders, illustrations by Bryan McCray (November 2022, Henry Holt and Co.)

It takes a person with extraordinary skills to organize an event as tremendous as the 1963 March on Washington. Bayard Rustin was primed for this event from a young age and across the span of his life. In A Song for the Unsung, we learn that his grandmother instilled in him Quaker values, and the importance of civic engagement; that Rustin practiced civil disobedience by resisting racism; that he endured homophobia even among the civil rights activists beside whom he struggled; and that along with being dedicated to non-violent resistance, he was a talented singer who knew the power of music to move and inspire. The creators of this biography pay tribute to Bayard Rustin with reverential grace and beauty, rendering him simultaneously sturdy and vulnerable, amid gorgeous mixed media illustrations. In the classroom, A Song for the Unsung can inspire conversation about the qualities of leaders such as Rustin, the legacy of the march (documented in the backmatter), and protest music (while listening to the songs listed on each page).

Game of Freedom: Mestre Bimba and the Art of Capoeira
by Duncan Tonatiuh (October 2023, Abrams)

In Game of Freedom, Duncan Tonatiuh tells the story of Manuel Dos Reis Machado, or Mestre Bimba as he is best known, and his role in uplifting capoeira from a marginalized and persecuted practice to an internationally recognized artform. The book starts at the turn of the 20th century in Brazil’s state of Bahia during Bimba’s childhood, when it was illegal to play capoeira in public. Skillfully interweaving exposition within the book’s narrative arc, Tonatiuh describes capoeira as a form of artistic cultural expression combining “music, fighting, theatrics, and dance” with deep roots within the culture of the Black descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, and explicitly links the harassment of capoeiristas to racial prejudice. After learning to play capoeira as a teenager, Bimba began to teach others but bristled at the disrespect and continuing persecution of the practice. In what follows, Tonatiuh offers an informative unspooling of how social and political change are slowly built. Readers learn that, determined to change matters, Bimba developed a new capoeira style and established a school or academia for teaching it and participated in a series of challenge bouts that increased the game’s visibility. Bimba’s efforts, in combination with the opening of other academies and the development of other capoeira styles, helped shift the public’s perception of the game and led to its complete decriminalization in 1953. The book’s backmatter includes a glossary and a rich author’s note.

Utilizing his distinctive stylized illustration style, that is influenced by pre-Columbian art, Tonatiuh captures the beauty and the fluidity of capoeira and of the Brazilian historical contexts of Mestre Bimba’s life. Particularly poignant is the depiction of enslaved ancestors as reversed silhouettes in select illustrations of capoeiristas. Readers may notice some slight departures from Tonatiuh’s typical rendering in the shape of the characters’ ears, but most notably in the en face depiction of some of the capoeira players.

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller
by Breana McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison (January 2024, Dial/Penguin)

Throughout 2023, school and public librarians have served as guardians of free speech, putting their careers on the line to support young people’s access to diverse books. These librarians, to whom we owe so much, are part of a long line of librarian activists creating change for their communities and beyond. Augusta Baker was one such leader. Baker curated a list of Black book creators for the young people with whom she worked at the 135th Street Branch Library in Harlem, fostered the careers of many Black authors, from Virginia Hamilton to Walter Dean Meyers, and became the first Black coordinator of children’s services within the New York City Library System. Baker was also an author and storyteller in her own right, teaching storytelling at Columbia University and becoming “Storyteller in Residence” at the University of South Carolina. McDaniels’ writing moves, propelling readers forward through varied sentences, alliteration, and just enough information. Hamilton’s gorgeous mixed media collages, saturated in warm colors of yellow, orange, and green, envelop readers in the warmth of Baker’s presence in the library and in the classroom. Backmatter includes a timeline, author’s note, and citations list. Go Forth and Tell would be a wonderful read alongside picture book biographies of fellow New York City librarian, storyteller, and changemaker Pura Belpré such as Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré (Denise, 2019) and Pura’s Cuentos: How Pura Belpré Reshaped Libraries with her Stories (Pimentel 2021), and Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library (Weatherford, 2017).

