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The CLA Blog

The CLA Research Award: Now Accepting Applications!

3/24/2025

 

By René M. Rodríguez-Astacio on Behalf of the CLA Research Award Committee

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The pleasures of reading children’s literature extend beyond aesthetic experiences. Powerful storytelling beckons its readers to contemplate, speculate and learn about the world around them, building opportunities to nurture hope, empathy and curiosity for what we observe and experience in both our individual and collective lives. Thus, it becomes an imperative to research how children’s books continue to inspire young readers into imagining what else is possible through captivating storytelling, imagery, and language.

Each year, the CLA Research Award supports scholars who are committed to inquiring into significant questions related to the field of children’s literature. Given the advancement of technological tools for creating and accessing texts, its implications on current literacy and creative practices, and ongoing sociopolitical and economic pressures, researchers use these funds to pursue important inquiries on the affordances and challenges of storytelling for children and youth in today’s landscape. Suriati Abas, our 2024 recipient, is using the award funding to inquire into how pre-service teachers can use video picture books read aloud as catalysts for literacy advocacy and social justice education. As highlighted by Suriati, “the novelty of this research lies in its focus on the audiovisual experience of diverse picture books for literacy advocacy. Video picture book read-alouds offer a unique combination of visual, auditory, and sometimes interactive elements, potentially enhancing comprehension and emotional connection in ways that may not be possible through traditional print or audio-only formats.” 

It’s been a privilege to serve in this committee for the past two years. Connecting and learning with researchers through this avenue goes beyond the grant awarded. It builds mentorship and community in times in which there is a critical need for us to consider the significance of children’s literature both in the field and our civic lives. At a time of political unrest and evolving understandings of digital literacies and storytelling, children’s literature remains a powerful vehicle that reminds us of the power of stories and how it connects us. As Donna Barba Higuera invites us to contemplate in her stellar middle-grade novel The Last Cuentista, the power of storytelling encompasses memory, cultural identity, ways of being, knowledge, empathy, and dreaming—important pillars of what makes us human. As researchers in this field, these very threads inform our roles as researchers in the field of children’s literature.

Do you have an inquiry involving the field of children’s literature? We invite you to apply today!

Want to learn more about the CLA Research Award?

Visit the CLA Research Award page on our website.

Are you considering applying for the CLA Research Award?

Access the application call, prepare your application and submit it by the July 1, 2025 deadline.

Want to learn more about the CLA Research Award?

Visit our Research Award Recipients page, were you can find short profiles of past award recipients and their funded projects.
CLA Members, you can find detailed reports on each funded project in the spring issues of the Journal of Children's Literature.

Do you know about CLA's other Grants and Awards?

Visit our Grants and Awards page to learn about:
  • the CLA Early Career Award
  • the Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award
  • the Vivian Yenika Agbaw Student Conference Grant
René M. Rodríguez-Astacio is Assistant Professor of English at Fresno State University. He is a member of CLA's Board of Directors and chair of the 2024 CLA Research Award Committee.

Countdown to the Inaugural CLA Online Research Conference

2/11/2025

 

By Xenia Hadjioannou on behalf of the CLA Online Research Conference Organizing Committee

Register for the CLA Online Research Conference
The organizing committee for the inaugural offering of the CLA Online Research Conference is busily putting the final touches on our plans for a day full of  vibrant research presentations on children's literature research and opportunities for invigorating professional conversations.
Have you Registered Yet?
The conference features presentations from researchers across the United States and the world, a session with journal editors who publish children's literature research, and a keynote talk from Kathy Short.
  • Join our social time zoom rooms at the beginning and the end of the conference day to network with colleagues, contribute to conversations, and hear announcements.
  • During each of our presentation-focused Concurrent Session program slots, you will have a choice among 4 sessions. Go to the zoom room that best fits your interests and enjoy learning about the work of researchers exploring topics ranging from Pedagogical Wobbles to Historical Fiction Representing Chinese History, to Intersectionalities.  
  • Editors from 10 different journals that publish children's literature research will participate in our Journal Editor Session. Join a different zoom room for each of the two rotations to learn about the featured journals and to ask questions about publishing your work there.
  • During the keynote presentation for the conference, Kathy Short will trace the shifting landscape of research in children's literature.
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*Times listed are in Eastern Standard Time
Below you will find a sampler of the sessions included in the conference. For details and schedule information, visit the Conference Program. 
Sampling image linked to program
The conference is co-sponsored by the Children's Literature Assembly and the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia. It is supported by the CLA Endowment Fund, which was established:
  • to support original research contributing to the field of children's literature, and
  • to support the dissemination of CLA's yearly selections of Notable Books for the Language Arts.
CLA Online Research Conference Organizing Committee

