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.

For 27 years dedicated members of the Children’s Literature Assembly have served on the seven-member committee tasked with selecting 30 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts (NCBLA). While enthusiastic summaries of each title on the annual NCBLA list have been a highlight for readers of the Journal of Children’s Literature and Language Arts as well as for session attendees at the annual National Council of Teachers of English conference and Tucson Festival of Books, in coming months the instructional possibilities of selected NCBLA titles will now regularly feature on this blog. 

To launch this resource alongside the announcement of the 2024 NCBLA list, three current members Fran Wilson, a second-grade teacher in Madeira, Ohio and the 2024 NCBLA Chair, Patrick Andrus, a fourth-grade teacher in Eden Prairie, Minnesota and the 2025 NCBLA Chair, and Laura Hudock, an assistant professor of literacy and children’s literature at Framingham State University wish to pull back the so-called curtain to shed light on the selection process.

All titles on the annual NCBLA list are works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry penned for children in grades K-8 and published in the previous calendar year. These selected children’s books have to exemplify additional criteria, including

• have an appealing format*;
• be of enduring quality;
• meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written; and 
• meet one or more of the following criteria:
  • deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language;
  • demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style; and/or
  • invite child response or participation*.

With these criteria foremost on NCBLA committee members’ minds, we individually read and evaluate and then collaboratively vet each prospective book. 

The exemplary children’s books named to each NCBLA list are high-quality texts that promote language arts and offer a range of literacy-related instructional possibilities. For example,

There is something endlessly energizing about reading new things—whether it’s an anxiously-awaited release, a long-term tenant on your TBR-list, or the research of an emerging scholar (maybe we’re a little biased on that last one). Members of the CLA Student Committee are privileged to do just that: to read exciting books and write about all the exciting ways they can be used in classrooms to improve the lives and learning of our students. Much of our work as early career researchers highlights critical pieces of children’s literature that attend to the social, cultural, and political contexts of our real and literary worlds. We want to share a few recently published, award-winning books relevant to our doctoral research that highlight young peoples’ bravery and acts of resistance. All three are critical, impactful reads worth embedding in each of our classrooms in 2024.

I’m a huge fan of books by authors who share a lived reality with their characters. As a neurodivergent researcher, I strive to highlight middle grade novels that help to restory the perceptions of who neurodivergent people are (and who they’re allowed to be). There have been many fabulous authors in the past five years or so who have contributed books that do just that. But one author sticks out to me as an exceptional advocate for neurodivergent acceptance: Sally J. Pla. She’s an autistic middle grade author and the founder of A Novel Mind, a website that centers mental health and neurodiversity representation in children’s fiction. ANM has been a gold mine for my research. Not only does it feature a vibrant blog and a ton of educator resources, but it also has a database of over 1,150 children’s books featuring mental health and neurodiversity representation.

As a middle school teacher for ten years, I often utilized picturebooks to engage my students and to teach discrete skills, usually about grammar, and to illustrate writing techniques. These lessons had varying success—sometimes the 7th graders would be open to reading a picturebook, other times they rolled their eyes and refused to participate.

The most successful picturebooks that I ever brought into my classroom though had nothing to do with grammar or writing, they had to do with Anne Frank. I taught her diary to 6th graders who, unless they were readers themselves and had already discovered World War II fiction, had no knowledge of the Holocaust or how Jews were treated in the years preceding the war. My Anne Frank picturebook collection featured many books about Anne (there are a lot of them out there), but also books that explained significant parts of the war: the night of broken glass, Jewish resistance, children in concentration camps, children who also hid during the war, and many others.

Now, as a doctoral student in English education, I have come full circle to analyze the stories of Jewish female protagonists in YA novels about World War II, and representations of the Holocaust in picturebooks. Two of these picturebooks were published in 2023 and feature stories and information that our students need and can learn from. Both books were also just named Notable Books for a Global Society Award for 2024. As is fitting for a book about a traumatic historical event, both are nonfiction and have extensive back matter to explain the stories.

Utilizing both of these picturebooks in the classroom with older students can prep them for the heavier history or readings a teacher might soon introduce. They also provide picture evidence of hardships and bravery without being too macabre.

At the beginning of each school year, teachers flock to public and school libraries in search of familiar or new back-to-school books to read to classes as they welcome students to a new school year. There is no shortage of titles from which to choose. Typical displays in most libraries showcase dozens of choices. Many picture book series feature a well-known character going back to school. Froggy, the Pigeon, the Pout-Pout Fish, Llama Llama and Lola are just a few familiar characters who face their fears and find that school is a happy place. ​

​First, it is important to establish what constitutes notable verse novels for children. Our committee’s definition is:

• A narrative told predominantly in poetic forms, with strong poetic elements.
• The poetry forms and elements are integral to the telling of the story.
• Excellence in writing and emotional impact. We ask: does the poetry "create images, express feelings, and stir emotions" (Cullinan, Liang, and Galda, 2016)?
  

We look for purposeful and aesthetic uses of such poetic elements as metaphor and other figurative language, pattern, imagery, and evocative word choice. Verse novels often use free verse, but might also include other poetic forms, such as rhyming couplets, enjambment, concrete poems, personification, and rhythms that represent the voice of strong characters. 

The verse novels I present in this blog post certainly meet these criteria to heighten each protagonist’s encounter with adversity. An example is from Samira Surfs. Samira, her older brother, Khaled, and their parents are now living as unwanted refugees in Bangladesh, after escaping religious persecution in Burma (now called Myanmar). 

This excerpt expresses the power of poetry to convey this harrowing experience. Guidroz uses onomatopoeia, personification, strong imagery and word choice, metaphor, line breaks and stanzas to "create images, express feelings, and stir emotions.” 