Hope is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese American Poet Kahlil Gibran
by Cory McCarthy, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (July 2022, Candlewick)

Khalil Gibran believed and held on to the universals of love and togetherness as he navigated his life as an outsider traversing between cultures. He moved back and forth between his homeland of Lebanon, and Boston, in the United States. The seeds for his greatest work of writing, The Prophet, were sewn in his continuous back and forth between cultures. Actual pieces from this famous book, which has been translated into more than 40 languages, are woven into this story. The snippets offer readers a glimpse of how his life may have engendered and connected to his famous writings. It was his art and poetry which helped Khalil Gibran persevere through incredible challenges and helped him communicate his ideas across cultures. There is a good chance that students who have grown up with more than one culture will connect with his story. It may provide teachers an opportunity to introduce students to some of Khalil Gibran’s work and dig in more and could invite students to communicate some of the larger feelings and ideas in their lives through poetry and art, much like he did.

Tiny Jumper: How Tiny Broadwick Created the Parachute Rip Cord
by Candy Dahl, illustrated by Maithili Joshi (October 2023, Little Bee Books)

Born as a “tiny” baby, but with tremendous courage, Tiny Broadwick was the inventor of the parachute rip cord and named the “First Lady of Parachuting.” Despite enduring embarrassing stunts like dressing up as a baby in order to do what she loved, Tiny knew she belonged in the air and took action to make her dreams a reality. After establishing herself as a prolific hot air jumper, Tiny persevered and entered a world where no woman had gone before- parachuting from airplanes. In Tiny Jumper, Dahl and Joshi show what determination, bravery, and unique interests can accomplish. Joshi’s dynamic illustrations and the incorporation of quotes from Tiny Broadwick throughout the running text bring this incredible woman’s story to life. Tiny Jumper inspires readers to follow their passions, against all odds, even when they seem up in the clouds.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrap the World Cover

Christo and Jean Claude Wrap the World
by G. Neri, illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle (March 2023, Candlewick)

One of the greatest gifts artists offer humanity is the invitation to see the world in new ways. This is certainly the case with environmental artists Christo and Jean-Claude, the subjects of a new picture book written by G. Neri and illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle. Imagine walking through a city and suddenly noticing a car or even a giant building completely wrapped in fabric or finding a brightly colored floating path from a lakeshore to an island, where none had been the day before. These projects and more are featured by Neri who employs a constructed dialogue between the two artists to convey their life stories, their unique installations, and the goals that guided their public art making. Haidle’s mixed media illustrations match the playful creative nature of the artists’ collaboration, incorporating frames, speech bubbles, and marvelous renderings of the oversize and surprising works of art. Helpful back matter includes additional details about the married couple’s life stories, a note about the author’s sources and how the dialogue was composed, and ‘fun facts’ about the art. This engaging biography compels consideration of important questions such as: What is art? Who owns art? Who experiences art? Can art be temporary? How does art impact our lives?

The Biography Clearinghouse is a website aiming "to support educators in sharing biographies with young people." The site includes several resources, including a framework for teaching with biographies, interviews with biography authors and illustrators, and a portfolio of book entries. Recent entries:

Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin

A Life of Service: The Story of Tammy Duckworth by Christina Soontornvat,
Illustrated by Dow Phumiruk

The Biography Clearinghouse Team is comprised of book creators and educators of different levels.

Winter Hiatus Announcement

Teaching and Learning Opportunities with Make Meatballs Sing

5/30/2022

By Denise Dávila on Behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Regarded as The Rebel Nun, the Pop Art Nun, and Andy Warhol's Kindred Spirit, Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986) was a member of the Immaculate Heart Community of Los Angeles, California. She created multimodal art prints that were social commentaries on poverty, injustice, and war. As the artist of "The Rainbow Swash" (1971), the largest copyrighted rainbow in the world, and the designer of US Postal Service's best selling "Love Stamp” (1985), Sister Corita also used her art and her voice to promote the kind of hope, love, and kindness that overcomes barriers and unites people.

In the highly acclaimed picturebook biography Make Meatballs Sing: The Life and Art of Corita Kent (2021, Enchanted Lion Books), author Matthew Burgess and illustrator Kara Kramer engage readers in a multimodal exploration of an extraordinary person’s life and legacy that resulted in nearly “800 serigraph editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions” according to The Corita Art Center of Los Angeles, CA. Learn more about Corita Kent at: www.corita.org.

