IDEOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ DIALOGS WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS
by
OKSANA LUSHCHEVSKA
(Under the Direction of Jennifer M. Graff)
ABSTRACT
Literacy scholars assert that an introduction to diversity and global perspective using
literature is most effective at the elementary level (Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010; Schultz;
2010; Stan, 1999) and well-trained teachers can teach multicultural literature and international
literature to all students with the same success and expectations despite their own different
background/race/gender (Schultz, 2010, p. 18). However, a number of factors influence K-12
educators’ selection of children’s books for classroom use (Serafini, 2013). This study focuses
primarily on what happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks. By focusing on how and why teachers vacillate between aesthetic reception and resistance (Rosenblatt, 1978; Soter, 1997) when reading international children’s literature, we can better understand ways by which we can match readers (teachers and students) with international children’s literature. Additionally, we can better understand the ideological underpinnings of elementary school teachers’ transactions with the selected international children’s picturebooks.
INDEX WORDS: international children’s literature, elementary school teachers,
transactional theory, heteroglossia
IDEOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ DIALOOGS WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS
by
OKSANA LUSHCHEVSKA
B.A., The Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University, Ukraine, 2004
M.A., The Pennsylvania State University, 2012
A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
ATHENS, GEORGIA
2016
© 2016
Oksana Lushchevska
All Rights Reserved
IDEOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ DIALOOGS WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS
by
OKSANA LUSHCHEVSKA
Major Professor: Jennifer M. Graff Committee: Bob Fecho Denise Davila
Electronic Version Approved:
Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2016
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my biggest gratitude to my major professor and supportive advisor, Dr. Jennifer M. Graff, who led me through my PhD journey with sincere encouragement and trust; to my committee Dr. Robert Fecho and Denise Davila, who challenged, influenced and guided me to my best in this journey. Thank you for your countless time and believing support.
I am grateful to my colleague Michelle Robinnette, an elementary school teacher, who generously invited me to her classroom to read aloud international picturebooks to her students and to learn a lot from our fruitful discussions. This reminded me of my deepest childhood interests in international children’s books and encouraged me to move into my dissertation topic.
I am thankful to all those teachers that agreed to participate in my study and showed me the most fruitful collaborative process. Their desire to bring the best examples of children’s literature in the classrooms is unmeasurable and inspiring.
I would also like to thank Stephanie Maria Short, who always read my manuscripts thoroughly with great willingness and energized me on my way.
I also thank my family and friends, who always cheered me up and reminded me about my true self.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv
LIST OF TABLES ...... x
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Problem Statement ...... 4
Definition of Terms...... 9
References ...... 11
2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 15
Picturebooks as a Distinct Area of Children’s Literature ...... 16
“Global,” “International,” and “Translated” Children’s Literature ...... 19
Global Children’s Literature ...... 20
International Children’s Literature ...... 21
Translated Children’s Literature ...... 22
International Children’s Literature Since WWII: Background and Context ...... 23
Theoretical and Empirical Studies in International Children’s Books ...... 26
Ideologies ...... 29
Ideologies and Children’s Literature ...... 31
Ideologies and International Children’s Literature ...... 33
Elementary School Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use ...... 35
v
Curriculum and Common Core State Standards ...... 36
Aesthetic and Cultural Connections...... 37
Roadmap to Understanding...... 39
References ...... 40
3 VISUALIZING RECEPTIVITY AND RESISTANCE: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ RESPONSES TO INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S
PICTUREBOOKS ...... 50
Abstract ...... 51
Introduction ...... 51
Theoretical Framework ...... 53
Literature Review...... 56
Picturebooks as a Complex Art Object ...... 58
In-service Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use and Responses to
International Children’s Literature ...... 59
Methodology ...... 60
The Teachers ...... 61
The International Picturebooks ...... 62
Data Sources and Collection Procedures ...... 63
Data Analysis ...... 65
Findings...... 67
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks ...... 69
Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks ...... 72
vi
Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s Books
for Classroom Use...... 74
International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers ...... 75
Discussion ...... 78
Moving Forward ...... 81
References ...... 82
List of Tables ...... 86
4 OPENING SPACES FOR “OTHER POSSIBLE ” IDEOLOGIES: IDEOLOGICAL
TRANSACTIONS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS WITH
INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS ...... 94
Abstract ...... 95
Introduction ...... 95
Theoretical Framework ...... 98
Ideologies in Children’s Literature ...... 101
Ideological Landscapes and Diversity ...... 102
Ideology of Diverse Children’s Literature ...... 103
The Synergy of Picturebooks ...... 104
U.S. Elementary School Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use ...... 105
Research Design: People, Picturebooks, and Processes ...... 106
Participants ...... 107
International Picturebooks ...... 109
Data Collection and Analysis...... 110
Findings...... 113
vii
International Children’s Literature as a Learning Tool ...... 113
The Idea of Message in International Picturebooks ...... 116
Negotiating Cultural Voices in International Picturebooks ...... 117
Skimming the Surface: Visual Images as Indicators of Internationalism ...... 120
Discussion ...... 122
Next Steps ...... 125
References ...... 126
5 A SPACE FOR VISUAL LITERACY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’
DIALOGUES WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS ...... 136
Abstract ...... 137
Introduction ...... 137
Scholarly Framework ...... 141
The Design of the Project ...... 143
Data Sources ...... 145
The Reading and Responding Processes...... 149
Making Space for Visual Literacy through International Picturebooks ...... 150
Color ...... 151
Picturebook Design Elements as a Tool for Visual Literacy ...... 153
What I Learned ...... 156
What to Do in the Classroom ...... 157
List of Recommendations for Drawing on Illustrations to Foster Visual
Literacy ...... 160
References ...... 162
viii
6 CONCLUSION ...... 168
Implications for Practice and Research...... 176
References ...... 181
......
APPENDICES
A DESCRIPTION OF THEMES ...... 183
B LETTER OF CONSENT OF STUDY ...... 187
C RECRUITMENT EMAIL ...... 190
D INTERVIEW PROTOCOLS ...... 192
Initial Interview Protocol ...... 192
Book Dialogs Protocol ...... 193
Follow-up Interview Protocol ...... 195
REFERENCES ...... 196
ix
LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1.1: International Picturebooks Selection List ...... 85
Table 1.2: Teacher Demographics ...... 88
Table 1.3: Categories by Percentage ...... 90
Table 1.4: Teachers’ Picturebook Responses, Preferences and Selections ...... 91
Table 2.1: Summary of the data collected through online survey ...... 108
Table 2.2: International Picturebooks Selection List ...... 133
Table 3.1: Teacher Information ...... 144
Table 3.2: International Picturebooks Selection List ...... 146
Table 3.2: International Picturebooks Selection List ...... 146
x
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
When I was a child growing up in both former Soviet Ukraine and independent Ukraine, children’s books that shared stories from other countries fascinated me. I read about hundreds of beautiful places and was open and eager to visit countries not only to see and learn about other people and their cultures but also to share something from/about my own country. When I first came to the United States, I brought souvenirs from Ukraine in order to share the unique culture of my country. I have been living in this country for many years now and I am still bringing some souvenirs while going back and forth. However, the souvenirs have changed from items to books, primarily children’s books to be exact.
As a doctoral student, I am even more interested in international books; however, I have become puzzled when I find out that my country is represented only by Jan Brett’s interpretation of a Ukrainian folktale The Mitten. I am also surprised that many other countries are underrepresented in the plethora of children’s literature in the U.S. And I wondered why such a diverse country built by immigrants does not necessarily have a wealth of international books, especially when considering its’ increasingly multicultural population largely a result of immigration.
Even though many researchers assert a need to foster diversity, international-mindedness, and global awareness, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, the estimated number of multicultural books published in 2015 in the U.S. constitutes only around 14.6% of total children’s titles published. In addition, Garrison and Kimmel (2014) state that according to
1
Natalie Levisalles “50% of children’s books translated in the world are from English while only
3% are translated into English” (p. 38). This paucity of published translated literature aligns with the aforementioned paucity of multicultural children’s literature, and both are quite disconcerting when remembering that it has been over fifty years since Nancy Larrick’s 1965 call for the cultural diversification of children’s literature within the U. S.
While many people have heard of Larrick’s call and continue to act upon it, fewer people know that Mildred L. Batchelder (1966) also called for the broadening of geographical barriers and diversification with international children’s literature. As part of the larger umbrella of multicultural children’s literature, international children’s literature can be “windows and mirrors” (Bishop, 1994), both of which allow readers to not only see the world around them through the windows, but to see themselves (and/or) their experiences mirrored in literature.
Such literature presents multiple perspectives about the lives of many cultural groups around the world and interweaves intercultural understanding within the storylines (Corapi & Short, 2015;
Joels, 1999). It offers the depth and breadth of a sense of community and influences communication between people, making it deeper, more sympathetic, and more enduring (Joels,
1999, p. 34). These rich depictions of culture and subcultures make diverse literature an optimal source (Galda, Sipe, Liang, & Cullinan, 2013) to reflect a flourishing mosaic of our pluralistic society. With diverse literature students can effectively and thoughtfully acknowledge, understand, and value differences as well as recognize commonalities of humanity. But do
American schools utilize culturally diverse texts and if they do, how often does the practice occur and with what books?
Only half-way through the second decade of the 21st century we are more readily seeing the benefits of responding to Batchelder’s original call in 1966 and Rosie Webb Joels’ (1999)
2
call for a greater awareness and advocacy of international children’s literature. Such a call has resulted in many world-wide initiatives that have certainly raised awareness about international children’s literature. In 2014, a group of children’s literature enthusiasts created the We Need
Diverse Books initiative with the goal of advocating that the publishing industry increase the number of diverse children’s books in the U.S. This initiative includes international literature in its list of diverse children’s literature. Additionally, new publishing houses such as Lantana
Publishing in the United Kingdom as well as more established publishing houses such as
Canada’s Groundwood Books are publishing more international children’s literature either originally written in or translated into English and marketing them to U.S. audiences.
Educators, scholars and children’s literature enthusiasts are also more frequently attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the world’s premiere children’s publishing copyright market, to share and obtain international children’s books. Moreover, they are supporting international children’s literature through annual awards such as the International
Reading Association’s Children’s Literature and Reading SIG’s Notable Books for a Global
Society, as well as the United States Board on Books for Young People’s (USBBY)’s
Outstanding International Books. Children’s literature publications such as Bookbird, Bridges, and World of Words (WOW) specifically review international children’s literature for K-12 teachers and annual research and practitioner conferences sponsored by International Board on
Books for Young People’s (IBBY) and International Research Society for Children’s Literature
(IRSCL) are specifically devoted to international children’s literature. Clearly the production and promotion of international children’s literature continues to grow.
Despite all of these awards and lists, teachers remain relatively unaware of international literature. This may be because international children’s books are still often regarded in the U. S.
3
as “commercially risky” (Markus, 2010, p. 48), meaning that most publishers consider them
unpopular and, as a result, unprofitable. Moreover, the international children’s books to which
the U. S. children are exposed do not represent a microcosm of the greater body of children’s
books published in other countries (Stan, 1999, p. 168). Consequently, teachers may know about
international children’s literature, but they are not necessarily including it in their classrooms,
despite the ongoing call for more diverse literature in the classroom.
Problem Statement
Educators in the United States strive to provide students with outstanding literary works
to connect young people effectively with high-quality literature and to create life-time passionate
readers, writers, and thinkers of our global pluralistic society (Joels, 1999, p. 65; Lehman,
Freeman, & Scharer, 2010, p. 34). While using children’s books to support instruction, educators
co-construct school learning environments and “promote alchemy” between the curriculum and
the needs of cosmopolitan students of the 21st century (Campano & Ghiso, 2010). No doubt,
diverse and multilingual student populations represent some special challenges and opportunities
for teachers because students’ identities and interests unfold through many geographical,
cultural, and historical dimensions (Corapi & Short, 2015; Campano & Ghiso, 2010). Children’s
literature from other countries can be a valuable resource in these situations. Such literature
offers an emphasis on connections between cultures and introduces the capacity for dialogue,
understanding, and respect across an “interconnected yet deeply divided world” (Hull &
Stornaiuolo, 2010, p. 86). Such literature has the potential to help educators acknowledge “multi-
voicedness” in global society (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2012, p. 28) and help children envision themselves as actors for both local and global social responsibilities. International
children’s literature can also help educators to accomplish the difficult challenges of
4
communicating and teaching cultural pluralism, intercultural understanding (Corapi & Short,
2015), and acceptance of cultural diversity (Suh & Samuel, 2011). Consequentially, international children’s literature is a great yet often underestimated resource to share and study personal culture and culture from a variety of geographical areas.
Literacy scholars assert that an introduction to diversity and global perspective using literature is most effective at the elementary level (Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010; Schultz;
2010; Stan, 1999) and well-trained teachers can teach multicultural literature and international literature to all students with the same success and expectations despite their own different backgrounds/races/genders (Schultz, 2010, p. 18). However, a number of factors influence K-12 educators’ selection of children’s books for classroom use (Serafini, 2013). School curriculum and state Common Core standards represent some of the most important factors in determining teachers’ book selection criteria and practices as well as their personal and/or professional aesthetic connections and ideologies (Martens et al, 2012).
Since books are symbolic artifacts of beliefs and practices of a particular culture to socialize a target audience (Stephens, 1992, p. 10), the author and reader share a field of ideological discourses or intersections of such discourses when transacting with the text
(Stephens, 1992, pp. 84-115). However, when looking at international books for children, the discourses contained within them may vary drastically and inevitably include ideologies of the culture the book came from but not necessarily the ideologies of the cultures reading the books.
Therefore, international children’s books often receive probes for critical/ideological challenges that they provide (Soter, 1997), even though a traditional rationale of bringing international books into the U. S. classroom has been focused on increasing international understanding
(Batchelder, 1966; Lo, 1991; Stan, 1999).
5
The concept of international understanding is closely related to the idea of cultural and
literary translations. It is a balancing act to make sure there is not too much “foreign” yet not too much familiar in the book. The narratives respect cultures, communities, and languages while
still infusing ideologies about other countries and peoples that may or may not be stereotypical.
International children’s books convey ideologies that can either be adjusted to a target culture
from which the book is being published, or be distinctly different or even unnoticeable within a
target audience (Nikolajeva, 2010). Therefore, international children’s books are likely to foster
aesthetic reception or resistance, with many readers identifying the books as exotic, peculiar, and
quaint (Stan, 1999). Moreover, as Roxburgh (2004) notes, international children’s books stir up
some of the comfortably organized norms of people’s lives in the U. S. and take readers out of
their comfort zones by showing even familiar things in a new light Therefore, by bringing
international children’s books to the students, educators might promote the diverse reading,
display multiple perspectives, as well as also help children to become a community of critical
thinkers. In order for this to happen, educators need to pave their own way to critical thinking
and create a classroom climate which values equity of each individual is beneficially open for the
dialogue “on issues regarding diversity” (Suh & Samuel, 2011, p. 3).
The advocacy for diverse children’s literature in the U.S. has resulted in studies involving
international children’s literature that are more exploratory and celebratory than rigorous or
empirical. Within this corpus of studies there is a lack of research on reader reception of
international children’s literature and K-12 educators’ selection processes of international
children’s literature for classroom use. Since reading is a social practice (Graff, 2010; Luke,
1988), when it comes to the classroom, it is mostly shaped by the teachers (Voelker, 2013). As
Corapi and Short (2015) share, teachers are positioned to be knowledgeable, collaborative,
6
creative professionals, who flexibly move from theory to practice (p. 8). They use their personal
and professional knowledge and skills, experiences and values to bring books into classroom
practices. Yet, they also project their assumptions, beliefs, and values on the selection of
literature. Brinson (2012) claims that educators should strive to create anti-bias classroom book selections and connect their students with a wealth of diverse literature. Those students can then
engage in the “train-the-trainers” model (Brinson, 2012), which advocates a “snowball” effect in
which teachers share information and knowledge to their colleagues, students, and student
families, who then pass it to others, and so on. Thus, understanding how teachers rely on their
assumptions, beliefs, and values when selecting, responding, and evaluating diverse children’s
literatures, especially international children’s literature, will help to open a doorway to better
understanding not only teachers’ assumptions, beliefs, and values, but also how to bring
awareness to educators about international children’s literature. Teacher educators and children’s
literature experts can better understand multiple ways of introducing, connecting, and talking
with educators about international children’s literature in the U.S., thereby helping diversify the
corpus of books available to our diverse students.