Jennifer Graff, University of Georgia
Xenia Hadjioannou, Penn State University, Berks
Lauren Aimonette Liang, University of Utah
Miriam Martinez, University of Texas San Antonio
Liz Thackeray Nelson, Utah Valley University
Mary-Kate Sableski, University of Dayton
Jennifer Slagus, University of South Florida and Brock University

Pursuing Our Commitment – An Update from the CLA DEI Committee

1/28/2025

 

By Grace Enriquez on behalf of the CLA DEI Committee

As children’s literature professionals, educators, and enthusiasts, we know our field faces challenging times ahead. Widespread misinformation and misunderstanding about educational theories and practices, coupled with fiery partisan rhetoric, have resulted in a swelling of bans and crackdowns on stories that work to make sure all children can find their voices, languages, histories, and lived experiences in books.
 
As delineated in the CLA Bylaws, the DEI Committee encompasses a steadfast commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity within CLA:
"The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity Committee Chair and members shall help ensure CLA’s commitment to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusivity. The committee shall help create and/or review CLA policies and position statements shared with CLA members and/or the greater public. The committee shall work with membership and nominating committees for recruitment as well as help distribute calls for CLA-related applications. Committee members shall also serve as resources for CLA Standing Committee Chairs when they are developing materials and programs." 
 In these unsettling times, we reassert CLA’s pledge. This past year, led by stalwart past chairs Adam Crawley and Elizabeth Bemiss, the DEI Committee engaged in the following pursuits to support CLA’s commitment:

CLA Member Survey

The committee created and distributed the survey in November, a week prior to NCTE, and analyzed the results in December. The survey gathered and analyzed information from the CLA membership about career role and stage, education level, age, gender identity, languages read and/or spoken, race and ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status, and other identity information individual members wanted to share. The survey also asked about members’ experience and interests in children’s literature, ways CLA could be more accessible, suggestions for CLA to be more welcoming to diverse groups of people, and suggestions for improving the survey. Results were shared with the executive board. Stay tuned for next steps to help the organization determine ways to better support its DEI commitment!

DEI One-Pagers

Per our CLA charge, committee members continued the work begun in 2023 to create one-page guidance documents to help other CLA committees to support DEI goals in their own work. We hope to finalize these one-pagers and distribute them soon. 

Diverse Books We Love

To support educators’ work to promote social justice with diverse books, committee members shared a list of personally recommended books that foster DEI work through the CLA Blog. The post Sharing Books We “Love” to Support On-Going Work During Troubling Times was published in February 2023. Be on the lookout for personal “loves” from this year’s committee.
We look forward to buliding upon this important work and ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion continue to drive our work with children and the books they read.

For more information about the DEI committee, please contact committee chair Grace Enriquez ([email protected]).
Grace Enriquez is professor of language and literacy and chair of the Ph.D. in Educational Studies program at Lesley University. Grace received the CLA research Award in 2013. She is current chair of the CLA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee.

Illuminating Children’s Literature Research: 2025 CLA Online Research Conference

12/10/2024

 

By Miriam Martinez and Jennifer Slagus on behalf of the CLA Online Research Conference Committee

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Imagine this: Spending an entire day immersed in the latest research on children’s literature. If you’re used to attending literacy conferences, you might think that’s not something that usually happens! So, how can you access such an experience? By attending the Children’s Literature Assembly Online Research Conference, of course!

