Recipients of the Children's Literature Assembly Research Award
2025 CLA Research Award Recipients
Jared Crossley
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Lisa Pinkerton
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Jared S. Crossley is an Assistant Professor of Literacy and Literature for Children and Adolescents at The Ohio State University at Marion. He is a former elementary school teacher, and taught 4th and 5th grades. He now teaches courses on children’s and young adult literature, as well as literacy and art pedagogy. Jared researches middle-grade literature, wordless picturebooks, children’s book awards, and the masculinity models of male teachers in children’s books.
Lisa Pinkerton is a Clinical Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. She teaches courses on children’s and young adult literature, as well as courses on literacy theory and pedagogy. Lisa researches the role of artistic methodologies in academic writing, and her scholarship focuses on the role of children’s literature in education. She is a long-time member of CLA and NCTE. She has served on the CLA board, as co-chair of the CLA Expert Class committee, and on the Bonnie Campbell Hill Award committee. She also served on the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children Committee.
Breaking Down Barriers with Wordless Picturebooks: A Thematic Analysis of IBBY’s Silent Book Collection
This study investigates the 78 international wordless picturebooks in the International Board on Books for Young People’s (IBBY) Silent Books Collection, created in 2013 to support refugee children by providing stories that transcend language barriers. Using a qualitative thematic analysis informed by reader-response theory and visual semiotics, the researchers identify recurring themes, visual motifs, and narrative structures across the collection, examining how these books foster empathy, intercultural understanding, and visual literacy. Set against recent U.S. policy shifts toward linguistic nationalism, the project highlights wordless picturebooks as inclusive educational tools that counter these trends by valuing diversity and shared human experiences. The study aims to inform classroom practice, expand the scholarly conversation on international children’s literature, and contribute to global citizenship education by demonstrating how visual narratives can bridge cultural divides.
Lisa Pinkerton is a Clinical Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. She teaches courses on children’s and young adult literature, as well as courses on literacy theory and pedagogy. Lisa researches the role of artistic methodologies in academic writing, and her scholarship focuses on the role of children’s literature in education. She is a long-time member of CLA and NCTE. She has served on the CLA board, as co-chair of the CLA Expert Class committee, and on the Bonnie Campbell Hill Award committee. She also served on the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children Committee.
Breaking Down Barriers with Wordless Picturebooks: A Thematic Analysis of IBBY’s Silent Book Collection
This study investigates the 78 international wordless picturebooks in the International Board on Books for Young People’s (IBBY) Silent Books Collection, created in 2013 to support refugee children by providing stories that transcend language barriers. Using a qualitative thematic analysis informed by reader-response theory and visual semiotics, the researchers identify recurring themes, visual motifs, and narrative structures across the collection, examining how these books foster empathy, intercultural understanding, and visual literacy. Set against recent U.S. policy shifts toward linguistic nationalism, the project highlights wordless picturebooks as inclusive educational tools that counter these trends by valuing diversity and shared human experiences. The study aims to inform classroom practice, expand the scholarly conversation on international children’s literature, and contribute to global citizenship education by demonstrating how visual narratives can bridge cultural divides.
Erica Holyoke
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Lauren Fletcher
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Dr. Erica Holyoke is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver in Responsive Literacy Education, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate literacy methods courses. Her research centers on equitable and inclusive teaching through relational literacies in elementary school and preservice teacher preparation. She also explores enactments of activism and environmental justice in interdisciplinary learning. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Dr. Lauren Fletcher is an assistant professor in the Teacher Education Department at California State University, Stanislaus. Her research foci include students’ meaning-making processes, culturally sustaining pedagogies in literacy events, and dialogic practices. She explores children’s literature and how children’s literature expands readers’ understanding and actions regarding activism and environmental stewardship. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Storying Belonging and Civic Agency: Using Picturebooks in a Teacher Inquiry Group for Early Childhood Educators
Storying Belonging and Civic Agency: Using Picturebooks in a Teacher Inquiry Group for Early Childhood Educators, explores the transformative potential of children’s literature to support civic learning in the early years. Through a five-month virtual teacher inquiry group, five early childhood educators will collaboratively examine multicultural and multilingual picturebooks that highlight themes such as migration, environmental stewardship, and disability rights. The study investigates how teachers engage with these texts to foster belonging, agency, and justice-oriented learning with their young students. Findings will contribute to scholarship on picturebooks, teacher inquiry, and civic education, while offering models for how children’s literature can inspire both educators and children as active participants in shaping a more just world.