I believe that understanding in-service elementary school teachers’ responses to
international children’s literature will help to better discover how to bring awareness to educators
about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and talk to
educators about international children’s literature in the U. S., so that international children’s
books become another educational vehicle for students to widen their knowledge of the world
and expand their cross-cultural understanding. Thus, the purpose of my qualitative case study
research is three-fold. First, I aim to understand how in-service elementary school teachers
respond to selected international children’s picturebooks. Second, I want to investigate what
7
ideologies of international children’s literature are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions,
as represented through discourse. Third, I want to better understand how to bring awareness to
educators about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and
talk to educators about international children’s literature. Thus, my research questions are as
follows:
What happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected
international children’s picturebooks?
a. What contributes to their positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance
continuum of reader response?
b. What ideologies of international children’s picturebooks are illuminated through
the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse?
In this study, I focus specifically on international children’s picturebooks for several
reasons. First, picturebooks are a unique genre in which text and visual elements come together,
thereby offering an unparalleled opportunity to use visual literacy skills to enhance the meaning-
making process. Second, the availability of international picturebooks is higher than any other
type of international children’s literature. Third, nowadays is the “golden age” of picturebooks,
making them a favorable target for in-class use. Fourth, I have taken several graduate courses
focusing on picturebooks and have authored many picturebooks. Thus, I have both background
knowledge and expertise. By learning how teachers transact with international children’s picturebooks and the ideologies that inform their transactions, I wish to offer the educational and
children’s literature communities both practical knowledge and empirical research on teachers’
selection of and responses to culturally responsive children’s literature that have the potential to
develop understanding, acceptance and appreciation. .
8
Designed in a manuscript style, the findings of this dissertation are organized in three
separate chapters that will be submitted to scholarly journals. In Chapter 2, I provide a review of scholarly debates about ideologies in children’s literature and interweave theoretical and empirical studies on debates about international children’s literature throughout my review. I
also discuss elementary educators’ children’s book selections. In Chapter 3, I analyze what
contributes to the teacher’s positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum of reader
response. In Chapter 4, I focus on ideological transactions of elementary school teachers with
international children’s picturebooks. In Chapter 5, I discuss how in-service elementary school
teachers responded to selected international picturebooks with a specific focus on their
engagement with the visual elements.
Definitions of Terms
To ensure understanding of terms that various scholars may define differently, I have
provided definitions of key terms for this study below. These terms are listed in alphabetical
order.
Discourses: Discourses are modes of organizing knowledge and ideas into sets of values
and beliefs. Their roots are in the language and the context of the social world (Bakhtin, 1981).
They represent a chain of utterances/words that are dialogic and conditional. Such
utterances/words are positioned historically within communities, places, and experiences.
Discourses are imbued with ideology (Stephens, 1992, p. 1), and no book for children, as well as
any responses to it, might be “innocent of ideological freight” (Hollindale, 1992, p. 21).
Ideology: Ideology is a schema of explicit social, political, and moral ideas and beliefs of individuals. Ideological discourses consist of social and linguistic conversations and a culture’s implicit dominant beliefs and values (Stephens, 1992, p. 92).
9
Internationalism: Internationalism is an idea and movement that formulates the relationship among nations through cooperation and interchange and inspires a more peaceful world through transnational efforts of sharing practices, promoting common good and values
(Iriye, 1997, p. 4).
International children’s literature: For the purpose of this study, international children's literature is a body of books published in countries outside of the U. S. in the language of that country and, then, translated and published in the U.S. (Cullinan & Pearson, 2001; Stan,
1999; Tomlinson, 1998). These international children’s books will have distinct cultural markers that identify and reveal certain cultural or societal norms, customs and traditions that can be traced to a particular country or set of countries.
Picturebook: A picturebook is a multimodal art object with a complex synergy (Sipe,
2008, p. 23), the key to the understanding of which depends on combining the verbal texts with the sign system of illustrations to achieve an authentic whole. In a picturebook, words and pictures relate to each other in many complex ways that involve rereading, reviewing, turning to previous pages, slowing down, and reinterpreting (p. 27).
Text: In this study, the term “text” will refer to both children’s picturebooks and transactions occurring within the formats of interviews, participant-initiated communications, and open-ended book responses.
Visual literacy: This concept coined by John Debes (1968), means an ability to read, interpret, and understand a visual text. This ability is fundamental to human learning and communication. It allows contacting, comprehending, and enjoying images on with a deeper analytic thinking.
10
Aesthetic reception and resistance: For the purposes of this study the term “aesthetic reception” will signify each individual reader’s positive reception and interpretation of a particular literary work based on his/her pre-existing knowledge, experiences and beliefs. The term “aesthetic resistance” will then be used to define reader’s opposition to or negative reception of a particular literary work that is in conflict or in ideological tension, due to prior knowledge and experience.
References
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Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (pp. 259-422).
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Batchelder, M.L. (1966). Learning about children’s books in translation. ALA Bulletin, 60(1), 33-
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Bishop, R. S. (1994). Kaleidoscope: A multicultural booklist for grades K–8. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
Brinson, S. A. (2012). Knowledge of multicultural literature among early childhood educators.
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Campano, G. & Ghiso, M.P. (2010). Immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. In S.
Wolf, K. Coats, P. Enciso, C.A. Jenkins. (Eds.), Handbook of research on children's and
young adult literature (pp. 164-176). New York, NY: Routledge.
Cooperative Children’s Book Center. (2016). Multicultural Literature. Retrieved from
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Corapi, S., & Short, K. G. (2015). Exploring international and intercultural understanding
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sociocultural landscapes of books and reading. Language Arts, 87(3), 177-187.
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networking as cosmopolitan practice. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 54(2), 84-
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Joels, R.W. (1999). Weaving world understanding: The importance of translations in
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Lehman, B.A., Freeman, E.B., & Scharer, P.L. (2010). Reading globally, K-8: Connecting
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awareness. The Horn Book Magazine, 86(6), 45-50.
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grade. The Reading Teacher, 66(4), 285-294.
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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The following literature review is multi-faceted. In the first part of this chapter, I discuss
picturebooks as a distinct format of children’s literature and synthesize scholarly debates on
linguistic, visual, spatial, and gestural parts of the picturebook in reference to readers’ visual
aesthetic experience. In addition, I focus on contemporary research involving international
children’s literature from the U.S. perspective. I contextualize the definition of “international
children’s literature,” yet also elucidate some of the debates about an interchangeable use of
terms “international children’s literature,” “global children’s literature,” and “translated
children’s’ literature,” which are often either closely related to each other or used to define the
same body of literature. I also investigate theoretical and exploratory studies and debates
involving children’s literature. In summary, this section provides a background for my study in
regards to the children’s literature as a whole, and specifically international children’s picturebooks which are my focus.
In the second section of this chapter, I focus on explorations of scholarly debates about
ideologies in children’s literature, because international children’s literature, as conceptualized
by scholars, manifests social, political, economic and ideological values that are often different
from those manifested in the U.S. Specifically, I discuss how ideology, as “inseparable from
language” (Hollindale, 1992, p.33), has a place in children’s literature and how it should be used
for understanding. I start with defining ideology and its nature as elucidated by Althusser (1971).
I continue with a theorization of ideologies by Taxel (1988), Stephens (1992), Hollindale (1992),
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Sarland (1996), and Zipes (2000) and augment the theories with a discussion of ideological discourses. Additionally, I explore how ideological landscapes in children’s literature portray examples of fragments of society as Hollindale articulated (1992). This section conceptualizes the notion of ideology and connects to children’s literature for the purposes of my study as my second research question focuses on ideologies illuminated through the transaction of teachers with international picturebooks.
In the third and final section, I include scholarly debates on the audience of picturebooks, review some practitioner-based works connected to the response to picturebooks and various rationales in teachers’ book selections for classroom use. I also include a discussion of children’s literature studies connected to curriculum and Common Core State Standards for English
Language Arts (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2016) as well as research based on aesthetic and cultural connections. This particular section provides a link between the teachers’ selection of books for classroom use and this study. In essence, it is essential to research teachers’ book selection criteria and understand how their personal responses influence the selection process. I conclude my review with the discussion of the importance of understanding the teachers’ response to international children’s literature and their recognition of ideologies embedded in children’s books as a basis for this study.
Picturebooks as a Distinct Area of Children’s Literature
Picturebooks, a very popular format of children’s literature, have often been considered books designed for young children to learn about the world around them as well as entertain themselves. However, readers of all ages enjoy picturebooks, in part, due to their sophisticated
(or complex) compositions (Salisbury & Styles, 2012). While the body of children’s books
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consists of multiple genres and formats, in this study I aim to focus only on a format of
children’s picturebooks, in which both verbal text and illustrations represent an authentic whole.
In picturebooks, words and pictures relate to each other in many complex ways that
involve rereading, reviewing, turning to previous pages, slowing down, and reinterpreting
(Kiefer, 1994; Lewis, 2001; Matulka, 2008; Nikolajeva & Scott, 2001; Nodelman, 1998;
Schwarcz & Schwarcz, 1991; Sipe 2008). I believe that illustrations in picturebooks need to be
reinterpreted and translated by the readers as well, especially with regard to elementary-aged
children who are still learning how to read the verbal text.
An important issue in the discussion of picturebooks is the audience. Nodelman and
Reimer (2003) share that picturebooks are often considered “the most common form of children’s literature,” emphasizing the audience to be exclusively children (p. 274). Kiefer
(1994) shares that such classification of young children emerged in the greater part of the 20th
century with the development of technology and books of high quality. Yet, throughout history
picturebooks have had a broad audience and have often reached the adult-bestseller lists.
Salisbury and Styles (2012) add that a picturebook’s audience is constantly widening and the format of picturebook becomes a crossover hybrid book art, which should be recognized as
“visual literature” (p. 7). Therefore, scholars also consider the literary and cultural texts of picturebooks challenging art or art which is not distant from controversies based on their impact on “our minds, emotions, and even our bodies” (Evans, 2015, p. xvii).
Picturebooks are a unique composition of words, images, and ideas collaborating “to
evoke an emotional and intellectual response” (Kiefer, 2010, p. 156). Because picturebooks
convey meaning through verbal and visual narratives (Salisbury & Styles, 2012), many scholars
discuss the format of picturebooks in various ways. For Sipe (2008), a picturebook is a
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multimodal art object with a complex synergy (p. 23), the understanding of which depends on summing up the verbal text with the sign system of illustrations to achieve an authentic whole.
Scholars also define picturebooks as multimodal texts blending into a whole story (Martens et. al, 2012). Thus, they look at the linguistic (e.g. words), visual (e.g. illustrations), spatial (e.g. layout), and gestural (e.g. movement) parts of the picturebook to relate to the overall aesthetic experience.
Although picturebooks “are significant for the esthetic beauty and emotional appeal,” their language and illustrative narrations require a critical level of awareness “through informed inquiry about the texts and illustrations” (Beck, 2009, pp.100-101). Lewis (2001) states that both
“pictures and words are used to tell stories and create imaginative fiction” (p. 31). Additionally, for Nodelman (2005), all the components in the picturebooks represent “what semioticians call
‘signs’” (p. 131). This unique symbiosis prompts readers to engage their visual literacy skills and allows the information to transmit from the book to the reader. Every element of the picturebook contains certain codes or information extracted through the process of reading. In addition, these codes can group together to form a story, based on the reader’s own transaction with the book.
The transaction, in turn, is based on the reader’s own personal experience as well as culture.
Readers can interpret pictures differently but the process of interpretation is “permeated by the ideological assumptions of [the] culture” (Nodelman & Reimer, 2003, p. 276). Nikolajeva and
Scott (2001) elucidate similar beliefs to Nodelman’s (2005) and emphasize the reciprocal nature of a picturebook’s visual and verbal communication (p. 2). Through acknowledging these approaches, readers turn from a visual to verbal grammar and vice versa for “concatenation of understanding” (Nikolajeva & Scott, 2001, p.2). In other words, readers transact between two systems: verbal and visual. Consequently, introducing verbal and image readings result in
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readers’ experience of creating meaning through interpretation of picturebook narratives. The interrelationship of verbal and visual components in picturebooks is a key factor for the reader response and is consciously or unconsciously explored by readers through semiotic and aesthetic theoretical lenses. Semiotic lens allows readers to learn visual texts with clusters of some particular signs, and the aesthetic lens helps to define what is aesthetically appealing to elementary school teachers and youth.
Overall, my discussion on picturebooks shows that children’s literature theorists and practitioners consider the potential dynamics of picturebooks and their roles for and reception by readers in contemporary realms. Taking all the discussed articles into consideration, I see that the scholars agree that in our increasingly visual society picturebooks become not just aesthetic art objects but powerful tools that afford to develop better meaning-making with using both verbal and visual parts equally. This dual purpose serves not only to strengthen attention to artistic elements but to provide a variety of codes that refer to diverse interpretations.
“Global,” “International,” and “Translated” Children’s Literature
In contemporary debates, scholars around the world interchangeably use the terms
“international children’s literature,” “global children’s literature” and “translated children’s literature” to define children’s literature from other countries. These terms have been conceptualized within literacy education since WWII when referring to the inclusion of children’s literature from a variety of geographical areas of the world to foster cultural understanding and interdependence and to develop global awareness. Economic, social, political, and cultural factors influence which term is used and by whom. Such factors include but are not limited to a level of economic and social development of the country, a geographical location, and a political situation. From the U.S. perspective, these terms should be included in the
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broader category of diverse children’s literature as they represent yet another dimension of
diversity and serve as a unique layer of perspectives underrepresented in the U.S. multicultural
children’s literature. In the following sub-sections, I discuss the usage of the terms “global children’s literature,” “international children’s literature,” and “translated children’s literature” in the U.S. and their overall interdependence.
Global Children’s Literature
Children’s literature represents a product marketed and distributed in an open market
(Hailbron, 1999; Ghesquire, 2006), and as such, it plays a significant role in the economies of many countries (Salisbury & Styles, 2012, p. 165). The import and export of children’s literature symbolically controls the market of children’s books. Despite the market economy realm, the richness of global children’s books provides resources to dive into other cultures and realize that we are all citizens of a changing political and economic world (Diakiw, 1999; Hansen &
Schmidt, 1989; “Notable Books for Global Society”, 2016; Livingston & Kurkjian, 2007).
Lehman, Freeman, and Scharer (2010) define global children’s literature as an umbrella term
being inclusive of four types of literature: (1) literature first published in another country, which
might be both written in English or translated into it, (2) literature written by immigrants that live
in the U.S. and write about their own countries, (3) literature written in other countries and
published in the U.S., and (4) literature written by U.S. writers that represent the settings of other
countries (p. 16). Global literature can also be considered international (Graff & Lushchevska,
2014), because it “was published in English either outside of the U.S. or published
simultaneously in the U.S. and other countries” and it also needs if not linguistic than cultural
translation (Graff & Lushchevska, 2014, p. 43). In this way, “global children’s books” is again
an umbrella term that is inclusive and comprehensive. Thus, the term “global children’s
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literature” can be extended or narrowed in accordance to a context; it can also be used
generically to represent a market commodity and commercial realm.
Over the past several years, such initiatives as We Need Diverse Books have appeared
with the mission to advocate “essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and
promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people” (“We Need Diverse
Books”, 2016). Such organizations take a broad view on the concept of diversity to represent all diverse experiences and include multicultural, global and international books as part of their definition of diverse literature.
International Children’s Literature
Broadly defined from the U. S. perspective, international children's literature is a corpus of books published in other countries in the language of those countries and, then, translated into
English and republished in the U.S. (Stan, 1999, p. 168; Tomlinson, 1998, p. 4). ). Similar to
Tomlinson’s (1998) definition of international children’s literature in the U.S. and Lehman,
Freeman, and Scharer’s (2010) definition of global children’s literature, The Continuum
Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (Cullinan & Pearson, 2001), defines international children’s literature for U.S. readers as: (1) books written in languages other than English; (2) books that were originally written in English but outside of the U. S.; and (3) books that were published in other countries than the U. S. in other languages than English and were, then, published in the U. S. in the original language.
