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From the 2020 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts

8/25/2020

 

BY JEANNE GILLIAM FAIN

Reflecting on the 2020 NCBLA List, our seven-member committee believes in the influence of each individual book and the power of the books grouped together to offer another layer of meaning. After reviewing over 400 titles with 2019 copyright dates appropriate for readers in K-8th grade, the members of the 2020 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts Committee met online to decide upon our final list of 30 titles. We read books multiple times and learned from each other as we carefully considered the craft of each book.
In this post, I am going to highlight two picture book biographies from the 2020 NCBLA List: Soldier for Equality: Jose´de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War (2019) and Feed your mind: A story of August Wilson (2019).

Tonatiuh, D. (2019). Soldier for Equality: Jose´de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War. New York, NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers, unpaged.

Soldier for Equality Cover
Jose´de La Luz Sáenz starts his young life by fighting bullies as they call him names for being Mexican despite being born in the United States and his “abuela” arrived in the United States more than “twenty-five years ago.” His war experiences emitted mixed responses in terms of equity from his fellow soldiers as his experiences included challenging injustices with particular officers that were his “countrymen.” This book is impeccably researched and many quotes were used from specific pages of Luz’ diary. Duncan’s original style inspired by Pre-Columbian art conveyed his digital and collage-type illustrations vividly add to the powerful voice in this story.

Bryant, J. (2019). Feed your mind: A story of August Wilson. (C. Chapman, Illus.). New York, NY: Abrams Book for Young Readers, unpaged.

Feed your Mind Cover
Jen Bryant's Website
August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittel Jr., learned to understand the power of language and reading. He grew up with the mantra, “If you can read, you can do anything-you can be anything.” This mantra moved him to overcome racial prejudice and intense bullying. This book is written in two acts and in verse. There is an extensive author’s note about research process and places where the spoken lines were based on what the author thought August might say.

Golden Line Strategy & Flip Grid

Both picturebooks feature high-quality language and there are many golden lines, lines that really resonate with the reader, within these texts. The golden line strategy involves the reader choosing a specific line from the picture book biography that causes the reader to pause, ponder, reflect, and/or question the text.

The line should purposely connect with the reader. Readers can choose the golden line from the text and post responses on Flipgrid.

Using flipgrid, the reader can record the reading of the golden line. The teacher can post invitational questions on the flipgrid. Readers can create their own response or answer one of the invitational questions and post on flipgrid. Readers can listen to their peers' golden line responses and post a response back.


Invitational Questions:
  • Why did you choose this golden line?
  • What did this golden line make you think about?
  • Did you make a personal connection with the line of text?
  • What did you learn from this golden line?
  • What you notice something in particular about the line in terms of the genre of the text?
  • What specific words stood out to you and why did these words stand out?
  • What inspired you in this golden line?
Read picture book, aske students to reflect on sections, readers choose a golden line. readers post on Flipgrid, peers offer responses
Golden Lines & Flip Grid Strategy

References

Bryant, J. (2019). Feed your mind: A story of August Wilson. (C. Chapman, Illus.). New York, NY: Abrams Book for Young Readers, unpaged.

Tonatiuh, D. (2019). Soldier for Equality: Jose´de la Luz Sáenz and the Great War. New York, NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers, unpaged.


Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts

You can check out the complete 2020 Notables List (2019 copyright) on our Notables page.

There you can also access the NCBLA lists from previous years.

Meet the Notables Committee

Jeanne Gilliam Fain is a professor in the College of Education at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the current Chair of  the 2020 NCBLA. Her research examines critical visual analysis in global children’s literature, critical literacy and linguistically and culturally diverse children’s and adolescents’ literature. Jeanne can be reached at jgfain@lipscomb.edu
 
Vera Ahiyya is a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn, New York.  She has been teaching for 14 years and in three different states. Vera has a passion for sharing books that feature diverse characters and voices. She shares her passion for children's literature on social media and through presenting to educators nationwide. Vera can be reached at thetututeacher@gmail.com.

Elizabeth M. Bemiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Educational Leadership at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, FL.  Her research examines teacher identity construction, effective literacy teaching practices, and critical literacy practices with young children. She can be reached at ebemiss@uwf.edu.