This inaugural conference, sponsored by the Children’s Literature Assembly and the Mary Frances Early College of Education at the University of Georgia, promises a full day dedicated to Illuminating Children’s Literature Research in Theory and Practice.
Mark your calendars: The CLA Online Research Conference is scheduled for Friday, February 21st, 2025, from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM ET.
Organized into three strands--research in theory, research in practice, and policy and politics—the conference will offer a rich array of the latest research in children’s literature. The keynote presentation will be given by Dr. Kathy Short, a leader in the field of children’s literature for three decades. Throughout the day, participants can choose from 20 different sessions featuring a wide range of international presenters. There will also be a journal editors session where attendees can meet with editors, learn about their publishing preferences, and discover upcoming calls for papers.

Whether you’re a faculty member planning your Spring syllabi for undergraduate or graduate classes, or a literacy leader planning your Spring professional development, or a teacher committed to using children’s literature in the classroom, the CLA Online Research Conference is a meaningful addition to those plans. Encourage your colleagues and students to attend. The discounted student registration rate is just $15.

​
Registration is now open on the conference page on the CLA website, or at tinyurl.com/CLAonConf. The regular registration rate is $30, with a discounted rate of $15 for students.

We are excited to offer an accessible and affordable opportunity for students and established researchers to gather and learn about current children’s literature research in theory and practice. And we can hardly wait to see you on Friday, February 21st for an illuminating day of learning and rich discussion about research in children’s literature!
Please share the downloadable pdf flier widely! 
Your browser does not support viewing this document. Click here to download the document.
Miriam Martinez is a Professor Emerita of Literacy Education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is chair of CLA's endowment committee. 

Jennifer Slagus (they/she) is a doctoral candidate at Brock University in Ontario, Canada and a Visiting Assistant Librarian at the University of South Florida. They are the Chair of the CLA Student Committee.​

Reflections from our CLA Early Career Award Recipients

4/23/2024

 

Submitted by Mary Napoli and Angela M. Wiseman, Co-chairs, Early Career Award Committee

In our rapidly evolving professional landscape, we continue to advance our collective body of research through the connections forged through CLA. It is this dynamic cycle of research combined with our networking opportunities that informs new directions and possibilities. With this in mind, we want to celebrate the contributions of our CLA Early Career Award Recipients from 2017 to the present. As you will read, they have continued to impact the field with their innovative and timely scholarship. In this blog post, we share their responses to open-ended questions that highlight their recent contributions to children’s literature and future projects on the horizon. They were also invited to reflect on how readers and educators will leverage their research in actionable and transformative ways. Finally, everyone was asked to share a photo of something that matters to them.

2023 CLA Early Career Award Recipient

JOSH COLEMAN

Assistant Professor of English Education 
Department of Teaching and Learning 
The University of Iowa
Twitter: @Josheducating 
Scholarly Website: https://uiowa.academia.edu/JamesJoshuaColeman 
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Picture of myself apple picking with Dr. Saba Vlach, also a Children’s Literature expert.
My current project, entitled “Banned Childhoods,” chronicles how English Language Arts (ELA) teachers resist book-banning legislation in their local contexts—namely their classrooms, schools, and communities. This work has been funded graciously by the Children’s Literature Assembly (CLA) of NCTE, the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and the University of Iowa. Based on this study, I have one forthcoming article intended to support educators teaching in restrictive legislative contexts to resist education policy that removes children’s literature from classrooms and libraries. Co-written with University of Iowa doctoral student Petra Lange, “A Two-Year Timeline to Anti-LGBTQ+ Book Bans in America’s Heartland” will be published this year in English Journal, and it provides actional strategies for recognizing impending book bans and resisting them through local activism. Responding to the immediate need, this article is grounded in practitioners’ lived experiences and strives for classrooms and libraries in which every young person can see themself represented in children’s literature.
 