Because international literature for children, as scholars point out, comes to the U.S. from many remote locations, Garrett (2006) defines international children's books as books that are not created to speak to Americans in their “language” (Garrett, 2006, p. 11) literally and ideologically. Yet, international books represent other ways of meaningfulness (e.g. foreign
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customs, traditions, and ideologies) that readers should respect, understand, tolerate, and enjoy
(pp. 11-12). According to Joels (1999) internationalism emphasizes an exchange of knowledge
(p. 65); hence, using the term "international" in regards to children's literature refers to an exchange and promotion of literature in translation in order to obtain some knowledge from it (p.
66). This definition stands close to Lepman’s rationale of international children’s literature, which is to increase international understanding and knowledge about each other (Stan, 1999, p.
168). In summary, most scholars use the term “international children’s literature” to talk about translated books as culturally conscious couriers that include and transmit some essential knowledge about ourselves and others. They help readers consciously accept that we are living on the same planet with other cultures, interdependently and tightly connected.
Translated Children’s Literature
“Translated children’s literature” is a term that defines the body of books that is translated from the languages in which they were originally written. It emphasizes a body of literature within translation studies and interdisciplinary studies. From the U.S. prospective, translated children’s literature represents a subset of international children’s literature. Referring to the term “translated children’s literature,” scholars explicitly explore the process of translating for children, translators’ voices and the peculiarities that go along with translations (Bell, 2006;
Stahl, 2006; Oittinen, 2000), theoretical approaches (Shavit, 1981), cross-cultural influences
(Nikolajeva, 2010; Sotter, 1997), and the variety of translations and interpretations, as well as an extensive history of translated children’s books (Ben-Ari, 1992; Lathey, 2006; 2010; O’Sullivan,
2003; O’Sullivan, 2009; Tabbert, 2002). All of these studies look at the act of translation and the role of translator in it. Most of these studies assert that translation is not mere transfer of text from one language to another, but rather a complex process of interpretation and adjustment of
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the original text to the language peculiarities and audience of the recipient country. Thus, the
translator plays a significant role in the final product that exists as the result of the translation.
In the sections above, I have discussed a multifaceted view of international children’s
literature and how the usage of terms is utilized. For the purpose of this study, I will use the
definition of international children's literature, from the U.S. perspective, as a body of books
published in countries outside of the U. S. in the language of that country and, then, republished
in the U.S. (Cullinan & Pearson, 2001; Stan, 1999; Tomlinson, 1998).
International Children’s Literature Since WWII: Background and Context
I begin my discussion of international children’s literature in the period just after WWII
because this is the period when children’s literature as well as international children’s literature
became a major focus of discussion among teachers, librarians, academics and children’s
literature enthusiasts. Academic research also shaped and established children’s literature as a
stand-alone category of literature that requires special attention due to its unique qualities and importance in the development of the next generation of people.
When the children’s literature enthusiast activist Jella Lepman (1891-1970) returned to
Germany devastated by the Nazi regime, she established the International Exhibition of
Children’s Books based on a belief that it would bring many changes to Western Germany. It
would not only help people move away from Nazism, but it would also help develop the new
values of the Western world by connecting children across the globe and emphasizing a peaceful
world (Arzuk, 2014; Lepman, 2002; Panaou, 2011; Tomlinson, 1998). When Lepman (2002)
succeeded in organizing the first International Exhibition of Children’s Books on July 3, 1946,
she turned to an article by Erich Kästner, a German author, emphasizing that children’s literature
“affords a wide view of differences and similarities in the children’s literature of various nations,
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[and] it also vividly shows the mutual influence they depend on” (p. 54). The importance of such
an exhibition was in setting intercultural communication, which would result in peace among
nations.
This International Exhibition of Children’s Books helped Lepman to establish the
International Youth Library in Munich, Germany in 1949 and to create The International Board
of Books for Young People (IBBY) in 1953. The purposes of both lay mostly in promoting an
international exchange of ideas and settling intellectual criticism through conferences and a
journal, Bookbird: The Journal of International Children’s Literature. Lepman placed a specific emphasis on various opportunities for children to have access to books, encouraged the production of high-quality books in developing countries, acquired the support of enthusiasts to be involved in working with children and books as well as supported research and scholarly
works on children’s literature (Tomlinson, 1998, pp. 8-9). Lepman’s open-mindedness, pursuit of
peace, and belief in the importance of intercultural communication made a significant
contribution in the following decades of cultural exchange and international communication
between national literatures (Panaou, 2011). All the initiatives described above resulted in a
foundation of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) in 1970, a
rise in debates in translated children’s literature and its inclusion in literature departments in 60s
and 70s as well as a growing body of academic works and scholarly research on children’s literature in the 90s.
Mildred L. Batchelder (1966), a librarian and an advocate of a wider international
understanding, similar to Lepman, promoted high-quality translated books to readers in the U. S.
She believed that when children from one country read the books that children from another
country read, children start to pave the way to mutual understanding. Batchelder asserted:
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Interchange of children’s books between countries, through translation, influences
communication between the peoples of those countries, and if the books chosen for
traveling from language to language are worthy books, the resulting communication
maybe deeper, richer, more sympathetic, more enduring. (p. 34)
As a result, the American Library Association established the Mildred L. Batchelder Award in
1966 to encourage international exchange of high quality children's books in translation.
Before the mid-1960s, the United States school curriculum focused attention on Anglo literary traditions. During the Cold War, the rise of interests to strengthen a focus exclusively on
English literature arose (Jay, 2001, p. 43). Yet, due to the United States Board on Books for
Young People (USBBY), influenced by IBBY and established in 1960s, and the activities and advocacy of Mildred L. Batchelder (1901-1998), international literature brought international discourses into the U.S. literacy studies and curriculum debates. In addition, a number of significant organizations appeared to serve for further development of international children’s literature. Examples include the International Reading Association (Children’s Literature and
Reading Specialist Interest Group), the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL), an online journal World of Words (available at http://wowlit.org/), an online journal from the
University of Arizona.
This brief overview does not provide the depth and breadth of all the historical contexts that conduced or prevented the development of international children’s literature, but it shows that the idea of creating a body of international literature lies in its ideological purposes that are influenced by societal events (e.g. tragedies).
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Theoretical and Empirical Studies in International Children’s Books
The studies and discussions involving international children’s books are mostly theoretical, exploratory and conducted both inside and outside of the U. S. (Arzuk, 2014; Hunt,
1996; Yamazaki, 2002). Scholars often focus on learning culture through international children’s books, connecting students to the world, weaving world understanding, promoting global awareness and cultural diversity, discussing elements of foreignness, illuminating issues of cultural diversity, global crossings, and the cross-cultural art of visual storytelling (Buck, 2008;
Garrett, 2006; Hadaway & McKenna, 2007; Joels, 1999; Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010;
Marcus, 2010; Pantaleo, 2012; Roxburgh, 2004; Salisbury & Styles, 2012; Stan, 2002;
Tomlinson, 1998). International scholars also discuss the role of translators, translation issues, and economics of international children’s book market (Nikolajeva, 2010; Oittinen, 2000;
O’Sullivan, 2005). Occurrences of aesthetic restriction, distance, and repulsion in regards to reader reception of international texts are evident in certain cases of reading (Soter, 1997).
Additionally, international children’s literature emphasizes difficulties in navigating cultural and ideological differences (Stewart, 2011).
Some researchers report on the necessity of the U.S. corpus of international children’s literature to include more distinct international settings (Liang, Watkins, & Williams, 2013). One way to reply to such a necessary call, as scholars have highlighted, is to include the Batchelder
Award winning books, titles from International Reading Association global literature list and the
United States Board on Books for Young People's annual Outstanding International book list into a school curriculum (Garrison, 2012; Joel, 1999). Doing so will explicitly give to readers an impression and understanding of literature written outside of the U.S. and inspire readers’ imaginations. However, Liang, Watkins & Williams (2013) argue that USBBY’s list is not
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international enough with almost three-quarters of books not having a “distinct international setting” (p. 23). International settings are important in children’s books, as they provide new perspectives on the world and allow readers to be exposed to various life challenges and situations. This exposure, in turn, can serve as a conduit to advanced critical thinking and expanded worldviews. At the same time, during our discussions in the International Children’s
Literature course with Dr. Jennifer Graff, we established that the inclusion of things, people and ideas that are often deemed by U.S. readers as “too international” in children’s books might actually work in the opposite direction, prompting educators to exclude such books from their curriculum and avoid them altogether (O’Sullivan, 2009). Consequently, there seems to be a need to find the right balance for international children’s literature to maximize its inclusion in the classrooms.
My review of empirical studies that focus on readers’ engagement with international literature shows a paucity of such research. Some studies encompass readers of all ages, actual or implied (Panaou & Tsilimeni, 2010), involve a read-aloud format (Bland, 2013), or focus on developing intercultural understanding (Corapi & Short, 2015). All of these studies determine that the role of translator is pivotal in bridging the gap between diverse cultures. Another study discusses cross-cultural reception (Nikolajeva, 2010), which includes responding to a text originally written in one language, a source language, that has been translated into another, a target language, and read by readers from culture tied to the target language. This study determined that K-12 students’ responses vary between aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic rejection, depending on their ideologies, as informed by their geographical locations (see
Nikolajeva, 2010, pp. 405-407). In essence, this study aimed to discover, how students transact with translated books and what responses they exhibit based on their transactions.
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Some studies involving pre-service and in-service teachers (Corapi & Short, 2015;
Nikolajeva, 2010; Panaou & Tsilimeni, 2010; Pritchard, Carr, Buchanan, & Powell-Brown,
2005) remind us that reader reception of any text, international or not, depends upon many factors such as background knowledge, personal connections, etc. According to Nikolajeva,
“Readers recognize texts as their ‘own’ through language, national mentality, ‘credible’ description, and so on.” (p. 21). So, what happens if readers arrive at geographical and linguistic boundaries? What happens with the interaction between two cultures: a culture in which the text was created and a culture in which a reader transacts with a text? “How can we study the interaction of two cultures on the level of mutual understanding, mentality, ideas, values, and beliefs? … What code or codes enable us to interpret a verbal text from a foreign culture after it is translated into own language?” (Nikolajeva, 2010, p. 34). These questions, generated from the previously mentioned studies addressing reader engagement with international children’s literature, refer to controversial postulates and assure a definite need in empirical studies in cross-cultural reception. A strong need exists for thorough reader response studies in international children’s literature. We need to explore how readers function in, what Nikolajeva calls, “a new semiotic space” (p. 35): a foreign text for a reader in his/her home country. In this particular study, the home country is the U. S.
While I recognize the importance of studying how children read translated texts, I don’t think we can forget that adults are often the intermediaries between books and children. Adults can inspire children to read international literature and assist them with book selection for their in-class and out-of-class activities. Similar to other studies, I conclude that if in-service teachers would read international children’s literature themselves, they would be more inclined to recommend such literature to their students (Buck et. al, 2011). In this study, my interest lies in
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learning how in-service elementary school teachers respond to international children’s picturebooks. By understanding teachers’ transaction with international children’s books I will better understand how to bring international children’s literature into dialogue with educators about the ways in which international children’s literature can become part of their professional and personal lives. I will also better understand the ideologies of international children’s literature that inform the teachers’ transactions with international children’s literature. .
Ideologies
Ideology derives from the Greek words “ideo” and “ology,” referring to idea and knowledge. It is a systematic set of ideas or “a form of discourse” that create the word
“ideology” (Parsons, 2011, p. 113). Althusser (1970) claimed that the expression “ideology” was invented by Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy and their colleagues and meant “the (genetic) theory of ideas.” Ideology is linked to constructed virtues (e.g., modesty, confidence, self-importance, even smooth talk and cunning, etc.), and these virtues are taught and/or taken from ideological state apparatuses (the Family, the Church, the Good Books, etc.).
The existence of ideology is material; it always comes with certain practices. For instance, children’s books in the U.S. school curriculum are tightly linked to school practices.
They are used extensively in various classroom activities and used in conjunction with other materials to deliver information and meet learning objectives. Althusser (1970) explains that ideological ideas exist in human actions; thus, a set of beliefs corresponds with actions. Ideology can also become a common sense concerned with values and assumptions that we go through in our everyday life (Sarland, 1996). A peculiarity of ideology is that it imposes obviousness. This obviousness makes us, as individuals, subjects of ideology. For example, living under the Soviet ideology, I believed that citing poetry about Lenin and Stalin was something obvious and
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normal. Moreover, practicing being a student in the school under such ideology was not questionable and became the routine for many children of that era. Therefore, “normal” practices did not include any type of critical thinking. Recognition of this phenomenon of obviousness gives us continual practice of ideological recognition. However, to break this process, one, while speaking in ideology and from within ideology, needs to outline a discourse to try to break the ideology (Althusser, 1970). Similarly, Hollindale (1992) suggests that one must locate ideology in order to understand it. This practice is a necessity for educators because educators help children to identify ideologies and see ideologically powerful components, especially in literary texts, if they themselves are trained in locating, recognizing, and analyzing ideologies. Sarland
(1996) borrows from Eco (1981) and encapsulates that although all texts bear ideological assumptions, while transacting with the texts the readers have three options: 1) they can assume/subsume ideologies of the texts; 2) they can miss/ignore ideology and import their own; and 3) they can question the texts to reveal the ideology, which is the option of ideological critique (p. 51).
Stephens (1992) refers to ideological discourses on a continuum that readers might interpret through socializing and acculturating lenses. He sees a text as an interrelationship between audiences, other texts, and sociocultural influences. All these factors are interdependent and shape personal beliefs on a day-to-day basis (Stephens, p. 116). This very idea goes along with Bakhtin’s idea on discourses, where a text is a combination of viewpoints, voices, philosophies and styles, and offers a more holistic picture of the text. According to Bakhtin, the nature of the text represents the conflict between various voices existing in it, thus encompassing a multitude of points of view and perspectives embedded in the text (Bakhtin, 1981). As a consequence of this multivoicedness, or as Bakhtin calls it “heteroglossia,” various and often
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conflicting ideologies are present in each individual text, based on writer’s and in the case of
picturebooks illustrator’s individual beliefs and discourses.
James Gee (1990) has also studied discourses and the ideologies embedded in them. For
Gee, a Discourse is “a socially accepted association among ways of using language” (1990, p.
537). It represents a multiplicity of ways to display belonging to a certain group or common
interest. Each individual becomes a part of a specific discourse, based on the connection to other
individuals and their own voices. Therefore, the multiplicity of voices described by Bakhtin can
be characterized by Gee’s concept of Discourses. As the result, the ideological components of
various discourses become intrinsic and evident. In summary, both Bakhtin and Gee agreed that
each text contains a multitude of ideologies and the conflict between these ideologies creates
heteroglossia.
Ideologies and Children’s Literature
With the development of reader-response theories concepts such as implied reader, ideal reader and actual reader became central in the modern literary criticism as the focus shifted from the author of the text to its reader. As the result, several reader-response theories have developed, including a transactional reader-response theory pioneered by Louise Rosenblatt
(1938/1978/1995) that is the basis of this study. Both Louise Rosenblatt and Wolfgang Iser
(1974) focus on the interaction of the reader with the text, thus making the process of reading a pivotal one.
As theorized by Iser (1974), the concept of implied reader attempts to establish a model for understanding the reader and the process of reading. “The term incorporates both the prestructuring of the potential meaning by the text, and the reader’s actualization of this potential through the reading process” (Iser, 1974, p. xii). In essence, the implied reader represents the
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process of meaning making driven by the textual condition. The reader has to become an implied
reader in order to make meaning of the text being read. This concept is developed even further
into the ideal reader and explored by Jonathan Culler (1975), Stanley Fish (1980) and John
Stephens (1992). The ideal reader is the one that can comprehend and understand multiple texts,
therefore representing a group of implied readers. In addition, the concept of actual reader comes
into play. In this case, the actual reader represents an actual person reading the text, what does
not necessarily mean that this same person becomes an implied or ideal reader. In summary, all
of the reader concepts discussed above play a significant role in establishing the connection
between the ideologies embedded in children’s literature and the reader’s transaction with the
texts.