​This book invites so many analytic and creative responses that will heighten students’ intentions for social justice. Here are some suggestions:
​

1. The teacher might photocopy each poem across the novel that describe the family’s escape from Burma. Reading across these poems, students then might bullet information they learned about Samira’s family’s life in Burma. This would create lively discussion. The teacher might then photocopy the first excerpt of the Author’s Note that explains this refugee crisis (page 404 to top of page 405). Students might then revise and elaborate their thinking.
2. The teacher might photocopy some poems that describe conditions that Samira and her family face as unwanted refugees in Bangladesh and do similar comparative work with the excerpt of the Author’s Note that describes these conditions (middle of page 405 to middle of page 406).
3. Similarly, the teacher might photocopy poems that describe Khaled, Samir and her friends learning to surf. Students might synthesize what they learned about surfing across these poems. They then might research the real-life empowerment of girls who learned to surf at Cox’s Bazar (the setting of this novel) using an online site such as The Surfer Girls of Cox’s Bazar. 
   

Here I turn to The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy (Dutro, 2019) for guidance. After reading this and other poems in the novel that focus on Amma’s illness, teachers might open invitations for students to share and write their own entries of times that they faced fear of illness or injury or hospitalization for themselves or loved ones that would open the vulnerable heart of literacy in the class community. These kinds of invitations are also possible for poems that describe the traumatic situations in Samira Surfs and The Lost Language. By making our classrooms sites of testimony and critical witness, we create “literacies of connection, of love, and of respect for the knowledge that comes from pain, from struggle, and toward the power of bringing that knowledge to learning” (p. 113).

I have just completed my position as chairperson of the NCTE Poetry and Verse Novels for Children Committee. Our list of notable poetry and verse novels that were published in 2021 as well as other information about the award can be found on the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children page.

In this blog post, I discuss three notable poetry books from this list that promote advocacy and provide lesson plan ideas to do with children. 

​The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics, poetry by Susan Hood, illust. by Christiane Engel (HarperCollins, 2021). ​

Looking out the window we begin to see the slight change in color of the fall foliage, a brisker feel to the air, and school busses carrying students to their not-so-new-normal classrooms.  Apples, pumpkins, and “Indian” corn are appearing in the grocery store aisles.  The gift of autumn is here. One highlight of this time of year is the NCTE Annual Conference held in November. Under “normal” circumstances, the Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast is held in person as part of that gathering. While we will not be able to meet in person this year, the CLA Breakfast will be offered as a live event during the conference. In anticipation of our session, we are sharing about some of the most prolific, wonderful Indigenous multiple award-winning storytellers from across the Four Directions.
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Cynthia Leitich-Smith (Muscogee Creek), Traci Sorell (Cherokee Nation), Michaela Goade (Tlingit), Carole Lindstrom (Metis), and Kevin Maillard (Seminole Nation) will make up this year’s Breakfast speaker panel. They will offer insight into their creative writing process, share their newest work, and offer some candid thoughts on how being Indigenous has strengthened their entire literature experience.

These storytellers celebrate #OwnVoices in the here and now. They offer counter stories to highlight the dynamism of Native American and Alaska Native communities for all ages. During a conversation with them in February 2021, we discussed the joys of reading and storytelling and reflected on the importance of celebrating the rich legacy of Native experiences that influence contemporary society. Native American, American Indian, or Indigenous peoples (terms used interchangeably) make up the 575+ federally recognized tribes and 200+ state-recognized tribes, much diversity exists across this Indigenous landscape in the United States. To celebrate this diversity, in this post, we will share with you the newest works from these amazing storytellers, including samples of teacher guides, links to audio-books, artwork, and other storytelling materials to share both in and outside of the classroom.

​Teachers strive to create an environment for children that is all-embracing because they know that when children feel accepted, they will be happy, healthy, and confident members of society. This spirit of inclusiveness should permeate not only the social dynamic of the classroom, but the teaching materials as well. Children’s books that are endowed with social justice themes and multicultural issues provide a much richer reading experience than texts with homogeneous characters and unchallenging stories. The stories shared by these authors and illustrator offer many ways to enlighten students of all ages to the diverse books, cultural nuances, and traditions that Indigenous people bring to the table. Check out these teacher resources for a glimpse into the rich world of native storytelling.

When students encounter texts that feature characters with whom they can connect, they can see how others are like them and how literature can play a role in their lives. If students can feel connected to books, not only will they be more apt to obtain the intrinsic motivation to increase the amount of reading they do, but they will also begin to feel more accepted as strong and unique members of society and to become less vulnerable to negative stereotyping and feelings of oppression. It is the hope of our storytellers that these resources be shared with all students, to demonstrate not only resiliency and determination, but also joy and grace within the texts and illustrations to take them to places they have never seen or heard of before. Below are are some video and audio resources related to some of the works of our storytellers.

We are obligated to educate our youth with a clear lens and to teach the richness of realistic, authentic, and contemporary literature for children and young adults. We need to promote books where Indigenous characters are up front and visible, not hidden or pushed aside. We want to highlight in a bold, distinguishable manner characters and stories that unveil and promote the beauty of diverse literature written/illustrated by and for Native Nations (also called Indigenous people and used interchangeably here when the specific Nation is not known), and all other marginalized groups. The storytellers highlighted here, and across the land, provide a glimpse of the wonderment and beauty that present-day and historical Indigenous culture and traditions bring to the literature landscape.

Come celebrate with us at 9 am (EST) on November 21, 2021 at the CLA Breakfast at NCTE! There will be great conversation and book giveaways!