Read This/Teach This: Explore Home in Children's Literature During the CLA Expert Class

By Kathy Short, Mary Ann Cappiello, and Suriati Abas on behalf of the 2025 Expert Class Committee

Exploring Home in Children's Literature

In times of uncertainty, we seek comfort and security, especially in places where we feel surrounded by love. Home is not just a physical space but metaphorically speaks to the values and relationships central to our sense of place in the world. Framing our use of children’s literature around Home encourages readers to reflect on values from which they can find the courage to dream and imagine new possibilities.  When we experience turmoil, reflecting on our values identifies the roots that ground us and give us a sense of security from which to reach out, dream, and act. 

The CLA Expert Class at the 2025 NCTE Convention in Denver is an opportunity for teachers and teacher educators to gain insights into the use of children’s literature through interactions with leading educators, authors, and illustrators. This session is an exciting opportunity to expand your engagements with literature and invite readers to reflect on the values to which they are loyal and from which they read, interpret, and write literature. 

READ THIS

In their newest collaborative picturebook, Home, Matt de la Peña and Loren Long explore the places, people, and feelings that create a sense of home and provide refuge in the face of instability, The lyrical text and vibrant images are a celebration of home in its many forms, but also a reminder that, even when  home is lost, we can find a harbor in love through the people who walk alongside us. 
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The powerful way in which the images and words interweave in this picturebook creates layers of meaning and interpretation. The lyrical nature of Matt’s reflections is matched by the emotion of Loren’s textured acrylic illustrations. Themes of resilience, healing, and connection are captured in the words and images around explorations of home as love and comfort that extend beyond four walls to the earth itself. Just as in their earlier collaboration, Love, this book tugs on reader’s heartstrings. 

Maham Khwaja is the author of The Home We Make, illustrated by Zainab Faidhi, in which a young Muslim girl and her family are forced to flee their home due to the violence of war. Told from a first-person perspective in free verse poems, the girl describes their long walk and their journey by sea to a refugee camp and eventually to a new land. Throughout this dangerous journey, the girl constantly wonders whether each new place is now home.
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This poignant portrayal of the longing for home captures the terror of displacement and the comfort of small tender moments. The harsh realities of refugee journeys are woven into loving interactions within the family and experiences of discrimination are contrasted with welcoming acts that temper the story’s bleaker moments. The digital illustrations are particularly effective in conveying details and events not mentioned in the poems and in conveying emotions through the girl’s expressive eyes. This picturebook is a moving and illuminating depiction of the journeys and emotions experienced by refugees.

TEACH THIS

Come to the Expert Class on Exploring Home in Literature to investigate these books and teaching engagements around Home. Matt, Loren, and Maham will talk about their explorations of Home in these two recent picturebooks, including their processes of creating these books and why and how they centered Home.

 A panel of educators—Desirée Cueto, Deanna Day, and Cynthia Ryman--will share their use of personal canons to encourage readers to identify and reflect on their values and to locate themselves as readers and writers. They will share engagements used in their teaching, such as heart maps, maps of good memories, artifact collections, mentor texts and other strategies that encourage deep reflection on values and traditions.
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In addition, participants will engage in an experience to reflect on the roots that ground them and their branches that reach out to dreams. Narges Zandi will share a book list of recent picturebooks centered around Home along with a handout of Home engagements discussed in the session.

Kathy Short is a Regents Professor in children’s literature at the University of Arizona.
Mary Ann Cappiello is a Professor of language and literacy at Lesley University.
Suriati Abas is an Assistant Professor in literacy and literature at SUNY Oneonta.

Also, be sure to check out other offerings from CLA at NCTE!