Dr. Lauren Fletcher is an assistant professor in the Teacher Education Department at California State University, Stanislaus. Her research foci include students’ meaning-making processes, culturally sustaining pedagogies in literacy events, and dialogic practices. She explores children’s literature and how children’s literature expands readers’ understanding and actions regarding activism and environmental stewardship. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Storying Belonging and Civic Agency: Using Picturebooks in a Teacher Inquiry Group for Early Childhood Educators
Storying Belonging and Civic Agency: Using Picturebooks in a Teacher Inquiry Group for Early Childhood Educators, explores the transformative potential of children’s literature to support civic learning in the early years. Through a five-month virtual teacher inquiry group, five early childhood educators will collaboratively examine multicultural and multilingual picturebooks that highlight themes such as migration, environmental stewardship, and disability rights. The study investigates how teachers engage with these texts to foster belonging, agency, and justice-oriented learning with their young students. Findings will contribute to scholarship on picturebooks, teacher inquiry, and civic education, while offering models for how children’s literature can inspire both educators and children as active participants in shaping a more just world.
2024 CLA Research Award Recipient
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Suriati Abas
Assistant Professor State University of New York (SUNY) Oneonta Project title: Amplifying Voices for Change: Video Picturebook Read-Alouds as Catalysts for Literacy Advocacy and Social Justice Education In an era marked by urgent calls for social justice and equity, the role of literacy educators as advocates for change grew ever more critical. Through Garcia and O'Donnell-Allen's (2024) Pose, Wobble, Flow framework, which has its roots in Freire’s liberatory pedagogy, the study aims to explore how video picturebook read-alouds can serve as a transformative tool for developing teachers' critical consciousness and empowering them as agents of social change in their literacy practices and classroom environments. |
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2023 CLA Research Award Recipients
Josh Coleman
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Josh Coleman
University of Iowa Assistant Professor Banned Childhoods: Storying Book Banning practices and LGBTQ+ Educational Activism in the Conservative Midwest. As diverse children’s literature is increasingly banned across the US, research has yet to account for the ways in which region influences both book banning practices and responding educational activism. Addressing this gap, the “Banned Childhoods” study chronicles regional storytelling by local educational stakeholders as they live through the implementation of SF 496—a comprehensive education policy that bans any mention of “gender identity and sexual orientation” in K6 and requires any book with a “sex act” be removed from public libraries and schools. Focused on the Midwest, this project seeks to increase access to diverse children’s literature within the region, by spotlighting local activism advanced by school librarians and teachers. |
2022 CLA Research Award Recipients
Christian Hines
Christian M. Hines
Ohio State University Doctoral Candidate/Research Assistant/Doctorate Fellow Title: Anyone Can Wear the Mask: Interrogating and Enacting Youth Empowerment via textual analysis and Comics Pedagogies in a High School Book Club The purpose of this study is to investigate whether creating a space for students to read and discuss superhero narratives in a high school book club, can position them to think critically about race and socio-political issues, and whether these visual texts can provide models of empowerment to motivate youth towards social action within their communities. |
Emmaline Ellis
Emmaline Ellis
Temple University Doctoral Candidate Title: The Role of Print Salience in Book-Related Interactions in Preschool Settings This study will address multiple gaps that have yet to be explored or answered in the current research related to print salience. This study will examine more broadly how print salience impacts classroom discussion. |
2021 CLA Research Award Recipient
Eun Young Yeom
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Eun Young Yeom was an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher at middle and high schools in South Korea and at the time of receiving the award, she was a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia. Eun Young received the award for her study “Zooming In: Korean Emergent Bilingual Youths’ Meaning-Making and Lived Experiences Reflected in Translingual Book Club Discussions.” The study sought to gain a deeper understanding of how Korean transnational emergent bilingual youths make meaning of their lived experiences through linguistically and semiotically inclusive online book club activities using graphic novels
with transnational youth characters. |
2020 CLA Research Award RecipientDr. Caitlin L. Ryan is associate professor of Language and Literacy in the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Prior to earning her MA and PhD from The Ohio State University, she taught literature-based reading and literacy enrichment programs in grades K-5 in the Washington, D.C. public schools through a university/schools/neighborhood partnership initiative. Ryan’s research agenda centers on the relationships among literacy learning, multicultural children’s literature, methods of reading instruction, and educational equity, especially at the elementary school level. She is the co-author, along with Dr. Jill Hermann-Wilmarth of Western Michigan University, of Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom, which received the Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association in 2018. She will be collaborating on the CLA-supported research project with Dr. Jill Hermann-Wilmarth, Dr. Mikkaka Overstreet of East Carolina University, and Dr. Craig Young of Bloomsburg University.