The Biography Clearinghouse entry for Make Meatballs Sing includes and interview with Matthew Burgess and several recommendations for working with the book. Below is an excerpt of the teaching ideas in the entry.

Free Curriculum Guide

Using Viewfinders

Sister Corita Kent authored provocative multimodal compositions that were inspired by looking closely at ordinary objects and were imbued with intertextual meanings. As suggested in Make Meatballs Sing, much of her work began by focusing her attention on specific elements and blocking out others. She employed cardboard viewfinders with her students as tools for developing the skill of looking. These next activities build upon the use of viewfinders in the classroom. They are adapted from the Make Meatballs Sing Curriculum Guide.

If you have 1 - 2 hours

Make and Use Viewfinders
Invite students to make viewfinders, like those Sister Corita Kent asked her students to create, from everyday materials like recycled cardboard, heavy paper, or cardstock. Encourage students to use their finders to examine things in their classrooms, schools, homes, neighborhoods, and other venues. Take a walking field trip in the vicinity of the school to take a closer look and find unexpected surprises. After returning to the classroom, invite students to write about what they noticed and to discuss their experiences in looking and seeing in a different way.

If you have 1 - 2 days

Develop a Scavenger Hunt
Invite students to develop a scavenger hunt for another looking tour. Welcome them to generate ideas for their types of objects, shapes, attributes, or other elements they should look on the tour. For example, students might search for things that are green, billowy, jagged, smooth, angular, etc. Encourage students to bring a sketchbook to capture the images they find during the scavenger hunt. Alternatively, they could use digital cameras to document their findings. Upon returning to the classroom, encourage students to identify their favorite "find" from the hunt and to contribute it to a class collage. Students could collaborate in the creation of a visual patchwork akin with the art collage that appears on the back jacket of Make Meatballs Sing.

If you have 1 - 2 weeks

Create a Multimodal Composition for Screen Painting
Invite students to use their findings from their scavenger hunts to create multimodal compositions that incorporate images and texts. Present an array of Sister Corita’s prints as models. Encourage students to incorporate epigraphs or quotes from texts that are meaningful to them. Alternatively and/or additionally, invite students to create images based on their looking exercises that could be used for a simple screen painting project. Several resources are available online for creating serigraphy with students. Here is one approach that uses embroidery frames.

Denise Dávila is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies children’s literature and researches the home literacy practices of families with young children in under-resourced communities.

Teaching and Learning Possibilities with Duncan Tonatiuh's "Soldier for Equality"

5/17/2022

By Erika Thulin Dawes and Xenia Hadjioannou on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

We close out the school year immersed in social strife and conflict. Our students are grappling both with big questions about humanity and substantial uncertainties about everyday life. Recent research describes rising mental health concerns for young people (Acheson, 2020; Cowie & Myers, 2021; Samji et al. 2022) and it’s not surprising that maintaining optimism is challenging in the context of war, a global pandemic, and climate change. As educators, we are seeking ways to provide our students with grounding and with hope. And we believe that biographies, life stories of inspiring people, can help to provide both an anchor and inspiration. Our latest Biography Clearinghouse entry features Duncan Tonatiuh’s picturebook biography Soldier for Equality: José de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War. Using his trademark illustrative style, digital collage inspired by Mixtec Pre-Columbian art, Tonatiuh describes the World War I experiences of ‘Luz’; a teacher, activist, Texan, and a person with Mexican heritage.

Toniatiuh’s biography of José de la Luz Sáenz is a powerful narrative of the transformative power of literacy. Luz’s education and multilingualism were instrumental in his life trajectory; his knowledge allowed him to navigate the battlefield safely, keeping him out of the trenches and instead in a fortified command post for the intelligence service. He developed his skills in organizing while teaching English to Mexican American soldiers. And upon his return to teaching when the war was over, he turned his outrage over unequal schooling for Mexican American children into activism, establishing the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an organization that helped to end the segregation of Latinx children from white schools.