On-going, data collection for the “Banned Childhoods” study will conclude in May of 2024, and I am currently preparing a book proposal that will expand upon the English Journal article. This book will support ELA teachers to combat draconian legislation targeting children’s literature featuring Black, Indigenous, and other children of Color as well as LGBTQ+ young people. My sincere hope is that this work will provide teachers with actionable strategies for challenging book bans and censorship in their local contexts. I am so grateful to the CLA for their support, and with it, I will champion intellectual freedom for teachers and students in every classroom and library across the United States.

2019 CLA Early Career Award Recipient

NOREEN NASEEM RODRIGUEZ

Assistant Professor of Elementary Education and Educational Justice
College of Education
Michigan State University
Instagram and X/Twitter: @NaseemRdz
Professional website: https://naseemrdz.com/
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"Something that matters to me" is learning about local histories from community members and scholar friends. This photo is from November 2023, when I was able to take a tour of Harlem with Akemi Kochiyama, whose grandmother Yuri Kochiyama is a famous Asian American activist and friend of Malcolm X. In the background is the mural painted in their honor, around the corner from her former apartment.
I am thrilled to have been part of the team behind the "Research in children’s literature" in Fisher & Lapp's recently published The Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts. My work related to children's literature tends to highlight how teachers use specific texts or focuses on critical content analyses. This was a nice shift that allowed me to look more broadly at current research and it was an honor working alongside my dear mentor Angie Zapata as well as Monica Kleekamp and Thomas Crisp, who are all brilliant. Another recent publication I am really proud of is my new book Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms.  My favorite chapter is the one on identity and stereotypes which features a wide array of recommendations to support class discussions of Asian names, food, and stereotypes like the model minority and South Asians as terrorist threats. 
 
For my Asian American-focused work, I want readers to know that what Viet Thanh Nguyen called "narrative plenitude" is so important - reading multiple Asian American stories is vital to disrupting notions that Asian Americans are a monolith, especially within cultures. For my elementary social studies work, a clear action step is pairing picturebooks about historical events and figures with primary sources that add nuance and complexity to the textual narrative. I call this going "beyond the book" to ensure that young learners engage with meaningful and contextualized social studies content.
 
I have a big announcement coming soon about a longitudinal project that examines how efforts to mandate the teaching of Asian American histories and/or Asian American studies are being implemented. I am really excited to spend time with students and teachers in classrooms again! I am also working on a second edition of my book Social Studies for a Better World  and am beginning a book tour in support of Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms. The next few years will be busy, but I am thrilled to be able to do this work in ways that impact more teachers and students.


2017 CLA Early Career Award Recipient

ANGIE ZAPATA

Associate Professor of Language and Literacies Education
College of Education
University of Missouri
Scholarly website: https://education.missouri.edu/person/angie-zapata
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This is a photo of the incredible early childhood teacher partners I have the honor of learning from as part of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant of which I serve as PI for the early literacies strand. These are PK and K teachers who choose to work in some of the most demanding areas of our state. They show up every day alongside the beautiful children and their families to do the work. With every interaction we have, I am inspired and energized by their commitments and excellence in the classroom under the most extraordinary schooling conditions and political climate. It is not easy to be a teacher right now, but these teachers make it happen!
I’m so pleased to share that I have recently published a book entitled Deepening Student Engagement with Diverse Picturebooks: Powerful Classroom Practices for Elementary Teachers  as part of the Principled in Practice imprint of National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Drawing on a year-long multi-site collaborative research project with classroom teachers, I braid together theories of literature response, grammar of visual design, bi/multilingual and multimodal literacies to offer what I call a Critical Literature Response Framework as a pathway for sharing books with diverse racial, linguistic, and cultural representation. This framework is guided by the ethical work of integrating diverse children’s picturebooks in the classroom, a desire to cultivate a critical literature classroom landscape that resists stereotypical representations of racialized, linguistically diverse communities in literature, and a commitment to recentering critical and aesthetic engagement of picturebooks with diverse representation.