S. Rebecca Leigh is professor in the Department of Reading and Language Arts at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. Her research interests include multiple ways of knowing, writing, and teacher education. Her current research examines how access to art serves as a pathway to literacy learning and development and its impact on students as writers. Leigh can be reached at leigh23@oakland.edu
Janine M. Schall is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Bilingual and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She teaches literacy courses and conducts research in the areas of multicultural literature and children’s literature with LGBT characters. Janine can be reached at janineschall@utrgv.edu.
 
Jennifer Summerlin is an Assistant Professor of Reading at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research examines construction of knowledge among preservice teacher candidates, supporting literacy best practices within the P-12 classroom, and reading intervention. She can be reached at jsummerl@uab.edu.

Kathryn Will
is an Assistant Professor of Literacy at the University of Maine Farmington.  Her research interests include clinically based teacher education, new teacher mentoring, and rural education.   Her current research looks at the literacy practices of future teachers and how their engagement with children's and young adult literature impacts their attitudes about reading.  Kathryn may be reached at
kathryn.will@maine.edu.
Jeanne Gilliam Fain is s a professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and Chair of the 2020 Notables Committee.

Post Removed

8/22/2020

 
The Tuesday, August 18th blog post has been removed at the request of its authors.

The Biography Clearinghouse: Creating, Crafting and Connecting

8/11/2020

 

BY MARY ANN CAPPIELLO & BARB ROSENSTOCK on behalf of The Biography Clearinghouse

People are hardwired to connect to other people. From birth, research tells us that babies prefer human faces over all other images. People are also hardwired for story. For tens of thousands of years, we humans created stories and listened to them as if our lives depended on it. Often, they did. Story helps us process the present, connect to the past, envision the future; and reflect on broader cultural issues. Story developed along with language itself.

Stories about people’s lives are called biographies. With this post, we’re introducing a new initiative to explore the potential of the powerful genre of biography to connect students with the broader world.

The Biography Clearinghouse, endorsed by the Children’s Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English, developed out of casual conversations about biography’s underused potential. We are an expanding set of educators, authors, students and interested readers working together to use biography to champion diversity, explore history, model agency and support perseverance. 

Biography Clearinghouse Framework

Picture
This fall, we’ll be launching a website to support educators as they explore the ways the craft of biography can connect students—with the past, with the future, and with each other.

Our core principles express the belief that biographies are uniquely positioned to accomplish a variety of classroom goals. They can be read for pleasure and academic learning. They can evoke student wonder and prompt questions. They can address real issues in society and help students build empathy and know that they are not alone.

Our principles affirm that biographies can support Literacy, Content Area/Disciplinary Literacy and Socio-Emotional Learning. A fuller articulation of the principles can be found at our Biography Clearinghouse Principles document.

Based on these principles, we constructed a framework for discussing biographies and their role in the curriculum. We envision this as a practical guide for supporting educators as they consider how to leverage the potential of biographies to support their students’ learning across the curriculum. We also aspire to develop resources and recommendations for working with particular books that can be readily adopted and adapted by teachers in their particular teaching contexts.

Though principles are important, we know our busy fellow educators find practical guidance necessary. This is certainly true now that the CoVid-19 pandemic has challenged all teachers, students and parents in unforeseen ways. We want this project framework and website to be a convenient resource for educators and students working in K-8 classrooms, whether virtually or in-person. We see the relationship between book creators, text, teachers, and students as interconnected and interdependent.

Explorations of how biography is constructed verbally and visually help enlighten students to the decisions made in the creative process, the ways in which books operate, and can provide mentorship for student work—written, visual or performance. Since high-quality, well-written life stories are multi-dimensional and multi-layered, their analysis can help students learn about our complex world—its flaws, discoveries, and potentials for change.

Biography Clearinghouse Founding Committee

Tonya Bolden
Mary Ann Cappiello
Erika Thulin Dawes
Jennifer Graff
Xenia Hadjioannou
Scott Riley
Barb Rosenstock
Courtney Shimek
Myra S Zarnowski

Initial Authors & Illustrators

Chris Barton
Tonya Bolden
Jen Bryant
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Barbara Kerley
Barb Rosenstock
Tanya Lee Stone
Don Tate
Carole Boston Weatherford
Biography Clearinghouse Principles Document
Biography Clearinghouse Framework Document
The Biography Clearinghouse website will address the process of investigating biographies, crafting biographies, and exploring content areas with biography. Biography creators will share their process, research, and motivations in writing and illustrating these complex works. Since real people advocate, solve, write, read, experiment, and create; we can use real people’s diverse life stories to explore all content areas: history, mathematics, language arts, science, and the arts. Biography gives students a way to see what is really possible in the world. Working with stories of the struggles and triumphs of accomplished people can ignite students’ own activism, agency, and perseverance.