In our Biography Clearinghouse entry, we provide an interview with Duncan Tonatiuh and a collection of teaching ideas to support student exploration of Soldier for Equality. These teaching ideas encourage students to consider the transformative power of literacy and the generative power of community organizing and activism. They include: an exploration of translanguaging and theme development in picturebooks; a history of and contemporary look at the experience of minoritized populations in the United States army; a call to allyship to counter bullying; a visual literacy exercise exploring traditional artistic motifs; and a tribute to teacher activists.

Below is an excerpt of the teaching ideas in the Biography Clearinghouse entry for Soldier for Equality: José de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War:

Social Justice Concerns in Personal Lives and Society

Throughout his life, Luz identified injustices levied against Mexican Americans, and engaged in purposeful actions to work against these injustices and promote equity. In Soldier for Equality, readers encounter several instances of prejudice and discrimination against Luz, because of his status as a Mexican American. Readers also get to see purposeful actions Luz is taking to fight against these injustices.

As a class, create parallel lists of (a) instances of prejudicial treatment Luz encountered and (b) purposeful actions he took to work against those injustices and bring about equality and fair treatment.

At the micro/personal level: Invite students to locate instances of prejudicial treatment and unfairness in their daily lives. Are there certain people who are persistently teased, gossiped about, called names, bullied, or excluded? What would be some specific purposeful actions they could take to work against those patterns of mistreatment and exclusion?
At the macro/social level: Invite students to locate instances of prejudicial treatment and injustice in modern society. What are some aspects of modern society where unjust treatment is still an issue? Who is taking purposeful action to combat these injustices? What actions are they taking? Depending on the age of the students and on the time available, this can lead to inquiry projects into the lives of modern day activists and/or the work of social action organizations such as LULAC and the NAACP.

RECENT ENTRIES

Teachers as Activists

If you have two hours…	If you have two days…	If you have two weeks…
Read or reread Soldier for Equality: José de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War and ask students to make note of the meaning that education, language, and reading and writing had in his life. Record students' thoughts on a two column chart with one column labeled ‘claims’ and the second column labeled ‘evidence from the book.’ Next, pair students up, asking students to interview each other about the roles of language and literacy in their lives. Prior to conducting the interviews, brainstorm a list of questions to ask. Questions could include: What languages do you speak? What language are spoken in your family? In your community? What does it mean to you to be bilingual? Why is education important to you? What do you hope to achieve through education? What do you read and why do you read? What do you hope to learn and/or achieve by reading? What do you write and why do you write? What do you hope to create and/or achieve through writing?	The text set outlined below features the life stories of teachers who also served as activists. Divide students into small groups, each group responsible for reading one of the picturebooks listed below. Brown, M. (2010). Side by side: the story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez = Lado a lado: la historia de Dolores Huerta y Cesar Chavez. Ill. by J. Cepeda. Rayo. Halfmann, J. (2018). Midnight teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and her secret school. Ill. by L. Ladd. Lee & Low. Harvey, J.W. (2022). Ablaze with color: A story of painter Alma Thomas. Ill. by Loveis Wise. HarperCollins. Rhuday-Perkovich, O. (2018). Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins. Ill. by J. Johnson. Seagrass Press. Wallace, S.N. & Wallace, R. (2020). The teachers march! How Selma’s teachers changed history. Ill. by C. Palmer. Calkins Creek. Provide each group with a graphic organizer on which to record notes about the subject of their biography. Students can record: the name, birth, and death dates of their subject; where their subject lived and worked; key achievements of their subject; challenges faced by their subject; beliefs about education held by their subject. To share their learning about these teacher activists with their classmates, ask each group to create and perform a monologue in the voice of their subject. The monologue should highlight the information captured in their graphic organizers.	As an extension of the text set exploration of teacher activists, engage students in a discussion of all the people that serve as teachers in their lives. In which settings do they learn beyond school? Who are the people who mentor, guide, and teach them in all the realms of their lives? Invite students to consider what they could compose, create, or make to honor and celebrate their teachers. Possible projects could include: Interviewing their teachers to create profiles honoring them Developing a forum for community members to publicly thank teachers who have made a meaningful difference in their lives (bulletin board in the school or local public library, social media campaign) Letter writing to thank significant teachers Establishment of a teacher recognition award with student developed award criteria