As a way to unpack the Critical Literature Response Framework, the book features practical literature approaches and guiding principles that can be tailored to their individual contexts with a focus on the classroom commitments, conditions, practices, and collaborations needed to deepen students’ engagements with picturebooks that offer diverse racial, linguistic, and broader cultural representation. I wrote this book to contribute well theorized examples of how to launch aesthetic and critical response in classrooms through literature explorations of diverse picturebook collections. I hope readers find the book to be a foundational part of their toolkit as they develop and rethink their literature beliefs and practices. For example, I hope readers will utilize the reflection invitations to ponder their critical social educator journey as curators of children’s literature or consider the ways visual thinking strategies can support children’s critical reading of illustrations, and so much more. The book offers multiple entry points for both the beginning and most experienced teacher to make their own.

It has been exciting to reflect and see how my research has evolved over time and how past learning has directed me to next steps in my research. As an early career children’s literature researcher over a decade ago, my research inquiries began with deep explorations of bi/multilingual children’s translingual picturebook making processes. Over time, my analytic gaze shifted towards the classroom conditions and pedagogies that produced racialized children and youth responses to diverse picturebooks and the emerging text and text making processes that resulted. I am partnering more and more with teachers as a model of professional learning and my analytic gaze homes in on the ways teachers develop their beliefs and practices when sharing children’s picturebooks that feature better representation. The arc of my research life thus far and my learning from those inquiries now lead me towards continued teacher/researcher collaborative inquiries with a close eye on the ways educators come to understand and enact a Critical Literature Framework in their classrooms. I look forward to sharing our Young Scholars Program  grant funded work from Foundation of Child Development as an example of this shift through an upcoming publication with Bank Street Occasional Paper  in May 2024 and more examples of our children’s picturebook learning together in the year to come. I believe as picturebooks with diverse representation slowly find their way into our classrooms and libraries, building coalitions of solidarity through teacher/researcher partnership will be essential to not only ensuring that these picturebooks are taught well and enjoyed by children, but also a necessary way to support and advocate with/for teachers during these challenging times in education.
Mary Napoli is the former co-chair of the 2023 Early Career Award Committee. She is an associate professor of education and reading at Penn State Harrisburg.

Angela Wiseman is a former CLA Board Member and co-chair of the 2023 Early Career Award Committee. She is an associate professor of literacy education at North Carolina State University.

Announcing the 2024 CLA Research Award Call for Applications

4/8/2024

 

By Grace Enriquez

How might you help to advance the field of children’s literature? The Children’s Literature Assembly Research Award can support your projects and inquiries by providing a grant of $1,000 for original research addressing significant questions related to the field of children's literature.

No longer is the power of a children’s book relegated to the realms of libraries, classrooms, and home. The field of children’s and young literature has burgeoned over the past few decades, with everyone from celebrities and professional athletes to politicians and corporations weighing in on the creation and use of children’s and young adult books. Additionally, the field has recognized the importance of all children seeing their lives, experiences, languages, and communities reflected and celebrated in books. These shifts have ushered in new considerations and challenges, as much as it has strengthened the field’s capacity to inspire hope, creativity, and human connection.

To illustrate how the award can support our work with children’s literature, I gathered reflections from some past CLA Award recipients.

Supporting Inquiry

Award recipients have used the award grant to investigate these possibilities. Dr. Josh Coleman (2023 CLA Award recipient) is chronicling how ELA teachers are resisting book-banning legislation in their local contexts—namely their classrooms, schools, and communities. Dr. Emmaline Eliis (2022 CLA Award recipient) received the award as a doctoral student studying how print salience impacts classroom discussion. Dr. Christian M. Hines (2022 CLA Award recipient) and Dr. Eun Young Yeum (2021 CLA Award recipient) were also doctoral students when they received their respective awards, with each exploring the use of book clubs and graphic texts in different student and learning contexts. Ten years ago, the award enabled me (2013 CLA Award recipient) to study how teachers negotiated their use of children's literature and social justice teaching amid the multi-state adoption of the Common Core State Standards.