Ideologies in children’s literature are critically theorized by Taxel (1988), Stephens
(1992), Hollindale (1992), Apol (1998), and Zipes (2000). For these scholars, ideological
presuppositions in children’s books might be explicit or implicit, but they are present. Because
literature for children is often written to promote some cultural, societal, political, economic,
personal values and beliefs, children’s books are never neutral (Hade, 1997; Hunt, 2011;
Mendoza & Reese, 2001). Therefore it is not surprising that the debates on ideology in children’s
literature raise a number of issues such as pedagogical and socialization purposes, cultural and
societal values, the construction of the implied/real reader, the connection to dominant discourses, circumstances of production and commodity (Chambers, 1977; Iser, 1974; Sarland,
1996).
Ideological landscapes in children’s literature portray fragments of society representing a
wide variety of classes, genders, races, nationalities and cultures (Hollindale, 1992). Hollindale
adopts a postmodern lens and suggests that being aware and accepting that we inhabit a
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fragmented society means that each “of the fragments needs and deserves to feel a confident
sense of its values” (p. 34). Therefore, in our classrooms, ideally speaking, we should be able to
incorporate a variety of children’s literature (p. 34), as each book is a cultural “fragment” of
society. If we as educators appear to value ideologies of a diverse society (Campano & Ghiso,
2010), we need national, local, multicultural literatures and literature written by children as well as international children’s literature (Hollindale, 1992, p. 34). This variety is the ideal approach to connect multicultural and international texts with the experiences of readers, thus offering windows, mirrors and doors. Connecting literature that portrays the full complexity of contemporary U.S. society with contemporary readers will encompass multiple individual and collective identities and ideological practices (Campano & Ghiso, 2010) beyond borders and barriers of “our own provincial understanding” (p. 175).
Ideologies and international children’s literature
An examination of ideology and international children’s literature can usefully address many issues. While referring to international children’s literature, we should consider the role of a translator and his/her ideological assumptions as well as a translator’s voice. A complex shift in the very idea of the implied reader occurs because a reader of a particular geographical area/culture approaches a text of different geographical area/culture. History also plays a significant role in the reader response to a particular book imported from a different country. A
decision about the production of international books is also very important. It employs layers of
publishers’ ideologies, such as which book might be profitable and which might not, what is the
implied audience of the book, etc.
Ideologies represented in international children’s literature are based on some specific
determined practices that are historically grounded; thus, when texts are critiqued, analyzed and
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interpreted, the ideologies become visible, assuming the person involved in the analysis understands the ideologies. Using critical analysis, the reader can recognize ideologies embedded in the text and develop understandings as to the underlying subjects and codes located within the text. Interpretations of literature are also ideologically aligned; as readers, we perceive things as obvious if they are connected to our realms and beliefs. We respond differently to things distant to us and might resist some particular ideological beliefs. Some obvious practices encoded in the texts are often hard to locate and decode. For instance, the German import picturebook Duck,
Death and the Tulip (Erlbruch, 2011) directly depicts a subject of death without referring to hope and memory, and thus explicitly addresses and asks the reader to address the concept of death.
The picturebook depicts an unlikely acquaintance between Death and Duck and refers to beliefs that although death is a complex topic, we need to talk about it directly. Such beliefs might be obvious for anticipated audience in Germany, yet for an American audience such ideological standpoint is challenging.
During my discussions of this picturebook with my pre-service early childhood teacher students in 2014, I learned that they felt that the book was too harsh and gave no hope. The depiction of death as an inevitable bystander in everyday life is very complex and such thematic representation is alien to them. Remembering Crystal by Sebastian Loth (2010), originally published in Switzerland, is another example of an imported picturebook about death. The theme of death evolves through the main protagonist’s grief with his memory of his friend serving as a metaphor for hope. While reading this picturebook, the students responded that such representation of death meets their own cultural frames and beliefs, their ideologies of death.
Thus, the book was acceptable and valuable to them. My pre-service teachers’ receptivity to two different international picturebooks about death reminds us that while international children’s
34
literature is purported to stimulate cultural awareness and understanding, it does so with the
caveat that prevailing ideologies should be recognized and interpreted.
As illustrated thus far, children’s literature is a complex international phenomenon
(Nikolajeva, 2010, p. 404). It is always in the midst of a global system of cultural exchange and plays a multidirectional role in transnational, political, economic, and cultural relations, as children’s literature is being exported and imported following the global trends and market
conditions of trade partners involved. Adding to the complexity is the interchangeable use of
multiple terms when identifying and discussing international children’s literature.
Elementary School Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use
Book selection is a dilemma for teachers (Voelker, 2013). Many teachers come into
contact with books because of multiple considerations. The texts teachers choose are often
“boring companions on our journey” because texts are often limited to comprehension, grammar,
punctuation, and safety (Evans, 2015, p. XLIIII). When designing their elementary school
curriculum, teachers use their theoretical knowledge, yet they often lack confidence and
experience (Evans, 2015).
Literacy educators and scholars assert that an introduction to global perspectives using
literature is most effective at the elementary level (Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010; Schultz;
2010; Stan, 1999) and well-trained teachers can teach multicultural literature to all students with
the same success and expectations despite their own different backgrounds/races/genders
(Schultz, 2010, p. 18). In these theoretical studies, international children’s literature is explicitly
mentioned in the discussions of Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer (2010), and Stan (1999), yet
Schultz (2010) refers only to multicultural children’s literature in which she includes examples
of international literature. As I mentioned earlier, teachers often project their assumptions,
35
beliefs, and values on the selection of literature and use their personal and professional
knowledge and skills, experiences and values to bring books into classroom practices. Teachers
should be aware of international children’s literature to increase its use in reading activities and
engage children of variety of cultures.
In the following sections, I discuss various considerations by teachers during the book selection process, including curriculum, Common Core State Standards (National Governors
Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), aesthetic
and cultural connections and global perspectives.
Curriculum and Common Core State Standards
School curriculum and Common Core State Standards represent some of the most
important factors in elementary school teachers’ selection of books for classroom use. The
teachers’ perceptions of the students’ reading skills and abilities as measured via assessments often led to the teachers’ inclusion or exclusion of books for instructional purposes. Williams
and Bauer (2006) identify that school teachers searched for books that would meet state
standards and often relied on materials in the school libraries and media centers, paying attention
to themed units, books on display, and the recommendations of media or library specialists (p.
15). Jiménez and McIlhagga (2013) studied the selection of children’s books connected to the
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. They discovered that in their
selection of books, teachers tended to focus on the pedagogical goals such as offering a wide
range of materials, providing concrete concepts for use in solving real problems, among other
things. Donovan and Smolkin (2001) observed 10 elementary school teachers’ book selections of
informational children’s literature and reported on the book selection process during “Reading and Writing Science Text” workshop. Similar to McKeon (1975), they concluded that teachers
36
considered efferent components such as readability, content, genres, developmental appropriateness, and visual features.
Investigating elementary school teachers’ read-aloud choices, Hall (2007) concluded that many teachers often have many books to relate reading to a number of topics such as cultural consciousness, diversity, global citizenship, etc. However, a lack of time to work, curriculum constraints as well as limited knowledge often result in a lack of thorough evaluation by teachers of the books with a critical eye, especially with regard to representations of diversity. As illustrated by these empirical studies, teachers use what they know and understandably privilege the academic purposes and curriculum-based content when selecting books to use in the classroom (Donovan & Smolkin, 2001; Giordano, 2011; Jipson & Paley, 1991; Jiménez &
McIlhagga, 2013; McKeon, 1975; Williams & Bauer, 2006).
Aesthetic and cultural connections
The aforementioned curriculum-centered factors are important to consider when selecting books; however, it is also important to select books that enable students to develop aesthetic and cultural connections and the books they read in order to bring global awareness and cultural understanding as well as build interpersonal skills and facilitate personal growth. When selecting children’s books for classroom use, teachers indicate they are much less concerned with the aesthetic and personal connections students might have with the books. The same teachers are open to a wider spectrum of books and willing to look beyond the state standards. For example,
Williams and Bauer (2006)’s research involving elementary in-service teachers, determined that having a wide selection of literature, teachers were ready to bring more diverse literature to their students’ joyful reading experiences.
37
Pritchard, Carr, Buchanan, and Powell-Brown’s (2005) study involved U. S. pre-service and elementary teachers in book selections from the European Picturebook Collection. The scholars documented that the selection of children’s books were based on empathy, growth of knowledge and cultural understanding and other personal responses such as esthetic likes/dislikes. They concluded that transactions with international texts and their selection were based on the teachers’ active engagement, connections, and interpretations. For instance, pre- service and in-service elementary teachers looked closely at the verbal text and illustrations and conducted activities based on analysis of the books. They also participated in discussions in which they concluded that illustrations add many insights to the verbal stories (p. 85). Pritchard and colleagues advocated further research on the selection and usage of international children’s literature.
Additionally, Adams (1998) focuses on kindergarten teachers’ selections of children’s books for their classrooms to improve cultural understanding and have certain positive impacts on children’s lives. While the research was focused on read-alouds and the teachers’ selections of culturally diverse picturebooks that originated in the U.S., Adams informed readers of many strategies that are essential, as determined by Adams, for developing a positive influence from literature and widening readers’ horizons. Among the factors that influenced the teachers’ book selections were genre, literary quality of the book, children’s interests, values, issues of controversy, racial and gender equity, multiculturalism, and awards. Finally, Adams insisted on responsible and careful consideration of books that will lead to inclusions and representations of many life practices and experiences.
Based on the studies discussed in this chapter, joyful reading is seldom a factor in teachers’ book selections (Gray, 2009; Williams & Bauer, 2006), yet it is universally encouraged
38
by scholars and thus sets up an ideological standard for the role of international children’s literature. While theoretical studies situate international and multicultural children’s literature in the academic discussions as a means to meeting the needs of the diverse population (Lehman,
Freeman, & Scharer, 2010; Stan, 1999), Pritchard et al.’s (2005) research communicates the priorities of pre-service and elementary teachers when selecting international children’s books.
Roadmap to Understanding
Based on the discussion above, it becomes clear that it is imperative to study teacher’s responses to international children’s picturebooks and find out how those responses influence their book selection process. I believe that understanding in-service elementary school teachers responses to international children’s literature will help to open the doorway to better understanding how to bring awareness to educators about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and talk to educators about international children’s literature in the U. S. I also believe that such understanding comes via transactions and dialogue.
Given the role of the teacher in the book selection for classroom use, it is critical to learn the criteria used by teachers to evaluate international children’s picturebooks as well as their responses to international books for children. In addition, it is imperative to study whether teachers recognize ideologies intrinsically embedded in children’s books as discussed in the sections above, because that would indicate how ideologies impact the teacher’s book selection process and classroom discussions. Through the transactional process of reading as described by
Rosenblatt (1938/1995) and Iser (1974), teachers make decisions about which books to include and exclude in their curricula and such decisions are meaning-making processes involving the intersection of discourses as shared by Bakhtin (1982). By conducting a study investigating how teachers transact with international children’s picturebooks and the ideologies present in their
39
transactions, I’ll be able to take a closer look at the transactional process that takes place during
their reading of international children’s picturebooks in order to develop effective strategies for
delivering such books to educators. This, in turn, would lead to meeting the needs of
cosmopolitan students of the 21st century and fostering a variety of cross-cultural and global perspectives in the classrooms.
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CHAPTER 3
VISUALIZING RECEPTIVITY AND RESISTANCE: ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ RESPONSES TO INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS1
1 Lushchevska, O. Beyond International: Elementary school teachers’ responses to international children’s picturebooks. To be submitted to Journal of Children’s Literature.
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Abstract
Many scholars believe that the elementary schools level provides the most effective platform for introducing the topics of diversity and global perspective through literature to children. Well-trained elementary school teachers can bring multicultural literature and international literature to all students with the same success and expectations, despite their different background, race and gender. This article focuses on what happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks. It specifically looks at what contributes to the teacher’s positioning on the aesthetic reception- resistance continuum of reader response. Findings indicate that the opportunity to read, respond, discuss and dialogize about the international picturebooks supports visual and verbal aesthetic awareness, sheds light on personal and social connections and promotes the use of international picturebooks in the classroom. However, those findings also indicate a need to cultivate additional attitudes toward the purposes and values of the international picturebooks
Introduction
“Ideally, every human being, from an early age, should have the opportunities of crossing
frontiers, meeting neighbors, going abroad, getting to know different people and landscapes,
listening to other languages, eating different food, being in touch with beautiful diversity of
cultures.”
– Ana Maria Machado (2010, p. 397)
Educators in the United States provide students with outstanding literary works to effectively connect young people with high-quality literature and to create life-time passionate readers, writers, and thinkers in our global pluralistic society (Joel, 1999, p. 65; Lehman,
Freeman, & Scharer, 2010, p. 34). While integrating children’s books to support instruction,
51
educators co-construct school learning environments and strive to “promote equilibrium”
between the curriculum and the needs of today’s students. Due to ongoing migration within the
U.S. and around the world, today’s students bring a variety of cross-cultural and global perspectives into the U.S. classrooms and necessitate educators increasingly search for culturally authentic and international children’s books (Campano & Ghiso, 2010; Liang, Watkins, &
Williams, 2013).
Literacy scholars assert that using culturally diverse literature to introduce global
perspectives of life and culture is most effective at the elementary level and knowledgeable
teachers can teach such to all students with the same success and expectations, despite their
different backgrounds, ethnic and gender affiliations (Lehman, Freeman, Scharer, 2010; Schultz,
2010, p. 18; Stan, 1999). However, a number of factors influence K-12 educators’ selection of
children’s books for classroom use. School curriculum and state standards, often related to
Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices &
Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), represent some of the most important factors in
teachers’ book selections and subsequent inclusion in curriculum. Other factors include their
personal and/or professional aesthetic connections and ideologies (McKeon, 1975; Jipson and
Paley, 1991; Williams and Bauer, 2001).
Because international children’s books convey ideologies that are often adjusted to the
target audience for which the book is being published, distinctly different, or even unnoticeable
within a target audience (Nikolajeva, 2010), international children’s books can become a conduit
to new and unfamiliar things. Therefore, by bringing international children’s books to students,
educators may not only encourage diverse reading and display multiple perspectives but also
help children to become a community of critical thinkers.
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This article focuses primarily on what happened when in-service elementary school teachers transacted with selected international children’s picturebooks, as evidenced by the teachers’ oral and written responses to the picturebooks and their book discussions during individual interviews. By learning how and why teachers vacillate between aesthetic reception and resistance (Rosenblatt, 1978; Soter, 1997) when reading international children’s literature, educators can better understand ways in which they can match both their students and themselves with international children’s literature. Additionally, educators can better understand the ideological underpinnings of elementary school teachers’ transactions with the selected international children’s picturebooks and how those ideologies contribute to their selection or rejection of the books. The questions that guided my study are: What happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks? What contributes to their positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum of reader response?
Theoretical Framework
For this study, I invited in-service elementary school teachers to respond to selected international children’s books for classroom use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogic theories of language and reading and Louise Rosenblatt’s (1978) transactional theory undergirded my study.
To both Bakhtin and Rosenblatt, reading is a creative act; it is a transactional process between the reader and the text, as informed by the reader’s stance and societal contexts. As such a process, reading is a lived-through experience; it is an event in which the reader has to be able to demonstrate intellectual potential and emotional readiness. As part of the transactional process the reader may adopt aesthetic, efferent or a combination of both stances of reading, depending on a particular situation and intention of the reader. In this article I focus primarily on the
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aesthetic stance, more specifically, how the teachers’ aesthetic reception or resistance to the picturebooks is activated based on the books’ verbal and pictorial language.
Language, as a manifestation and representation of ideology, culture, and communication, is integral to the reading process. For Bakhtin (1981), language creates verbal and written discourses, or interchanges of ideas, and readers try to understand what they are reading by activating the knowledge that they already know. During the process of reading, the reader dips into multivoicedness, or hetoroglossia. Heteroglossia is the diversity of many voices or languages (Bakhtin, 1981). Thus, while reading, the reader uses language as a communication tool, activating both personal and social experiences through the language used in the texts and the language that he/she uses. The reader, therefore, is always in the dialogue between the self and society, and understanding comes again from the language.