Citations

Acheson, R. (2020). Research digest: The impact of the covid-19 pandemic on child, adolescent, young adult, and family mental health. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 46(3), 429-440. https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2021.1912810

Cowie, H., & Myers, C. (2021). The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the mental health and well‐being of children and young people. Children & Society, 35(1), 62-74. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12430

Samji, H., Wu, J., Ladak, A., Vossen, C., Stewart, E., Dove, N., Long, D., & Snell, G. (2022). Review: Mental health impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on children and youth – a systematic review. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 27(2), 173-189. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12501

Erika Thulin Dawes is a Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University where she teaches courses in children’s literature and early childhood literacy and is the program director of the graduate Early Childhood Education program. Erika is a former chair of NCTE’s Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children.

Xenia Hadjioannou is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Harrisburg campus of Penn State University where she teaches and works with pre- and in-service teachers through various courses in language and literacy methodology. She is the Vice President and Website Manager of the Children's Literature Assembly, and a co-editor of The CLA Blog.

The Bonnie Campbell Hill National Literacy Leader Award
Call for Applications

Do you have a vision for a leadership initiative that stands to improve and enhance literacy teaching and learning ffor students and/or teachers? Consider applying for the 2022 Bonnie Campbell Hill National Literacy Leader Award.

A Lesson from Faith Ringgold about the Radical Power of the Picturebook

4/19/2022

By Jessica Whitelaw

Last week I was able to visit the long-awaited Faith Ringgold exhibit, American People, at the New Museum in New York. Many know Ringgold from her book Tar Beach, but this retrospective - her first - features Ringgold as artist/organizer/educator and showcases paintings, murals, political posters, sculptures, and story quilts that span the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, critical feminism, and reach into the landscape of contemporary Black artists working today. After years of a relationship with the book version of Tar Beach, it was moving to stand in front of the original story quilt that the book is based on, this intimate everyday object upon which she wrote, painted, and stitched, to push the boundaries of white western art traditions and explore themes of gender, race, class, history, and social transformation.

Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach, 1988
Acrylic paint, canvas, printed fabric, ink, and thread
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Gift, Mr. and Mrs. Gus and Judith Leiber, 1988

But from an educator perspective, this important exhibit left out something important about the arts, access, and critical literacy. It didn’t pay much attention to the radical act of making this story quilt, and all of the ideas that it explores, available to young people in the form of another everyday object, the picturebook. In the book version of Tar Beach, narrator Cassie Louise Lightfoot, “only eight years old and in the third grade,” invites readers into an experience and conversation that the story quilt was asking museum audiences to consider. Cassie’s is a story of resistance and self-definition and an invitation through art and words, to encounter issues of class, race, place, history, and the future through what Ringgold has called a “fantastical sensibility.” Cassie’s story offers a word/picture narrative marked by sharp observation and critique but also beauty and humanization.

I left the exhibit thinking about how Tar Beach provides an object lesson in how the arts can support critical literacy. With its imprint on the social and cultural imagination of so many, Tar Beach reminds us that we can look to the humble picturebook to find sources of radical power. In these everyday objects that can traverse home, school, and everyday life, we can seek out art and words to explore issues of cultural significance, often with an eye toward joy and justice at the same time.

So how can we harness the power and possibility of the arts that can be found in picturebooks? How can we invite and encourage deep critical literacy and inquiry?

Below is a protocol adapted from the steps of art criticism that can be used to support students in developing picturebook practices that engage critical literacy and inquiry. It can be used with Tar Beach, whose content is both accessible and complex enough to use with both younger and older readers. But it offers a flexible participation structure that teachers can use with any picturebook that has rich visual/verbal content. Like most protocols, it works best as a flexible tool not a prescriptive device.

Picturebook Read Aloud Protocol

Adapted from the steps of art criticism, this protocol provides a framework for sharing picturebooks that aims to cultivate a critical practice. It guides the reader through a process of looking closely to notice what they might otherwise overlook and to use what they know about words and pictures to analyze and make sense of what they see. The stages offer a helpful way to support students of any age through a process and unfolding of critical engagement that relies upon attention to specific details in the work to guide thoughtful engagement and response. The protocol is intended as a facilitation guide for teachers. Wording should be adjusted for the audience/age of the reader.