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Caitlin L. Ryan
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2019 CLA Research Award Recipient
Monica Kleekamp received the 2019 CLA Research Award for her proposed study titled “Tracing the Network in Room 124: Neurologically Queering Literature Response.” The committee was “highly intrigued” by her proposed research to study the responses to inclusive picturebooks of children labeled as disabled.
Monica Kleekamp is currently a doctoral candidate in the Language and Literacies for Social Transformation program in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Monica’s dissertation research centers secondary students' neuroqueer literature responses to inclusive picturebooks, or humanizing texts that feature main characters with lived dis/ability experiences. The student participants in Monica’s research have historically been labeled as significantly dis/abled and receive the majority of their education in a segregated special education setting. The purpose of this research is to disrupt the longstanding notion that students labeled with significant dis/abilities cannot and do not benefit from opportunities to transact with authentic literature. To engage in this disruption is to reimagine what embodied and relational neuroqueer literature responses are possible when students are presumed competent by their teacher and accompanying classroom network. |
Monica Kleekamp
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2018 CLA Research Award Recipient
Sara Sterner
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Sara Sterner was born and raised in Idaho and has always been a passionate enthusiast of children's literature. After completing her degree in elementary education from the University of Idaho, Sara began teaching 6th grade in Boise, Idaho. After seven years in that role, Sara moved to Virginia to pursue her master's degree in English as a Second Language at Marymount University. After graduating, Sara returned to the elementary classroom for seven more years, teaching English as a Second Language, 4th grade, and Gifted Education. Children's literature has always been central to her life as an upper elementary teacher, serving as a both a pedagogical tool and a means to make connections with her students. Feeling the call to further her education and more explicitly pursue her passion for children's literature, Sara began her doctoral studies in Literacy Education with an emphasis in Children's and Adolescent Literature at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2014. Through her doctoral studies, her experiences with readers in the classroom, and her long-standing love of children's literature, Sara began to explore the ways in which teachers engage with children's literature. As a post-intentional phenomenologist and teacher educator, who cares deeply about promoting equitable and inclusive children's literature, for her dissertation research Sara studies how dominant reading experiences have shaped preservice teachers, a phenomenon she calls Reading Whitely. Sara is a proud Ravenclaw who currently lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband Shawn and their Siamese cat, Archie. She will defend her doctoral dissertation and graduate in May 2019.
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2017 CLA Research Award Recipients
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Dr. Kelly Wissman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany. Across her scholarship and teaching, she considers how children’s literature, writing, and the arts can facilitate the creation of more equitable and humanizing educational spaces for all students. Her research and teaching interests include children’s literature; sociocultural approaches to writing; practitioner inquiry; the interplay of literacies, identities, and equity; and multimodal composing. She pursues these interests through collaborative, arts-based, and ethnographic research methodologies.
Dr. Wissman is the Director of the Capital District Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project. The Capital District Writing Project is a vibrant community of P-16 educators working to improve writing and learning in the Capital Region’s schools. She also serves as a co-editor of Language Arts and is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Children’s Literature. Her publications have appeared in several journals, including, Anthropology and Education, Research in the Teaching of English, Children’s Literature in Education, Journal of Children’s Literature, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Dr. Wissman has received recognition for both her scholarship and her teaching. In 2006, she was awarded the Selma Greenberg Dissertation Award from the Research on Women and Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. She has been named an “Educator of Excellence” from the New York State English Council. In 2016, she received a President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University at Albany. In 2017, she was honored with a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the State University of New York. |
Kelly Wissman
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Stephen Adam Crawley
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Stephen Adam Crawley is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. His CLA-funded research project will explore elementary parents' perspectives on various gay and lesbian-inclusive picturebooks, the parents' thoughts about the books' (potential) use in PreK through Fifth Grade classrooms, and if/how the parents position themselves as allies across individual and group contexts.