Louise Rosenblatt’s (1904-2005) theoretical approach to reading as a transaction aligns with Bakhtin’s through the very idea that the reader has already obtained some particular ideologies through practices interwoven with their societal and personal experiences and, while reading, the reader activates a variety of the previously obtained or desired experiences (life occurrences, obtained knowledge, psychological insights, etc.).
For Rosenblatt, reading is holistic and represents a powerful tool for producing an aesthetic experience (Faust, 2000, p. 14). In her essay “Transaction Versus Interaction: A
Terminological Rescue Operation,” Rosenblatt (1985) argued that the transaction in reading is an ongoing process where a variety of elements and parts constitute a whole (p. 98). The language in the text is self-contained, and the reader deconstructs and constructs it in his/her special way and takes the meaning out of it. The reading act is an individual and unique occurrence in which both cognitive and affective aspects of consciousness are activated because of language.
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Besides a “social matrix” (Rosenblatt, 1987, p. 28), texts insert in the reader’s consciousness certain life concepts that the reader interprets. In turn, the reader brings personal history and experience to the text as well as his/her psychological state and mood at the particular moment of reading (pp. 30-31). All of the components of reading discussed above constitute the transactional process of reading, a complex ongoing multilayered process in which elements become wholeness; however, each element is conditioned (Rosenblatt, 1978, pp. 16-
17).This idea relates to Bakhtin by the notion that language is societal and intrinsic to reading, and while reading the text the reader uses the language to decode, understand, and interpret it.
Therefore, Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of language and reading transact with one another. For both Rosenblatt and Bakhtin, the relationships between the reader, the text, and the context are three important and essential components for active reading and critical understanding. They represent reading as constructive and deconstructive processes as well as a creative process.
International children’s literature is an excellent example of heteroglossia and adeptly enables us to see how people respond “text worlds and lived worlds” (Galda & Beach, 1987, p.
71). International children’s books encompass the multivoicedness of discourses from both outside and inside the nation due to multiplicity of voices, ideas and values coming together from all around the world. This multivoicedness can provide valuable insights for particular verbal- visual-ideological forms. For this study, the teachers go through the act of reading and experience multivoicedness through their transactions with picturebooks created and published outside the U.S. in multiple languages and were subsequently translated into English, when necessary, and published in the U.S.. By inquiring about how teachers transact with international
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picturebooks, I am able to further inquire about how reading is an act as well as interpretation
that depends upon many cultural models and discourses (Galda & Beach, 2001, p. 66).
Literature Review
The very definition of international children’s literature is complex. Scholars often use
the three terms “international,” “global” and “translated” interchangeably. The choice of term is
often related to the context of use, overall purpose, and ideological stances of the people using
the terms. For example, from the U.S. perspective, books originally published in the U.K. are
considered global by some scholars and international by others. The terms are often used in
connection with a particular context, purpose, philosophy or set of goals, which conceptualizes
the usage fed by a multiplicity of economic, social, political, and cultural factors.
According to the University of Rochester’s Three Percent blog
(http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/), international titles constitute only around 3% of the total number of books published in the U.S. Of those, only a small fraction is considered children’s books. Thus, the presence of international children’s literature often seems bigger when placed under the larger umbrella of global children’s literature, since global children’s literature includes both US-published multicultural and international titles (Hadaway
& McKenna, 2007, p. 5). The international aspect of global children’s literature is typically the topic, origin of publication, and author’s country affiliation (Lepman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010, p. 17). Thus, scholars define global children's literature in four ways: (1) literature first published in another country, which might be both written in English or translated into it, (2) literature written by immigrants that live in the U.S. and who write about their own countries, (3) literature written in other countries and published in the U.S., and (4) literature written by U.S.
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writers that represent the settings of other countries (Lepman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010, p. 16).
All four definitions describe the nuances of being a part of, yet distinct from, the US.
“Translated children’s literature” is a term affiliated with international children’s
literature that focuses on the linguistic translation, and thus cultural transmediation, of books.
They are books that are translated from the languages in which they were originally written to
another language. Children’s literature scholars explicitly explore the process of translating for children, translators’ voices, and the cultural, linguistic, and ideological peculiarities that go along with translations (Bell, 2006; Nikolajeva, 2010; O’Sullivan, 2009; Shavit, 1981; Sotter,
1997; Tabbert, 2002).
For the purposes of this study that occurs in the U.S. I have defined international
children's literature as a corpus of books published in other countries in the language of those
countries and then translated and republished in the U.S. (Stan, 1999, p. 168; Tomlinson, 1998,
p. 4). I consider international children’s literature as culturally-conscious couriers that handle
knowledge about ourselves and others and help readers accept that people live closely and
interdependently on the same planet (Joels, 1999). While a body of international children’s
books consists of multiple genres and formats, in this study I focus only on picturebooks in
which both verbal (written) text and illustrations represent an authentic whole. Although
translation is often referred to oral language, visual images are just as important, if not more
important, in the case of picturebooks. I believe that visual images should be treated as language
and can be translated. As Davies and Oittinen (2008) point out, “translators need both verbal and
visual literacy” (p.XIII). Since this study focuses solely on international children’s picturebooks,
it is imperative to recognize the role illustrations play in the transaction of the reader and the
literary work. At the same time, my study focuses on the reception and response of in-service
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elementary school teachers to the selected international picturebooks, so that the specific emphasis rests on their transactions with the picturebooks and not on the picturebooks themselves.
Picturebooks as a Complex Art Object
Picturebooks are a unique genre, where words, images, and ideas collaborate “to evoke an emotional and intellectual response” (Kiefer, 2010, p. 156); they “tell stories and create imaginative fiction” (Nikolajeva & Scott, 2001, p. 31) and convey meaning through verbal and visual narratives (Salisbury & Styles, 2012). Hence, a picturebook is a multimodal art object with a complex synergy (Sipe, 2008, p. 23). The key to understanding the stories in picturebook format depends on summing up the verbal texts with the sign system of illustrations to achieve an authentic whole. The words and pictures relate to each other in many complex ways that involve re-reading, reviewing, turning to previous pages, slowing down, and re-interpreting (p.
27). Although picturebooks “are significant for their aesthetic beauty and emotional appeal,” their language and illustrative narrations require a critical level of awareness “through informed inquiry about the texts and illustrations” (Beck, 2009, pp.100-101), because all the components in the picturebooks represent “what semioticians call ‘signs’” (Nodelman, 2005, p. 131). Readers can interpret pictures differently, but the process of interpretation is “permeated by the ideological assumptions of [the] culture” (Nodelman, 2005; Nodelman & Reimer, 2003, p. 276).
Scholars and practitioners agree that, in our increasingly visual society, picturebooks represent powerful tools that foster the meaning-making process. They do this by equally using both verbal and visual parts to draw attention not only to the artistic elements but to a variety of codes that refer to diverse interpretations (Matulka, 2008; Lewis, 2001; Pantaleo, 2012; Salisbury & Styles,
2012; Sipe, 2008).
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In-service Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use and Responses to International
Children’s Literature
Selecting books for classroom use represents one of the most common challenges for teachers (Voelker, 2013). School curriculum and Common Core State Standards represent some of the most important factors in determining a teacher’s book selection criteria and practices. A review of empirical research of in-service teachers’ book selections for classroom use reveals that teachers mostly emphasize the academic purposes and goals for reading connected to the curriculum and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (Donovan &
Smolkin, 2001; Giordano, 2011; Jiménez & McIlhagga, 2013; Jipson & Paley, 1991; McKeon,
1975; Williams & Bauer, 2006). When selecting books for classroom use, educators primarily seek children’s books with a particular vocabulary, readability and curriculum units. Teachers indicate that they are much less concerned with aesthetic and personal connections that students might experience. Yet, teachers, at times, are also open to a wider spectrum of books and are willing to look beyond the state’s standards. For instance, teachers used realistic memorable characters, diverse connections and joyful reading as important criteria (Adams, 1998; Gray,
2009; Williams & Bauer, 2006). Specific to international book collections, such as the European
Picturebook Collection (Cotton, 1999), U. S. pre-service and in-service elementary teachers’ book selections were based on factors such as empathy, the growth of knowledge and cultural understanding and the teachers’ aesthetic responses to the texts (Pritchard Buchanan, & Powell-
Brown, 2005). Pritchard et al.’s research is especially valuable in the context of this article, because it elucidates pre-service and elementary teachers’ roles in the selection of international children’s books.
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As teachers serve as “gatekeepers” to children’s literature for their students and make selections of literature for classroom use based on their personal and professional criteria, it is imperative to understand that teacher’s personal reception of children’s books might be the decision point of whether to include certain book into the curriculum or not. Therefore, it is necessary to study how teachers transact with international children’s picturebooks to gain insight into their reception and reactions that accompany it.
Methodology
I have chosen a case study design for my research in order to understand human interactions and the complexities involved (McTavish, 2009; Merriam, 1998; Simons, 1999); in this instance, how elementary school teachers respond to international children’s picturebooks.
Case studies enable us to see the uniqueness of a study under practice through careful examination of its function, the activities involved, and the complex social issues involved in said activities (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, p.84; Stake, 2005, p. 2). As a bounded system (Merriam,
1998), qualitative case study research can focus on a phenomenon occurring in a particular connected context. The case itself is specific, complex and might be defined and selected because of some concerns, instances, and hypotheses. To maintain an in-depth study of the case the researcher needs to select several instances. For my study, I chose to research in-service elementary school teachers’ transaction with international picturebooks. Consequentially, I have constructed a case by selecting the in-service elementary school teachers to participate in the study; their transactions with the international children’s picturebooks represent a bounded system that connects the teachers, books, and me as a researcher. Due to the fact that there was no preexisting setting for the case study, I needed to bring the teachers together and provide a complete setup for the bounded system to function.
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This case study involved five in-service elementary school teachers who expressed interest in knowing more about and reading international picturebooks. Elementary school teachers are ideal because they help develop lifelong readers through response-centered and literature-based classroom activities while also helping shape their students’ lives. They also help youth understand the power of books and help build knowledge and understanding about themselves as well as their local and global worlds (Hadaway & McKenna, 2007; Joels, 1999;
Kiefer & Tyson, 2014; Lehman, Freeman & Scharer, 2010; Liang & Cullinan, 2014; Tomlinson,
1998).
The Teachers
Since a random approach of recruiting might result in missing the papulation that is particularly interested in the research (Hennink, Hutter, & Bailey, 2011), my recruitment of the teachers was purposeful. Using a social network approach to recruitment, I asked current and former elementary school teachers in the area for recommendations of teachers who might be interested in reading and discussing international children’s picturebooks. I then contacted potential participants via email to notify them about my study and asked them if they were interested in participating. I used the following criteria to recruit the participants for the study:
1. The participants identify as in-service elementary school teachers (K–5).
2. The participants are interested in culturally diverse literature, including international
children’s literature.
3. The participants have access to the Internet.
Six teachers expressed an interest in participating; however, one teacher had to withdraw from the study due to personal reasons. The remaining five teachers fully participated in the study. The teachers, all of whom lived in the Southeast region of the United States, had had 11-
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15 years of teaching experience and expressed an interest in learning about international
children’s literature. Most of the teachers had participated in some professional development
activities related to children’s literature, yet they stated they lacked knowledge and experience
working with international children’s literature. In regards to culturally diverse literature, the
teachers shared that their classrooms represent a culturally diverse body and that children’s
literature is a great way of showing students the similarities and differences of people.
Additionally, one of the teachers explicitly stated that through diverse literature students have a
chance to be exposed to other cultures in a more meaningful way instead of through food, dance,
and dress-up. Table 1.1 provides an overview of the teachers in terms their educational expertise and beliefs about culturally diverse literature.
The International Picturebooks
I selected eight international picturebooks for in-service elementary school teachers to read, respond to, and evaluate. My selections were informed by United States Board for Books for Young Readers (USBBY)’s criteria for their Outstanding International Book list and the criteria of the Mildred L. Batchelder Award, an award given to outstanding children’s books in translation. All of the picturebooks had a strong emphasis on building cultural awareness, a deeper exploration of cultural experience, and did not have generic plots or settings (Liang,
Watkins & Williams, 2013, p. 22). Many books originated in Europe and all of the books were translated into English. Each picturebook also had distinct cultural markers as conveyed via verbal and visual narratives (e.g. distinct cultural settings such as, national food, artistic style popular in some particular areas at a particular time-frame, etc.). I acknowledge that by selecting particular international children’s literature to which teachers responded, I served as a literary
“gatekeeper.” I also recognize that what I considered to be “cultural markers” may not be what
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the teachers considered to be cultural markers and that my and the teachers’ responses to the
books may be both similar and different.
When selecting the picturebooks, I specifically included the books that I both like and
dislike and books that I believe represented a wide range of international topics, artistic styles,
cultural markers, etc. (see Table 1.1). I attempted to have as much “balance” as possible and my personal taste did not dominate or lead the selection process. I wanted to have a variety of international picturebooks that I believed would provide fruitful response and dialogues. I tried not to include the picturebooks with obvious cultural markers that would “exoticise” the book.
For instance, I did not consider The Amazing Discoveries of Ibn Sina by Fatima Sharafeddine and Intalaq Mohammed Ali (2015), which referred to a very explicit reference to Persian culture and history based on the title, author and illustrator names, and the illustration, in order to avoid such explicit and perhaps overly didactic international references. Thus, with the exception of
The Sky of Afghanistan by Ana Eulate and Sonija Wimmer (2012) and Jimmy the greatest! by
Jairo Buitrago and Rafael Yockteng (2012) the books did not include exotic explicit international references. The books that were included had people, animals, and inanimate objects (i.e. a table) as primary characters in the stories and were included on notable international book recommendation lists. Throughout the book selection process, I documented my reasons for including and excluding picturebooks and the ideologies that I recognized in the picturebooks to use as reference points when analyzing the teachers’ responses.
Data Sources and Collection Procedures
The six-month study, from March to August 2015, included the following data sources: a) eight international picturebooks described in the previous section and my reasons for selecting those books (see also Table 1.1); b) an online teacher demographic survey about their teaching
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expertise and their thoughts about culturally diverse children’s literature (See Table 1.2); c) one
semi-structured initial interview with each teacher, each lasting 30-60 minutes; d) open-ended
book dialogues with me, each lasting 50-90 minutes; e) my initial interview and open-ended book dialogue notes, and f) my dialogic memos as I transcribed and analyzed the data. I had requested one follow-up interview with each teacher to clarify my understanding about any ideas and determine whether or not the teachers were able to include the picturebooks in their instructional practice; however, the teachers’ hectic schedules resulted in their declining to participate.
The teachers first completed an online survey which provided me with some insights into
their teaching experiences and thoughts about children’s literature (See Table 1.1). I then
conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with each teacher. These 30-60 minute
conversations enabled me to understand their individual experiences within the cultural
collective (Galleta, 2013). At the end of our interview I booktalked the set of eight international
picturebooks each teacher received and we discussed how each teacher wanted to share her
personal response with me. For the next two months, the teachers contacted me when they had
finished reading the books and we met face-to-face to discuss their responses to the books.
The book dialogue meetings were dialogic in nature in that they were conversational and
often involved spontaneity and natural progressions from topic to topic and then back again. One
response informed another response. However, there were also times when I initiated particular
topics with the teachers. I asked them what they considered to be “international” in the books
and why and how these picturebooks may (or may not) be acceptable for their classrooms. These
book dialogues with each teacher lasted approximately 50-90 minutes.
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Data Analysis
I used transactional analysis (TA; Stewart, 2011) to analyze the teachers’ responses. This
approach blends thematic and narrative analyses (Stewart, 2011) and honors how teachers transact with the international picturebooks and our transactions about the books themselves. By identifying patterns within the data and then investigating the patterns, I studied how experience and dialogue as well as the process of revealing/activating said experience in written or oral dialogue represent and shape the ideologies of individuals. I also engaged in transactional analysis to help me understand the experience of the teachers as well as my own experience in transacting with the teachers. My research space is a transactional one in which understanding is constructed “through dialogue in research situation” (Stewart, 2011, p. 286). This transactional approach to analysis embodies Bakhtin and Rosenblatt’s concepts of reading and how experience and dialogue, as represented through written and oral discourse, represent and shape ideologies of individuals.