You will hear from The Biography Clearinghouse via the CLA blog every three weeks this fall as we add new content such as book titles, author interviews, research artifacts and teaching materials. Additionally, to keep ourselves responsive to the unique challenges our classrooms face this year; we want to hear from you! We want you to join us as part of The Biography Clearinghouse initiative. We invite your help in crafting this new story—to use the connection to others inherent in diverse people’s lives to encourage curiosity, creativity and commitment in your students.
 
Please email thebiographyclearinghouse@gmail.com with your questions, ideas, and classroom dilemmas. Or, comment below if you’re reading this on Twitter or Facebook. We’d love to know how you’ve used real people’s stories in the past, and how you’d like to see them used them in the future. We invite your help in crafting this new story—to use the connection to others inherent in diverse people’s lives to encourage curiosity, creativity and commitment in your students. 

Barb Rosenstock is the author of many picture book biographies for children. Her books have been awarded Orbis Pictus and Sydney Taylor Honors, among many other awards. Otis and Will Discover the Deep, illustrated by Katherine Roy, won a SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and The Noisy Paint Box, illustrated by Mary Grandpré, was awarded a Caldecott Honor.

Mary Ann Cappiello teaches courses in children’s literature and literacy methods at Lesley University, blogs about teaching with children’s literature at The Classroom Bookshelf, a School Library Journal blog, and is a former chair of NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction K-8. 
Update 9/1/2020: Readers may also be interested in the post: Ideas for Change with Tonya Bolden’s Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Jennifer Graff and Courtney Shimek (on behalf of the Biography Clearinghouse)

The CLA Blog is Back as a Weekly Blog

8/4/2020

 

BY LAUREN AIMONETTE LIANG & XENIA HADJIOANNOU

As the days of August are marching on and the beginning of the 2020-21 school year is approaching, it is becoming increasingly clear that this will be another challenging year for students and educators of all levels. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is still looming large in our daily lives and our plans for working and learning with our students. In the absence of firm solutions for treatment and inoculation from the virus, and in the context of growing numbers of infections across the United States, schools are faced with complex and challenging decisions about how to pursue their mission in safe and academically robust ways. 

Our hope and intention here at the CLA Blog is to offer resources and support to educators as they plan for what is sure to be an extraordinary year of teaching and learning. We aspire to offer helpful ideas for sharing children’s literature with students through various instructional modes, as well as continue to maintain a focus on amplifying diverse voices, highlighting literary works representing diverse perspectives, and supporting an antiracist social justice agenda.

We are grateful to various CLA groups and individual CLA members for volunteering to contribute posts to the CLA Blog over the coming weeks. New posts will be published every Tuesday. We are delighted to announce that in Fall 2020 the blog will feature:

  • Posts from individual CLA members and CLA committees on a variety of topics. 
    • If you are interested in contributing a post, please read our Instructions to Authors document and email Lauren Aimonette Liang to sign up for an available date. We are especially interested this fall in highlighting the voices of our elementary and middle school teacher and librarian members. 
  • Notables in the Classroom: A series of posts by the Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts Award Committee highlighting some of our 2020 Notables.
  • Biography Clearinghouse: A series of posts from the Biography Clearinghouse team on incorporating biography into the curriculum.
Our thoughts are with you as you expertly handle the many new preparations, alongside frequent and often abrupt changes, to plans for this fall in your classrooms. We value the outstanding work that you do, and hope that you are able to stay safe during this challenging time.
Lauren Aimonette Liang is an associate professor at the University of Utah and the current president of CLA.
Xenia Hadjioannou is an associate professor at Penn State's Harrisburg campus and the webmaster of the CLA website.

    Authors:
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    Supporting PreK-12 and university teachers as they share children’s literature with their students in all classroom contexts.

    Disclaimer
    The opinions and ideas posted in the individual entries are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of CLA or the Blog Editors.

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    Xenia Hadjioannou
    Lauren Liang
    Liz Thackeray Nelson

    contribute to the blog

    Instructions to Authors

    If you are a current CLA member and you would like to contribute a post to the CLA Blog, please read the Instructions to Authors and email co-editor Liz Thackeray Nelson with your idea.


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