Supporting the Knowledge-Building and Information-Sharing

With the support of the award, recipients have also extended the findings of their projects to share with broader audiences. Dr. Ellis stated, “The CLA Research Award was a crucial support for the completion of my doctoral dissertation study. As a doctoral student, the award committee's belief in my research was very meaningful to me." Dr. Coleman collaborated with doctoral student Petra Lange to write a forthcoming article intended to support educators teaching in restrictive legislative contexts to resist education policy that removes children’s literature from classrooms and libraries. He is also completing a book proposal that expands upon that article. “My sincere hope is that this work will provide teachers with actionable strategies for challenging book bans and censorship in their local contexts,” Dr. Coleman reflected. 

Supporting Communities

Perhaps most importantly, the award has also provided recipients with opportunities to support the communities with whom they work. “With the funds provided by the award, I was able to purchase high-quality picturebooks for the preschool teachers participating in my study, all of whom worked in economically disadvantaged schools,” explained Dr. Ellis. Likewise, Dr. Hines shared, “I am exceptionally grateful for the CLA Research Award. Funding from this award made it possible for my students to have access to books and resources to enhance their learning experience. This award allowed me the opportunity to co-create a space with students where they could engage in discussion and activities centered on learning with comics and developing their critical literacies." 

Dr. Caitlin Ryan (2020 CLA Award recipient) reflected, “Receiving the CLA Research Award was so helpful to the ongoing work Drs. Jill Hermann-Wilmarth, Craig Young, Mikkaka Overstreet and I were doing with our Reading the K-8 Rainbow Book Club project.  It funded LGBTQ-inclusive books for our participants who had given us so much of their time and effort. We felt supported, they felt supported, and their students got new books! Having these materials, in turn, helped give us more to talk about and learn from during our Book Club sessions.” Dr. Coleman echoed these sentiments as they pertain to his research: “I am so grateful to the CLA for their support, and with it, I will champion intellectual freedom for teachers and students in every classroom and library across the United States.”

So, what lines of inquiry and projects might you want to pursue to explore the power of children’s literature in our schools and communities? Up to two grants may be awarded if funding is available, and projects may engage using any research method or approach. For the application and more information, see the Children’s Literature Assembly Award page on the CLA Website.
Grace Enriquez is a professor of Language and Literature at Lesley University, past chair of the CLA Research Committee, and a 2013 recipient of the CLA Research Award.

The CLA Endowment: Enriching Research in Children's Literature

9/7/2021

 

By Miriam Martinez, on behalf of the CLA Endowment Committee

As members of the Children’s Literature Association (or as visitors to this website), we all value children’s literature. Books have the power to enrich lives, foster empathy, open doors, and promote learning.  As educators, we also recognize the importance of learning more about children’s literature and ways of connecting readers to books for a range of purposes. This means there is a need for research related to children’s literature.

Because the Children’s Literature Assembly is committed to supporting research, in 2004 the leaders of CLA began making plans to establish an endowment for two purposes: 
  • To support original research contributing to the field of children’s literature, and 
  • To support the dissemination of CLA’s yearly selections of Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts​.
Members of the CLA Endowment Committee:
  • Miriam Martinez
  • Ruth Lowery
  • Lauren Liang
  • Trish Bandre
  • Xenia Hadjioannou
  • Ally Hauptman
Then, in 2005 the Endowment was officially launched! The next several years were devoted to the hard work of building Endowment funds to a point that sufficient money existed to sustain this critical work. This hard work came to fruition in 2011 when the first research grant was awarded to Lori Ann Laster for her research on text selection for refugee youth. Since that beginning, the fund has helped to support the research of 12 scholars of children’s literature.  Here is just a sampling of some of the exciting work the Endowment has supported:
  • Dr. Grace Enriquez’s longitudinal case study focused on how teachers’ understandings of children’s literature for social justice education develop over time and space.
  • Dr. Evelyn Arizpe investigated changes in reading practices and reading responses among adolescents in Mexico over a 25-year period.
  • Dr. Adam Crawley explored elementary parents' perspectives on various gay and lesbian-inclusive picturebooks.
You can learn more about the work of these and other research award recipients on the CLA website.  