I engaged in six analytic steps when examining my data. My first step involved transcribing all interviews and familiarizing myself with the data. This stage has a significant impact on the overall study, since data is being transformed from audio format into text with maximum accuracy preserving as much meaning as possible. In addition, I developed an initial understanding of the data that provides a basis for the rest of the research.
My second step involved an initial coding of the data. I began analyzing the data and identifying segments or features that related to the research questions of the study. For example, when discussing the book Anna’s Heaven, Blaine mentioned: “I had trouble making sense of this book until the very end.” When reading Blaine’s statement, I realized that this utterance is related to the first research question of the study regarding the aesthetics of reading and
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identified main keywords of this utterance, such as “trouble making sense.” At this point I coded this phrase as difficult to grasp meaning. This step allowed me to group the data based on common elements and their relevance to the overall purpose of the study. The objective of this step was to pinpoint as many data patterns as possible and code them accordingly, making sure the context was not lost.
In my third step, I used the initial codes obtained in step two to identify broader themes. I reviewed all the codes and proceeded grouping them under common themes forming sub-themes and major themes. For instance, the code difficult to grasp meaning fit into the broader category of “personal likes/dislikes” because if someone experiences difficulty understanding a book, he/she typically dislikes the book. This process enabled me to construct a thematic map containing a list of themes identified and relationships between them. However, the map at this stage was preliminary and was contingent on further analysis to determine whether the structure held or needed additional refinement.
The fourth step of my analysis involves a thorough review of all codes and themes to make sure that they work together as intended and refine the thematic map as necessary. This is a multi-level step that starts with initial codes and slowly moves up the coding structure when prior level is considered meaningful and consistent. First, I slowly reviewed my initial code base to ensure that I had used all the codes correctly. I then identified any deficiencies in the process. I also rearranged and changed a few codes that appeared problematic and did not clearly identify the data. Second, I reviewed the sub-theme level to determine if my code groupings made sense and I had identified the correct relationships between initial codes and sub-themes. Third, I considered whether my major themes were relevant and coherent. In addition, I made sure the overall thematic map was meaningful and I could identify an overall story of the data. As an
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example, a theme of “personal likes/dislikes” identified above is related to the major category of
International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers.
My fifth step of the analysis represents the process of defining each theme identified and producing a detailed analysis. In this stage I analyzed each of my major themes to understand the meaning it produced, its relation to other themes, and how it associated with my research questions. Through this process I was able to clearly identify each theme and its core story and correct any apparent deficiencies.
The sixth and final step included the final analysis of themes and production of the report based on the thematic map completed during the previous stages of the analysis. I completed this step through the process of writing the three articles presented below. In essence, I produced my analytical narrative that clearly demonstrated the validity and relevance of the themes identified through the process of thematic analysis. In addition, I made conclusions that were apparent to me based on the overall analysis of the data (See Appendix A)
Findings
All of the teachers’ responses to the picturebooks reflected reading as a cultural activity informed by one’s personal aesthetics, experiences, and history. The teachers collectively enjoyed the same books, found value with a particular subset of books, and distinctly differed in their opinion of which picturebooks were optimal for classroom use. Aesthetic pleasure was the primary reason for the teachers’ acceptance or rejection of the picturebooks; however, some teachers also strove to find curricular value in the books regardless of their aesthetic reception or resistance. The teachers' responses reflected reading and responding to picturebooks as a multivoiced, heteroglossic experience.(Bakhtin, 1981). They responded similarly to some picturebooks and were quite divergent in thought for other picturebooks, thus illustrating how
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their lived-through experiences are individualistic due to their unique experiences but also
collective through their shared sense of community as elementary school teachers in a
Southeastern community.
The teachers’ positions on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum individual responses to each picturebook varied significantly across books and teachers and such vacillations seem rooted in prior experiences and personal connections to either the topic or visual elements of the books. The teachers all personally preferred My Neighbor is a Dog
(Martins, 2013), a story about one family’s reception of culturally diverse residents moving into in an apartment building, not only because of its explicit message about cultural diversity but also because of its’ open ending. The artistry of German import Mr. Squirrel and the Moon, a book about a wheel of cheese mistaken for the moon and the frantic attempts by the main characters to return it back to the sky, (Meschenmoser, 2015) also made it a personally preferred book among the majority of the teachers. However ideological dissonance surrounding topics such as war (Spanish import Sky of Afghanistan), death (Norwegian import Anna’s Heaven), and being in control of one’s destiny (Indian import Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit), resulted in the majority of the teachers’ personal rejection of those books.
Teachers’ personal responses to the picturebooks containing such topics were shaped by the discourses prevailing during their transactions with the texts. As a result, teachers deemed these books not only “wrong” but also “offensive” in both content and form as well as inappropriate for their classroom libraries. As shown in Table 1.3, both the verbal and visual aspects of the picturebooks as well as the personal connections and pragmatics of curriculum mandate all informed teachers’ receptivity and resistance of the books. However, the picturebooks’ visual aesthetics and the teachers’ emphasis of an efferent stance toward reading in
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the classroom were the most important factors in determining which picturebooks were at the top of the teachers’ list and which were at the bottom for both pleasure reading and curriculum use.
Table 1.4 offers an overview of the teachers’ responses, personal preferences, and selections for classroom and personal use.
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks
The visual aesthetics of the picturebooks, inclusive of artistic media and color palettes, and the books’ paratextual features. (e.g. cover, title, endpapers), constituted 36.8 percent of the teachers’ discussions. The teachers’ commentaries were both analytical and critical in nature.
They commented on the color choices of the illustrators and how those choices contributed to their enjoyment of or disregard for the books. They also responded strongly to the endpapers and the visual representations of characters and cultural landscapes; the cultural symbolism of the illustrations was also a topic of choice during our book dialogues.
Color connected, disconnected, and characterized the books for all of the teachers and was one of the primary reasons for their acceptance or rejection of the picturebooks. The teachers’ personal preferences for books based on color were typically partnered with their identification of the colors they believed were most pleasing for their students. Bold, bright colors, rather than provocative content played significant roles in teachers’ receptivity of the books. For example, when discussing My Neighbor is a Dog, a book about migration and cultural differences (Martins, 2013), Beth said “I loved the colors. I’m a big visual person and so I loved the bright colors and I think kids would really connect with the bright colors.” Lynn enjoyed Mr.
Squirrel and the Moon, drawn in black and white pencil with color accents, because “It had the pop of color with the moon, which I thought was a nice effect because it really drew your attention.”
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The paratextual features of the picturebooks (e.g. endpapers) also contributed to the teachers’ aesthetic experience. Anna’s Heaven’s front and back endpapers of nails (front) and strawberries (back) falling from the sky, which paid tribute to surreal artist René Magritte, proved to be quite provocative for some of the teachers. Blaine found those endpapers of the picturebook Anna’s Heaven troubling: “It’s kind of disturbing. I don’t know if you noticed at the beginning, its nails coming down out of the sky and then strawberries.” However, for Lynn, the end papers contribute to her comprehension of the story as well as their enjoyment of the story:
“…the end papers had the strawberries and so it switches. It switches from the hardness of the nail to the juiciness and sweetness of the strawberry at the end”. The endpapers represented the transition between the painful emotions associated with the death of a loved one, portrayed by nails dropping from the sky, to the hope and peace, represented by the sweet strawberries. As evidenced by Blaine’s and Lynn’s comments about Anna’s Heaven, the teachers had a strong emotional connection to the picturebook due to the visual elements of the endpapers. Each based her transactions with the selected picturebooks on aesthetic response and resistance as she recognized and created meaning from and through the visual elements.
Particular images and artistic styles also elicited strong emotional responses. Blaine’s discussion of The Sky of Afghanistan, which focused on the consequences of the war in
Afghanistan and a young Afghani’s desire for peace, often centered on the image of tanks with flowers coming out of them. For Blaine, this illustration is powerful: “It doesn’t always have to be flowers out of guns, although it’s a very good symbol because it speaks to the truth of it.” For her, the significance of this symbol is understandable. The artistic style also seemed to sway the teachers’ reception of the characters. For Lynn and Leah, the characters from the picturebook about a young boy’s dream of becoming a famous boxer and realization that it does not require
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him leaving his hometown, Jimmy the Greatest! “looked comical” or cartoon-like, an artistic
style which contributed to the teachers’ enjoyment of the book. And while the endpapers of
Anna’s Heaven disturbed Blaine, the illustrations of Anna’s family as they grieved for the loss of
Anna’s mother, elicited mixed emotions. The depictions of the girl rendered her “relatable”; however, the dad “drove me nuts, I could not stand it; I couldn’t get past that. I think if he had
had some hair, it would’ve been okay.” Blaine’s resistance to Anna’s Heaven due to the
illustrations is further supported by Blaine’s desire to not have this book in her classroom nor her
home.
Most of the teachers drew on their understanding of settings within and outside of the
U.S. when identifying cultural markers of internationalism. When discussing Jimmy the
Greatest!, Leah commented that the setting, a town by the sea with unfamiliar terrain and an
open-air boxing ring seemed atypical to her. Those scenes, in conjunction with the visual
depiction of a bus as primary mode of transportation, led her to think the book was “clearly in a
different country”; however, she was unsure where the story was set. What she was certain of
was that it was not in the U.S. Leah utilized her visual literacy skills to draw connections to a
foreign country, based on her experience and understanding of how such country might look like
in the illustrations.
Similarly, Tiffany readily identified the use of a map as the visual backdrop to the story in The Sky of Afghanistan as a cultural marker of internationalism and shared that the setting was one of her favorite aspects of the book. For her, the use of the map not only significantly contributed to the book’s international focus but also showcased the creativity of the illustrator to
symbolically frame an international story, which she “loved.” Tiffany’s aesthetic reception to the
cartographic features of the story signals not only her emotional connection to the book but also
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how important the visual details of the story contribute to her understanding of the setting and focus of the book. Other teachers such as Blaine also talked about the significance of the visual inclusion of the map in The Sky of Afghanistan what helped a reader to visualize the country on the map and realize the richness and diversity of it.
Nowadays, visual literacy is increasingly important; thus my findings show that the teachers mostly focused on the visual grammar and the paratexts of the picturebooks (Serafini &
Moses, 2014; Sipe, 2008). However, the teachers also talked about character representations and landscapes. It appears that teachers made assumptions and judgements of the picturebooks based on their constructions of beauty, likeability, and novelty, all of which are personal opinions. The teachers did not emphasize international features, either in the characters or landscapes, in the selected picturebooks. When specifically asked about the international features, some of the teachers pointed out either landscape or references to diversity. In some cases, the teachers also vacillated between the visual and verbal (written) elements of the selected picturebooks, representing the synergy of picturebooks which I discuss in greater detail below.
Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks
Less than a quarter of all of the teachers’ responses focused on the verbal aspects of the picturebooks, concentrating primarily on the literary elements (plot structure) and writer’s style
(rhythm and rhyme, poetic flow). The teachers negotiated what verbal parts of the texts evoked in them during their dialogues with me. The teachers’ cultural understandings of narrative flow and cultural-specific vocabulary led to both appreciation and disappointment. All the teachers shared that they tried to anticipate the development of each book’s plot and conclusion, especially in My Neighbor is the Dog. Some of the books, such as Hope is a Girl Selling Fruit, fell short of their expectations. This disappointment is significant, because it illustrates that
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teachers aesthetically engaged with the text and also speaks to the discourse of endings in U.S.
books versus international books. At the same time, the teachers’ engagement with the texts via
prediction mostly occurred with the texts that teachers liked the most (such as My Neighbor is
the Dog) or with books that had rhythm, rhyme, and poetic flow (e.g. Polish import The Table
That Ran Away to the Woods). Therefore, it is possible to conclude that deeper connections
occurred mostly when the teachers’ transactions with the text involves aesthetic response.
A couple of the teachers enjoyed the reading, but were also critical of some of
vocabulary; for instance, during our discussion of Anna’s Heaven, Lynn shared: “There were
some words in the text that we don’t often use, like ‘the church bells chime from the across the
street.’” Similarly, Beth noted that “the word ‘strange’ was used a lot,” which to her is something
that often has a negative connotation. The teachers’ voluntary discussions of uncommonly used
vocabulary or vocabulary that conveyed a negative tone illustrate yet another possible factor
affecting teachers’ position on the aesthetic-efferent and the aesthetic reception-resistance
continuums of reader response. The teachers consciously brought the usage of some words into the discussion mainly because some word usage appeared wrong or foreign to them, contributing
to at least one of the teacher’s (Beth) resistance to the books. It also supports Bakhtin’s (1981)
view that language is a social tool, since some international picturebooks did not speak to them
in their own language, meaning that some elements were distant from their verbal standpoints.
As the result, the language used in the picturebooks sometimes did not represent the teacher’s
own social experiences and cultural connections, making transacting with the book more difficult
for them.
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Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s Books for Classroom
Use
Thirty percent of our book dialogues involved the teachers’ adopting an efferent stance to
determining their reception or resistance to the picturebooks. This theme includes teachers’
responses that suggest reading as efferent (Rosenblatt, 1978), with a special search for social
messages, moral lessons and themes within the texts, in order to use them in the classroom.
Curricular units as related to Common Core State Standards appeared to elevate a
picturebook’s appeal. For instance, while Leah did not personally enjoy The Table that Ran
Away to the Woods , she still found it to be valuable to her when teaching about civil rights:
“I feel like that book would be really great, because I don’t know much about that area
and the history of what was going on at that time, but I feel like, together with my
students, we could learn about it; we could talk about what the book means and all that
stuff.”
Similarly, while Beth did not personally resonate with The Table that Ran Away to the
Woods, she appreciated its rhythm and rhyme and its testimony to the power of writing: “I guess
I could see it’s really talking about writing and how your ideas in writing take root and you can
make your writing come to life.” Blaine added that she could use Hope Is the Girl Selling Fruit
in “a writing lesson to say what not to do.” The teachers’ comments about the books illustrate an
important fact that the teachers are willing to include books they personally dislike into the
curriculum, as long as they are able to connect it to learning objectives of the class.
Other curricular connections, such as WWI & II and the detriment of war throughout
history, were mentioned by the teachers when discussing the books, thus illustrating that the
teachers typically adopted an efferent stance when reading the picturebooks or at least relied on
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an efferent stance of reading to find some redeeming value to books that they aesthetically resisted. Overall, the category Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International
Children’s Books for Classroom Use, illustrated some of the efferent connections that the teachers made and how creative teachers can be when encountering children’s literature that they may not personally like but believe to be beneficial to fulfill curriculum needs.
International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers
Similar to teachers in previous research (see Pritchard et al, 2005) the teachers’ feelings and personal connections to the books’ plots/storylines were not as important as the books’ visual appeal and perceived value in the classroom. Nevertheless, they were present.
Approximately 15 percent of the teachers’ dialogues involved their making personal and intertextual connections to the selected picturebooks. The picturebooks seem to evoke memories of personal stories as well as the knowledge and experience of other cultural products (e.g. music). While the teachers did not emphasize the international qualities of the selected picturebooks, their transactions with them revealed some of the teachers’ concerns in regards to the international children’s books.
Some of the teachers’ conversations illustrate how readers engage in both aesthetic and efferent stances when making personal connections. Beth, whose brother served in Afghanistan, thought that the picturebook The Sky of Afghanistan would help her to gain some knowledge about the country and its people:
I thought, ’Oh yay, I can learn more about what he did, what was over there.’… I guess I
was expecting to get more of an understanding of what life is like there and, like I said, I
think that was just because coming from my brother and knowing that he’s lived there
and what the people are like over there.
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In this excerpt, Beth elucidates that the book is something of a storyteller to her and it is something that sheds the light on a period in the life of her beloved one. Yet, it also provides some social insight on the country that she had heard of, but never visited. This fact is important because Beth bases her perception of the country on the depiction of it in the picturebook and such depiction is closely related to the ideology embedded in the book by the author, illustrator and publisher.
In contrast, for Blaine, The Sky of Afghanistan created an impulse to set the book aside, so the author’s efforts had the reverse effect on her: “I felt she was trying too hard. The whole thing was kind of like a 1970’s hippie song. Like ‘let’s just dream together, let’s just be together’, I just didn’t like it.” In this case, the hippie song represents a simplistic view of the world, which did not correspond with her personal perception of the world. To Blaine, the author of the picturebook oversimplified the situation and painted the idealistic picture of the world. As the result, she experienced aesthetic resistance to this particular picturebook. Such a stance of resistance adds to some social norms that Blaine used to experience.