LOOK CLOSELY

Take inventory. Examine the cover of the book, the dust jacket and the endpapers. Look closely at the typography, the pictures, the words. Describe what you see and notice in detailed, descriptive language.

ANALYZE

Use what you know about picturebooks and design to analyze the words and the pictures. Look at the colors, the lines, shapes, textures. Try to determine the media the artist used to make the pictures. Examine the style of the language the writer used. Look for patterns, repetition, rhyme. Draw attention to the picturebook as a unique form of the book that relies on the synergy of the words and the pictures by asking how the words and pictures work together: What do the words tell you that the pictures do not? What do the pictures tell you that the words do not? What happens in between the openings?

QUESTION

Use questions together to probe and deepen. Stop and ask questions about pages that are visually and/or verbally rich or complex. What sense do you make of this page? How do you know that? Why do you think the author or illustrator chose to do it the way they did? What questions does the page raise for you, make you wonder about?

CRITIQUE

What do you think the author/illustrator is trying to do or say or show in this book? Who do we see in this book? Who is the audience for this book? Who do you think should read it? Whose voice/voices do we hear? Who do we not hear from? What ideas do you have about the topic/topics in the book? What do you think the storyteller in this book believes or thinks or wants us to know? What questions do you have about what the storyteller is saying and showing? What genre/category does the book belong to? What other work has this author and/or illustrator created and how is it similar to or different from this book?

RESPOND

After having looked closely at the book, what does this text mean to you? What does the story make you wonder about? How could this story mean different things? To you? To different readers?

Additional Teaching Resources for Tar Beach

Watch Faith Ringgold read Tar Beach

Create a paper story quilt

Listen to Faith Ringgold’s favorite songs

Explore a Faith Ringgold Text Set:

We Came to America
Cassie’s Word Quilt
The Invisible Princess
Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky
Harlem Renaissance Party
If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks
Henry Ossawa Tanner: His Boyhood Dreams Come True

For Older Readers: Watch the Ted Talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality

Examine how Tar Beach explores identity and power at several intersections. Examine other artworks of Faith Ringgold such as her For the Women’s House mural at the Brooklyn Museum or her America series of paintings on the artist’s website

Read Ringgold’s feminist artist’s statement from her memoir, We Flew Over the Bridge. Look for themes that connect across and examine how the different art forms allow the themes to be explored differently. Read other excerpts from We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, and examine how ideas from her life take shape in Tar Beach. Consider the different forms of visual and verbal storytelling that she employs in her work and how ideas are conveyed through different modalities in each.

Jessica Whitelaw is faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in the Graduate School of Education and a member of CLA.

The CLA Blog

By Mary Ann Cappiello, Sara K. Sterner, and Kathy Short

Other CLA offerings during NCTE 2024

By The Biography Clearinghouse

A Song for The Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washingtonby Carole Boston Weatherford & Rob Sanders, illustrations by Bryan McCray (November 2022, Henry Holt and Co.)

Game of Freedom: Mestre Bimba and the Art of Capoeira by Duncan Tonatiuh (October 2023, Abrams)

Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller by Breana McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison (January 2024, Dial/Penguin)

Hope is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese American Poet Kahlil Gibranby Cory McCarthy, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (July 2022, Candlewick)

Tiny Jumper: How Tiny Broadwick Created the Parachute Rip Cordby Candy Dahl, illustrated by Maithili Joshi (October 2023, Little Bee Books)

Christo and Jean Claude Wrap the Worldby G. Neri, illustrated by Elizabeth Haidle (March 2023, Candlewick)

Winter Hiatus Announcement

By Denise Dávila on Behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Using Viewfinders

If you have 1 - 2 hours

If you have 1 - 2 days

If you have 1 - 2 weeks

By Erika Thulin Dawes and Xenia Hadjioannou on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse

Social Justice Concerns in Personal Lives and Society

Teachers as Activists

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The Bonnie Campbell Hill National Literacy Leader AwardCall for Applications

By Jessica Whitelaw

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