The Endowment Committee wo​uld like to invite you to participate in this important initiative either by helping us continue to grow the Endowment or by applying for the CLA Research Award. (And some of you may want to do both.)

Donations can be made to commemorate a special event, to honor a children's literature enthusiast, or just as an expression of commitment to the work of the endowment. There are two easy ways to donate to the Endowment:

Donate Directly on the CLA Website

Donate to support the mission of the CLA Endowment Fund.


The CLA Endowment Fund was established to support:


  • original research contributing to the field of children’s literature, and 
  • dissemination of CLA’s yearly selections of Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts.

 

Your contribution will provide invaluable support for these efforts.


You can dedicate your donation in honor of another person.

Donate

Your donations support The Vivian Yenika-Agbaw Student Conference Grant, which helps defray registration costs for the NCTE conference for undergraduate and graduate students with interest in children's literature.


The grant is named after the late Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, co-editor of the Journal of Children's Literature. Vivian was devoted to students and contributed greatly to the field of children's literature.


You can dedicate your donation in honor of another person.

Donate

Send a Check with your Donation

Send a check made out to Children’s Literature Assembly (with a note that the donation is for Endowment Fund) to the following address:

Children’s Literature Assembly
Trish Bandre
95 Wildcat Circle
Salina, KS 67401

If you are a member of CLA, consider applying for the CLA Research Award.  You can find more information about the application process at this link.

Picturebooks Exploring Issues of Poverty

​Finally, as a committee focused on providing financial support, and one comprised of children’s literature scholars and educators, we want to offer you a special thank you for your work in promoting children’s literature. Please find below a beginning list of picturebooks focused on poverty and financial issues, an important topic but one that is not often explored in books for children.
  • A Bike Like Sergio’s  (2018) by Maribeth Boelts, illustrated by Noah Z. Jones
  • A Chair for My Mother (1982) written and illustrated by Vera B. Williams
  • A Different Pond (2017) by Bao Phi,  illustrated by Thi Bui
  • Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay (2016) by Susan Hood, illustrated by Sally Wren Comport
  • Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse (2018) by Marcy Campbell, illustrated by Corinna Luyken
  • The Field  (2018) by Baptiste Paul, illustrated by Jacqueline Alcantara
  • The Floating Field: How A Group of Thai Boys Built Their Own Soccer Field (2021) by Scott Riley, illustrated by Nguyen Quang and Kim Lien
  • Last Stop on Market Street (2015) by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Christian Robinson
  • Maddi’s Fridge (2014) by Lois Brandt, illustrated by Vin Vogel
  • The Most Beautiful Thing (2020)  by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Khoa Le
  • The Patchwork Bike  (2016) by Macine Beneba Clarke, illustrated by Van Thanh Rudd
  • Sunday Shopping  (2015) by Sally Derby, illustrated by Shadra Strickland
  • Thank You Omu! (2018) written and illustrated by Oge More
  • Tia Isa Wants a Car (2016) by Meg Medina, illustrated by Claudio Munoz
  • Tricycle (2007) by Elisa Amado, illustrated by Alfonso Ruano
  • Walk with Me (2017) by Jairo Buitrago, illustrated by Rafael Yockteng (and translated by Elisa Amado)
  • Watercress  (2021) by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Jason Chin
  • Yard Sale (2017) by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Lauren Castillo
Miriam Martinez is a Professor of Literacy Education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is chair of CLA's endowment committee. 

    Authors:
    CLA Members

    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.

    Blog Editors

    Liz Thackeray Nelson
    Emmaline Ellis
    Jennifer Slagus
    Sara K. Sterner
    Megan Van Deventer

    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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