Lynn shared that Jimmy The Greatest! touched her personally: “The next one that hit home on a personal level [ is Jimmy The Greatest!]. I did some mission work in Andras,
Bahamas. I had a little bit of background of that culture.” She developed an aesthetic stance because of her personal involvement and some cultural insight. At the same time, her ability to share some common knowledge about the culture enabled her to recognize an international context and connect to it. While Lynn was engaged in her mission work, she discovered that local parents tried their best to improve their community and keep the children home, since a lot of the children tended to leave for the large cities in search of better life. In this case, the theme of the book, in which the main character stays in his hometown, made Lynn establish a strong
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connection between the book and her own knowledge. Hence, for Lynn, prior experiences of a
particular culture resulted in an enhanced reception of the picturebook. At the same time, prior
experiences do not necessarily mean positive responses. A teacher’s reception to a picturebook
that evoked a memory or prior knowledge, as expressed here and in the following paragraph,
seems to be highly correlated with whether or not the memory or prior knowledge was positive
or negative.
The teachers also discussed how intertextual connections to other previously read books proved pivotal to their reading experiences, often eliciting skepticism of some picturebooks’
accuracy and appeal. Their connections suggested their skepticism to the selected picturebooks.
For instance, Blaine believed that Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit would be as bad as a previous
book that she had read, in which the Indian culture was presented negatively. A couple of
teachers expressed frustration when they noticed that the cartoonist-style illustrations in Jimmy
the Greatest! resembled the illustrations in The Story of Little Black Sambo, written and
illustrated by Helen Bannerman (1999), which was banned from the U.S. library shelves due to its stereotypical portrayal of black people and questionable themes and illustrations. As a result, two teachers, Beth and Blaine, felt that the picturebook Jimmy the Greatest! might contain the same types of issues. Therefore, they would avoid using this book in their classrooms.
The teachers’ personal experiences and intertextual links contributed to their emotional connection to the picturebooks and served as personal and social storytellers. They not only shed light on the reading experiences of the teachers, but also revealed the teachers’ personal stories and experiences that were activated in the transaction. This confirms Rosenblatt’s (1981) notion that the reader can activate aesthetic response during the transaction with the text that leads to a personal relationship and activates emotional reactions and responses. The theme International
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Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers provides an interesting perspective on personal evocations. Although personal connections are important in transaction, some personal connections, such as those suggested by Lynn and Beth, show that the international exchange of knowledge and experience is built into the responses. Teachers transacted with the selected picturebooks on a personal level what led to their deeper engagement with the books as well as increased their aesthetic reception. As a result, the teachers shared a particular connection with the international children’s picturebooks. This personal connection emphasizes the evidence of internationalism and can result in the inclusion of the picturebook in the classroom, further activating knowledge about the students’ personal connection to international references. While acknowledging what the selected books evoke personally, the teachers might like to look for other books that will serve as wider and deeper personal and social storytellers, for their cosmopolitan students.
These results might seem expected when considering previous research. The categories
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks and Efferent Reading as a Method for
Screening International Children’s Books for Classroom Use align with Hall’s (2007) and
Pantaleo’s (2012) research. However, the Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s
Picturebooks widens the research as well.
Discussion
In their article “A Step Toward Global Awareness: An Examination of USBBY
Outstanding International Books for the Primary Grades,” Liang, Watkins, & Williams (2013) state that it is the duty of the educators to emphasize explicitly that the book is international, because the students cannot assume this important factor and might believe that literature of quality is typical only to the U.S. This explicit emphasis would lead to the increased awareness
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of quality international children’s books and result in raised interest to said literature from both
students and teachers. When selecting international books, I personally anticipated that the
teachers’ responses would add more to both my personal, and their own, knowledge about
international markers in the selected picturebooks. Referring back to my dialogic memos, I see
that I not only expected responses to literary quality, but also to the international plots, such as
art, language and cultural markers. However, while some of the teachers’ responses speak to my
expectations, other responses prove that reading is a unique act that happens with a unique reader
at a unique time and that readers activate their knowledge and experiences to capture this
complex moment.
My findings show that the in-service elementary school teachers transact with international books in four different ways. Their responses emphasized that the teachers shared
visually and verbally “the comfort zones” (Roxburgh, 2004) represented in the selected
international picturebooks. As I see it, their text transactions represented their sharing of a
discourse or intersection of discourse such as visual aesthetics as integral to aesthetic reception,
the need or desire to find curricular benefits of a book, and how personal experience influences
initial receptivity of a book assumed to be similar in content and cultural message (Bakhtin,
1981; Stephens, 1992, pp. 84-115). There were just a few examples of aesthetical resistance;
however, adopting the efferent stance, teachers searched for ways to tie the picturebooks to the
school curriculum, even picturebooks that they personally resisted. In general, it appears that
teachers used the same selection criteria as they would have used if they selected the U.S.
picturebooks. The difference lies in the books themselves, their themes, illustrations and overall
quality and visual appeal. It is much more feasible that international picturebooks would contain
topics or themes that might seem foreign and potentially result in resistance to such books,
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especially if these books don’t personally appeal to the teachers. In this case, they might have hard time overcoming the resistance. Therefore, it is imperative to promote international picturebooks and create favorable conditions for critical discussions in order to dismiss any reservations teachers might have and provide a clear roadmap to include international picturebooks in the curriculum.
The research revealed that the opportunity to read, respond, discuss and dialogize about the international picturebooks supports visual and verbal aesthetic awareness, sheds some light on personal and social connections and promotes the idea of the usage of international picturebooks in the classroom by allowing teachers to acknowledge and realize the benefits of using international children’s literature in the classroom. However, it also showed that educators need to cultivate a more specific attitude towards the purposes and values of the international picturebooks, which would allow teachers to recognize the ideologies and cultural markers contained in the international picturebooks and utilize them to enhance their curriculum. If teachers and educators are not specifically involved in the discussions on the international origin of the picturebooks and cultural markers during pre-service education and in-service professional development, they mostly ignore them or do not see them because that type of discourse is not part of their mindset. Specific questions that I asked in regards to the international features of the selected picturebooks prompted some fruitful discussions. Hence, we, as educators, need to foster more imperative involvement of the teachers and educators to notice, respond, if possible, and recognize international subjects, characters, landscapes, examples of arts, etc. While results show that the visual aesthetics of international children’s picturebooks is the major focus, educators need to think of ways to link international picturebooks with the U. S. picturebooks for the comparative analysis activities and workshops (O’Sullivan, 2005), in order to pinpoint and
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compare the responses. To encourage this consideration, educators need to set platforms that will refer to all four categories found and discussed in this study.
Moving Forward
As an educator with an MA in Comparative Literature, I have found that the main issue arising from this research is the need to take a comparativist stance. I believe that if international children’s literature comes into dialogue with the literature published in the U. S., educators will have more opportunities to emphasize the visual and verbal, personal and social, aesthetical and efferent aspects, including geographically closer and more distant voices and perspectives, and recognizing and acknowledging their culturally authentic, as well as their global, features. This inclusion will help not only to build bridges from both sides (Isaacs, 2007) but also to create a possibility for literary journeys (Soter, 1997), without being biased by gender, race, and class, and more specifically, by accepting our diverse and heteroglossic worldviews.
Moving forward, I believe there are multiple steps that need to be taken in order for the
U.S. society to bring diverse perspectives into focus. First, I believe that academic institutions and professors need to place a specific emphasis on diversity and international children’s literature when preparing pre-service teachers for their future careers. Such early exposure to international children’s books will serve as a starting point for the teachers to begin using it in their classrooms. In addition, this would eliminate certain preconceived notions in teachers that international books represent a challenge to teach and might be not easy to comprehend. Second, teachers themselves need to put their fears aside and focus their specific attention on the diverse literature. This initiative would result in the recognition that our society is culturally diverse and the usage of international children’s literature is an essential component of building bridges between various diverse groups.
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List of Tables
Table 1.1. International Picturebooks Selection List
International Genre Country Award or Cultural Markers Book Summary Picturebook and Source Language of Origin Buitrago, J. Contemporary Spain; A Kirkus Best Distinct cultural This is an inspirational book about a (2012). Jimmy Realistic Spanish Children's Book setting in a small young village boy who dreams of the greatest! Fiction of 2012 Caribbean town becoming a great boxer and soon realizes Translated by with landscapes and that he does not need to leave his Elisa Amado. New York patterns of life that hometown to become one. Toronto, ON: Public Library differ from the Groundwood Top 100 Books mainstream U. S. Books. for Children and patterns. The Youth, 2012 houses are different, as well as the people and their activities around them.
Themerson, S. Fantasy Poland; USBBY Difference in This picturebook classic tells a story of a (2012). The Polish Outstanding authorstrator’s table that one day decided to run away table that ran International perspective. This is into the wild and reclaim its previous away to the Books list an avant-garde-style existence as a tree. woods. collage, published Translated by first in Poland in Tate 1940. This type of Publishing. collage was Mustang, OK: popular, Tate particularly in Publishing. Soviet Union.
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Machado, A.M. Contemporary Brazil; USBBY Internationalism An open-ended invitation to the boy’s (2013). What a Realistic Portuguese Outstanding through verbal and birthday party results in joyful and party! Fiction International visual parts. People humorous unintended consequences. Translated by Books list, 2014 celebrate their Elisa Amado. birthdays by Toronto, ON: bringing together Groundwood national foods and Books. traditions.
Martins, I.M. Fantasy Portugal; “How Does The basic plot is The book tells a story of a young girl who (2013). My Portuguese This Translate familiar. A dog welcomes some unique and strange neighbor is a Column” in moves into a new neighbors into her apartment complex dog. Translated USBBY Bridges building. However, while her parents disapprove of them. by John Newsletter the narration itself Herring. sounds different Toronto, ON: from the books Owlkids about dogs Books. published in the U. S. mainstream children’s literature.
Das, A. (2014). Contemporary India; USBBY Illustrations depict This unconventional picturebook is about Hope is a girl Realistic English Outstanding Indian national a young girl who travels on a train and selling fruit. Fiction International dress; portrays meets another economically poor girl, Translated by Books list, 2015 distinct cultural through whom a larger story of the life of Gita Wolf & settings that are an independent woman in the city is told. Susheela more typical for a Varadajan. particular Chennai, India: geographical area. Tara Books.
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Eulate, A. Contemporary Spain; USBBY “How Distinct cultural The book tells a story of one Afghan girl’s (2012). The sky Realistic Spanish Does This setting and people’s striving for peace in her own country. of Afghanistan. Fiction Translate national costumes Translated by Column”; are represented via Jon 2012 illustrations in the Brokenbrow. Moonbeam book, yet it also Madrid, Spain: Award refers to a universal Cuento de Luz. phenomenon: war and the people’s desire for peace. Hole, S. Fantasy Norway; USBBY “How Illustrations depict This whimsical picturebook represents a (2014). Anna’s Norwegian Does This a distinct cultural struggle of a father and a child caused by Heaven. Translate setting. The the loss of the mother and a search for Translated by Column” narrative sounds peace. Don Bartlett. different from the Grand Rapids, U. S. mainstream MI: Eerdmans children’s literature. Books for Young Readers.
Meschenmoser, Fantasy Germany; USBBY “How Difference in When Mr. Squirrel wakes up to a large S. (2015). Mr. German Does This writer’s perspective roll of yellow cheese that landed on his Squirrel and Translate through both verbal tree, he mistakenly believes that it is the the Moon. Column” and visual narrative. moon and tries to get rid of it before Translated by The theme deals someone accuses him of stealing it. David Henry with the emotional Wilson. New world. York, NY: NorthSouth Books.
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Table 1.2 Teacher Demographics
Participant2 Ethnicity Age Years Highest Grades Teaching Opinion of Culturally Diverse Teaching in Degree Next Year Children’s Literature Elementary School Lynn White, non- 25-34 6-10 Ed.S. 2nd Grade International Literature brings a Hispanic new awareness of the world and a new perspective of a different people group to the classroom.
Blaine White, non- 35-44 16-20 M.Ed. 5th Grade The stories are all the same, but the Hispanic telling is what makes them unique.
Tiffany White, non- 35-44 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I believe books help make Hispanic connections. They also give children life experiences, without leaving their home.
Beth White, non- 25-34 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I think it is important in the Hispanic classroom and would like to learn more about it!
Leah White, non- 25-34 6-10 Ed.S. 4th Grade, 5th Through diverse literature, students Hispanic Grade have the chance to be exposed to other cultures in a more meaningful way, instead of through food, dance and dressing-up.
2 All names of the participants are pseudonyms
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Table 1.3. Categories by Percentage
Theme Group Percentage
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks 36.8%
Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks 21.1%
Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s Books 27.1% for Classroom Use International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers 15.0%
Total 100%
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Table 1.4 Teachers’ Picturebook Responses, Preferences and Selections
International Lynn Blaine Tiffany Beth Leah Personal Selected Selected Picture- Preferenc for For Book es Classroom Personal Use Ownership (2 books Teacher per teacher) Jimmy the • International • Visual • Might bring • Bright colors • Ocean has Leah Tiffany Tiffany Greatest! setting resistance to up good of symbolic Leah • Expected a cover but discussions illustrations meaning Lynn more liked the • Personal • Ideology of • Clear dramatic illustrations appeal developing message of ending inside • Kids could local the book • Not • Philosophy relate to it community • Distracting everybody of living • Not for illustration want an local younger s American • Characters children dream are personalitie s
The Table • Text moving • Cover is • Too abstract • Abrupt • Positive Leah Leah Leah That Ran across pages unappealing • A lot of ending message Lynn Lynn Away to the • Not a typical • Themes of symbolism • Difficult to • Complex Beth happy story nature and and understand story with Woods Blaine • Similar U.S. connection background • Good to several Tiffany book • Illustrations story teach writing layers resemble • Not her to older • Deep propaganda favorite children connection What a Party! • A lot of • Very • Touched on • Representati • Offensive Tiffany Tiffany Tiffany ethnicities similar to several on of • Very Blaine represented U.S. subjects diversity stereotypic • Could almost picturebook • Might lead to • Might be too al Bad be s non-fiction generalized internation stereotypical • Book research • Visual al celebrate appeal
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• Melting pot differences • Children representat literature and interested in ion similarities several foods • Struggled to recognize cultures My Neighbor • Eye-catching • Visually • Use to show • Multicultural • Very Blaine Blaine Blaine is a Dog • Generation appealing differences connection realistic Leah Leah Leah gap character • Illustrations • Has foreign • Conversati Beth Beth • Judgmental • Dislike of make elements on starter Lynn Lynn unresolved international • Communicat • Generation Tiffany Tiffany ending • Pretty and es Gap • Good simple understandin message of illustrations g acceptance overall Hope is a Girl • Illustrations • Illustrations • Personal • Ideology of • Open for Beth Beth Beth Selling Fruit don’t catch are primary, connection a self-made interpretati Leah Leah attention the text is • Difficult to person on Lynn • Immediately secondary discuss • International • Students Tiffany anticipate to • The book • A hint of based on can relate be has no modernism illustrations to the book international lesson to • Interesting • Book • Out of my learn portrayal of changed comfort zone • Ideology of women through equality translation The Sky of • Not explicitly • Aesthetic • Role of • Not detailed • Connectio Lynn Lynn Afghanistan violent resistance women in enough n to the Beth • Suitable for • Too many cultures • Personal war Tiffany teaching symbols in • Much connection • Illustration detriment of discussing a Symbolism • Hard for s tell a war particular • Generates little story • Perspective of theme discussions children to • Parents someone not • Theme of understand may object in America peace Anna’s • Endpapers • Disturbing • Students • Gorgeous • Controvers Lynn Lynn Lynn Heaven stand out book would illustrations ial topic Tiffany Leah • Universal • The book identify • Ideology of Tiffany book might not • Symbolism childhood
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• Hesitant to relate to • Thought- • Universal • Worried use because curriculum provoking story about of parents • No personal parents connection • Too simplistic Mr. Squirrel • Great read- • Interesting • Kids enjoy • Similar to • Book for Beth Beth Beth and the Moon aloud illustrations it American opening Blaine Leah Blaine • A lot of ideas • Foreign • Not folktale conversati Lynn Beth for writing ending obviously • Aesthetic ons Tiffany • Colors give • Ideology of an appeal • Definite the pedagogical internation • Prison scene use in the perspective use al book might classroom • Different stimulate • Impact of cultures discussion translation can tap into on the text
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CHAPTER 4
OPENING SPACES FOR “OTHER POSSIBLE3” IDEOLOGIES: IDEOLOGICAL
TRANSACTIONS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS WITH INTERNATIONAL
CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS4
3 Sipe (2008, P. 246). 4 Lushchevska, O. Opening spaces for “other possible” ideologies: Ideological transactions of elementary school teachers with international children’s picturebooks. To be submitted to Children’s Literature in Education.