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2015 CLA Research Award Recipient
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The 2015 CLA Research Award winner is Prisca Martens. Prisca Martens is a professor in the Department of Elementary Education at Towson University, Towson, Maryland, where she teaches courses in reading and children’s literature. Her CLA-funded research study will investigate young children’s multimodal story-making experiences and how this relates to their perceptions of literacy and their literacy development.
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Prisca Martens
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2015 CLA Research Award Runner-Ups
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Erin Greeter is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Language and Literacy Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her CLA-funded research project will focus on exploring bilingual students’ use of multiple semiotic resources to construct meaning from text during story-based process drama.
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Erin Greeter
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Oksana Lushchevska is a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia in the department of Language and Literacy Education, studying children’s literature, and is an author and translator of children’s books written in Ukrainian. Her CLA-funded research project will explore in-service teachers’ interactions and responses with international children’s picturebooks.
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Oksana Lushchevska
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2014 CLA Research Award Recipient
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The 2014 CLA Research Award winner is Evelyn Arizpe. Dr. Arizpe is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education, University of Glasgow, where she coordinates the MEd Programme in Children’s Literature and Literacies. She has a BA in Latin American Literature from the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge. She has taught and published widely in the areas of literacy and children’s literature.
Dr. Arizpe’s study will investigate the changes in reading practices and reading responses among adolescents in Mexico in the last 25 years. Specifically, her research will compare findings from a previous study conducted 20 years ago on using young adult literature with secondary school students to the new quantitative and qualitative data she will be gathering in order to consider two questions: (1) What has changed in perceptions of reading and books in the last 20-25 years in Mexico? (2) In what ways do young adult reader’s responses to contemporary texts reflect changes in the reading and publishing context for young adults? |
Evelyn Arizpe
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2013 CLA Research Award Recipient
Grace Enriquez
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Dr. Grace Enriquez is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy at Lesley University. A former English Language Arts teacher and literacy staff developer, she bridges her work with students and teachers with ethnographic and critical research in high-needs urban populations to examine their responses to literacy instruction and children’s and young adult literature in school contexts. Specifically, her scholarship focuses on critical literacies; intersections of literacies, identities, and embodiment; and children’s and young adult literature for social justice.Dr. Enriquez's longitudinal case study, "Centering Children's Literature in Social Justice Teaching and the Common Core," will enable her study how teachers' understandings of children's literature for social justice education develop over time and space from a graduate course to classroom teaching, and help her see how teachers negotiate their use of children's literature and social justice in light of the CCSS.
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2012 CLA Research Award Recipient
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Dr. Jane Kelley is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Washington State University. The nature of Jane E. Kelley’s research and scholarly activities is grounded in critical multicultural analysis and involves the examination of ideology of power in children’s literature and the dissemination of this theory and pedagogy. Kelley’s research is two-fold. First, she applies a critical multicultural analysis to children’s literature in order to bring the ideology of power as it is portrayed in children’s literature. Second, she investigates pedagogical strategies to introduce a critical multicultural analysis to pre-service teachers, service teachers, and graduate students.
Dr. Kelley’s study will examine which current fictional narratives that portray individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders are authentic and engaging, and have the potential to help educators understand the complexities of ASDs.
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Jane Kelley
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2011 CLA Research Award Recipient
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Lori Ann Laster is currently a doctoral student in Critical Literacy and English Education at the University of Minnesota. Her background includes extensive work as an arts writer, playwright, educator and theater practitioner.
Laster’s exploratory qualitative case study seeks to acquire a deeper understanding of the obstacles of text selection for refugee youth, with a focus on fantastic literature young adult novels and how they meet the interests and needs of Hmong youth. |
Lori Ann Laster
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