There has been much recent scholarship on the importance of engaging students of all ages in the critical readings of texts. This study explores a group of pre-service teachers' responses to a set of experiences designed to encourage them to respond critically to several picture book versions of the American-Japanese conflict in World War II, focusing particular attention on Sadako by Eleanor Coerr (1993). Although a presentation by a visiting scholar from Japan highlighted the “constructedness” of the Sadako myth and outlined the historical and cultural inaccuracies of Coerr's telling of the story, the pre-service teachers in the study chose to believe the truth of the story and based their choices about teaching this literature to children on their pre-existing assumptions. The study examines reasons the pre-service teachers may have responded as they did and challenges teacher educators to develop more effective methods to support pre-service teachers as they select literature and develop their own pedagogical strategies to promote thoughtful critical conversations.
Literature that vividly and explicitly describes (often in the form of testimonies from one or more characters) traumatic and/or catastrophic events of human history poses particular challenges for readers. This article proposes testimonial response as one approach to responding to these ''risky historical texts.'' By way of introducing testimonial response, the article outlines a three-part framework. After considering how testimonial response extends and complements other traditional approaches to literature response to give readers a fuller experience of risky historical literature, the article applies the framework of testimonial response to the picture book, From Slave Ship to Freedom Road. The article concludes with implications for bringing risky historical literature and testimonial response into the classroom.
When using film adaptations of children's literature, teachers often limit learning opportunities to comparisons and contrasts of film and text or use movies as rewards. To develop deeper understandings of film adaptations of literature, students must learn that film adaptations do not merely translate a text but rather reenvision it within a particular cultural and historical moment. To move beyond looking at a film's fidelity to the original book and instead realize that the film is a creative work in its own right, students engage in film analysis in which they attend to a film's images, use of color, music, and camerawork and speculate about the consequences of the filmmakers’ choices. In doing so, students develop critical media literacy skills and meet Common Core State Standards. This article offers a SCREEN Guide created by the authors to facilitate students’ film analysis.
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