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Abstract
This article focuses primarily on what happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks. It specifically looks at what ideologies of international children’s picturebooks are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse. To understand how teachers become readers of international literature and how they transact with international children’s books, is an imperative for this study. The study showed that teachers looked at the picturebooks in an efferent way and with an obviously pedagogical agenda. International aspects of the books that could contribute to understanding diverse perspectives of the ways in which we live and respond to global events were overshadowed by their efferent approach to the books. Additionally, conversations revolving around international aspects of the picturebooks remained steadfast on the surface—the illustrations—without delving deeper into other possible ideologies. Therefore, it is important to devote time to identify and recognize the potential of international picturebooks beyond curricular standards. Doing so has the potential of generating understanding about diverse aesthetics and approaches to life, many of which may already be held by our 21st century readers.
Introduction
In his 2008 International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) World Congress speech, children’s literature scholar Petros Panaou (2008) emphasized that children’s literature always “has a multifaceted participation in the imagining of the nation.” Through children’s books, children develop a national awareness and learn the nation’s language standards. The literal and ideological language in children’s books contributes to children’s development of their national identities. Since books are symbolic artifacts of the practices of a particular culture
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that are meant to socialize a target audience, such as children, (Stephens, 1992, p. 10), the author
and reader share a field of ideological discourse, or intersection of such discourses (Stephens,
1992, pp. 84-115). However, the boundary between various literatures goes beyond the language
and overlays itself upon the ideologies and cultural identity of nations (Nikolajeva, 1996). As
McCallum and Stephens (2010) make clear, whether the textual ideology represented in
language is negative, positive, more or less neutral, it is determined by the ideological
positioning of a text within a culture. Because international children’s books convey ideologies
that can be adjusted to the target culture from which the book is being published, be distinctly
different from the target culture, or even unnoticeable (e.g. universal values), within a target
audience (Nikolajeva, 2010), international children’s books are often perceived from the
perspective of the critical or ideological challenges or alignments that they may provide
(Nikolajeva, 2010; Soter, 1997; Stephens, 1992).
Because educators value the ideologies of a diverse society (Campano & Ghiso, 2010),
they are in an ongoing search for culturally authentic international children’s books (Campano &
Ghiso, 2010; Liang, Watkins, & Williams, 2013). Bringing these books to the readers means not
only to provide students with “mirrors”, but also to open windows and doors, acknowledging that, despite the national boundaries, all people are tightly interconnected and are both citizens of our nations and of a global world (Bishop, 1994; Smith, 1997). At the same time, taking into account that international children’s literature represents the “truth, values, knowledge, and
culture” (Soter, 1997, p. 213) of close and/or distant geographical areas, educators need to
understand that not all readers will be ready and willing to connect with international literature,
nor will they recognize the ideologies imbedded in international children’s books. Yet, aside
from popular texts such as The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, the Harry Potter series by J. K.
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Rowling, the Artemius Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, U.S. teachers are not including international
children’s literature in the curriculum or classroom libraries. Or, if they are, the books are not
recognized as “international literature.” What is unknown is why they are not necessarily
including international children’s books in their classroom. What are teachers’ responses and
receptivity to international texts? How do teachers as readers situate themselves and what do
they experience while reading international texts? Knowing this information will help educators
better meet the needs of cosmopolitan students of the 21st century and to foster a variety of cross- cultural and global perspectives in the classrooms.
In this three-month case study, five U.S., in-service elementary school teachers read and
responded to eight selected international picturebooks. The picturebooks had specific cultural
markers that ensured the “international” component was readily identifiable. I define
international picturebooks as a corpus of picturebooks published in other countries in the
language of those countries and then translated and republished in the U.S. (Stan, 1999, p. 168;
Tomlinson, 1998, p. 4). Over a period of three months, the teachers individually responded to
the picturebooks and shared those responses with me. We also participated in subsequent book
dialogues about the picturebooks. Through this research, I sought to discover better ways of
bringing awareness of international children’s literature to educators. In particular, I sought to
know how to introduce, connect, and talk to educators about international children’s
picturebooks in the U.S., so that such books become a vehicle for students to see themselves in
literature, to hear the stories they do not often hear, to widen their knowledge of the world and to
expand their cross-cultural understanding.
Teachers are often “on the front line of advocating” particular titles to students and are
often one of the primary reasons why children select particular books (Fleener, Morrison, Linek,
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& Rasinski, 1997; Wray & Lewis, 1993; Williams, 2005). Teachers’ selections are often directly
connected to school curricula and, when selecting children’s books for the classroom, they often
choose school curricula or the Common Core State Standards as their primary book selection
criteria (Jiménez and McIlhagga, 2013; Jipson & Paley, 1991; McKeon, 1975; Williams &
Bauer, 2006). At the same time, teachers’ selections are based on assumptions of what students
may or may not like or connect to as well as concerns about the students’ aesthetic and personal connections with the books (Gray, 2009; Williams & Bauer, 2006). To understand how teachers transact with international children’s books is important because teachers’ personal reception of children’s books has a direct effect on their inclusion of those books into the school curriculum.
In the following sections I present the theoretical framework of the study, mainly
focusing on Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of language and
reading. A review of the pertinent literature relevant to the overall objective of the study follows
that discussion. I specifically focus on ideology in children’s literature, the synergy of
picturebooks, and U.S. elementary school teachers’ book selection for classroom use. I then
provide the description of my research design and analysis and conclude with my determinations
about the results.
Theoretical Framework
Both Rosenblatt’s (1978) transactional theory of reading and Bakhtin’s (1982) dialogic theories of language and reading inform my inquiry into elementary school teachers’ transactions with eight international picturebooks and the ideologies about international children’s literature that are illuminated within those transactions. Rosenblatt (1978) argued that reading represents an event through which the reader engages in the transactional process with the text, using personal and social experiences. Reading is a lived-through experience in which the reader
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activates a variety of previously-obtained or desired experiences when transacting with the text being read. To Rosenblatt (1978), reading enhances the process of understanding and comprehending the text and it provides a valuable opportunity to adjust some assumptions and sets of values.
One essential component of the reading process is the language. According to Bakhtin language lies at the heart of the written and verbal discourses that the reader activates in order to comprehend the text being read. As a result, the reader experiences what Bakhtin (1982) calls heteroglossia, or multivoicedness. To Bakhtin (1982), heteroglossia represents a multiplicity of languages or voices that produce a variety of discourses by means of the conflict between them.
In essence, the language serves as a mediator between the reader, the text and the society. During the process of reading, the participant uses the language of the text as well as personal language to activate the personal and social experiences and to comprehend and understand the text.
The tension that is part of the multivoicedness of text and reader is also evidenced through authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse (Bakhtin, 1982). We can define authoritative discourse as the unconditional words from the past; an authoritative idea passes from one generation to the next without anyone questioning its validity. In contrast, internally persuasive discourse is a combination of a person’s own word with words of others to produce a new dynamic discourse and one that may counter authoritative discourse.
Authoritative discourse communicates itself through history and/or agencies. Authoritative discourse directs the response and understanding, while resisting multivoicedness. For example, the student understands the authoritative discourse of the professor as an absolute truth, preventing a possibility of meaning negotiation if what the professor says is not necessarily aligned with the students’ beliefs. The opposite of authoritative discourse is an internally
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persuasive discourse, which offers the possibility of dialogizing and helps to interpret the words of others in order to seek deeper meanings, offer generative responses, share opinions and the multiplicity of voices of the author, illustrator, translator, etc. For instance, the professor in college may facilitate a discussion that would involve several participants with their own discourses and opinions on the subject, resulting in a shared meaning-making experience.
International children’s literature, in itself, represents the multiplicity of voices and discourses that form the multivoicedness, both externally and internally. Considering children’s picturebooks as a blend of the various ideological discourses of the writer, illustrator, publisher, and translator, international children’s books might by far be the most challenging medium for the reader to be transported from culture to culture. Yet, it could also be one of the most illuminating mediums due to the richness of both words and images. The participants of this study became readers engaging in the transactional process with international children’s books.
For this case study, I sought to understand how in-service elementary school teachers responded to selected international children’s picturebooks and what ideologies of international children’s literature are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through their discourses. Based on Bakhtin’s theory of language and reading, I looked at the communication between the visual and text language of the picturebooks and elementary school teachers to determine their responses to picturebooks and find out what ideologies can be identified. In addition, using Rosenblatt’s transactional theory, I looked at how the process of reading transfers information from the picturebooks to the teachers and how teachers’ responses reflect ideologies contained in the books.
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Ideologies in Children’s Literature
Ideology is a combination of distinct political, moral and social codes and beliefs of individuals. Ideologies in children’s literature are critically theorized by Taxel (1988), Stephens
(1992), Hollindale (1992), Apol (1998), and Zipes (2002). For these scholars, ideological presuppositions in children’s books might be explicit or implicit, but they are always present.
Because writing for children is often filled with purpose and authors often write literature to promote some cultural, societal, political, economic or personal values and beliefs, children’s books are never neutral. Moreover, the debates on ideology in children’s literature raise a number of issues, such as their pedagogical and socialization purposes, cultural and societal values, the construction of the implied/real reader, the connection to dominant discourses, as well as the circumstances of production and commodity (Sarland, 1996).
Ideologies represented in children’s literature are grounded in some specifically determined practices; thus, when we critique, analyze and interpret texts, the ideologies become visible, assuming the person involved in the analysis understands the ideologies. Responding to literature is also ideologically aligned; as readers, we perceive things as obvious, if they are connected to our realms and beliefs. We respond differently to things distant to us and might resist some particular ideological beliefs, because some obvious practices encoded in the texts are often hard to locate and decode. Ideologies are also represented through the oral, written, and in the case of picturebooks, visual language. Language represents social and linguistic conversations; it reflects a culture’s dominant ideologies and sometimes defines the audience, or a stance that the audience might take, with regards to reading (Stephens, 1992, p. 92). Thus, ideological assumptions are tightly connected to discourse processes taking place in the text, within the reader, and within transactions between the text and readers and among multiple
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readers. Readers use known stories or narrative patterns to make meaning of what they read.
This notion of ideology aligns with the theoretical lenses that I used for my study.
Ideological Landscapes and Diversity
Every children’s book represents ideologies of social structures, socio-political attitudes, and conscious and/or unconscious writers’ habits and thoughts. Ideologies formatted in children’s literature inform readers in specific ideologies of the dominant discourses, such as class divisions, diversity and racism (Sarland, 1996). Because educators value the ideologies of a
diverse society (Campano & Ghiso, 2010), there is a strong need for national, local, multicultural
literature, and local international children’s literature (Hollindale, 1992, p. 34) to represent the
stories of a diverse society. However, it is important to remember that international children’s
books often receive criticism for the challenges they provide due to the distinctly different
ideologies that can be foreign to a target audience (Nikolajeva, 2010; Soter, 1997). Aesthetic
(positive or indifferent) reception and resistance (negative or conflicting), while possible with
any book, may be more nuanced due to the presence or absence of cultural knowledge. For
example, a reader with no knowledge of the Iran-Iraq war may not feel compelled to critique,
challenge, or embrace Ahmad Akbarpour’s (2009) explicit discussion of the war in the
international picturebook, Good Night, Commander, from the perspective of war. However, a
reader whose ideology of children excludes the partnership of child and violence may resist the
violent acts of the child protagonist. The reader’s personal reception of or opposition to a
particular literary work is based on the reader’s pre-existing knowledge and beliefs and there may be more possibilities for resistance when reading international children’s literature.
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Ideology of Diverse Children’s Literature
Diverse children’s literature represents a broad body of literature that portrays a wide variety of topics related to diversity and multiculturalism. Diversity includes and extends beyond ethnicity, race, and language to include family structures, disabilities, gender identity, etc.
(Hermann-Wilmarth, 2007). Over the past several years a number of private initiatives, such as
We Need Diverse Books, have advocated for more diverse literature in the U.S. and promoted the necessary change in the industry. These organizations understand diversity as all diverse experiences, including but not limited to global, multicultural, and international books as part of their initiative. This research focuses primarily on international children’s literature. However,
Nikolajeva (2010) believes that although the global general exchange of information is evolving and expanding, children’s literature is becoming more national and isolated, rather than international (p. 43). Many challenges contribute to such isolation, and awareness about international books is among them, especially in the U.S. According to the statistics provided by the University of Rochester’s Three Percent blog (n.d.), international literature represents only around 3% of all literature published in the U.S. Consequently, it is imperative to grow U.S. educators’ awareness of the diverse works within international children’s literature.
For the purpose of this study, I will use the definition of international children's literature as a body of books published in countries outside of the U.S. in the language of that country and which are then translated and published in the U.S. (Stan, 1999; Tomlinson, 1998). While a body of international children’s books consists of multiple genres and formats, in this study I aim to focus only on a format of international children’s picturebooks, in which both the verbal text and illustrations represent an authentic whole (Sipe, 2008). In picturebooks, words and pictures relate to each other in many complex ways that involve re-reading, reviewing, turning to previous
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pages, slowing down, and re-interpreting (Kiefer, 1994; Lewis, 2001; Matulka, 2008; Nikolajeva
& Scott, 2001; Nodelman, 1988; Sipe 2008; Schwarcz & Schwarcz, 1991). I believe that readers
need to interpret and translate illustrations in international picturebooks as well, especially with
the increasing focus on picturebooks as texts for people of any age in a global picturebook
market (Salisbury & Styles, 2012). Illustrations play a special role in conveying the information,
capturing attention, portraying a concept, telling a story and providing ways of experiencing the
world around. Therefore, recognizing the transaction that happens as the result of the visual
stimulus is critical.
The Synergy of Picturebooks
Picturebooks are a unique genre, in which words, images, and ideas collaborate “to evoke
an emotional and intellectual response” (Kiefer, 2010, p. 156). Picturebooks convey meaning
through verbal and visual narratives (Salisbury & Styles, 2012); hence a picturebook is a
multimodal art object with a complex synergy (Sipe, 2008, p. 23), in which the key to
understanding it depends on blending together the verbal texts with a sign system of illustrations,
to achieve an authentic whole.
Although picturebooks “are significant for the aesthetic beauty and emotional appeal,”
their language and illustrative narrations require a critical level of awareness “through informed
inquiry about the texts and illustrations” (Beck, 2009, pp.100-101), because all the components
in the picturebooks represent “what semioticians call ‘signs’” (Nodelman, 2005, p. 131).
Scholars and practitioners agree that, in our increasingly visual society, picturebooks become not
just aesthetic art objects, but powerful tools that develop better meaning-making. They use both
verbal and visual parts equally, to not only draw attention to artistic elements, but to a variety of
codes that refer to diverse interpretations (Matulka, 2008; Lewis, 2001; Pantaleo, 2012;
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Salisbury & Styles, 2012; Sipe, 2008). Readers can also interpret pictures differently, but the
process of interpretation is “permeated by the ideological assumptions of [the] culture”
(Nodelman, 2005; Nodelman & Reimer, 2003, p. 276).
U.S. Elementary School Teachers’ Book Selections for Classroom Use
As shared earlier, book selections can often be a dilemma for teachers (Voelker, 2013).
When designing their elementary school curriculum, teachers use their theoretical knowledge
and experience. Although some literature shows that teachers want to create exciting literary
journeys for their students, the school curriculum and Common Core State Standards represent
some of the most important factors in determining a teacher’s book selection criteria and
practices. For example, in their research on the criteria that elementary teachers use for selecting
books for their classroom, McKeon (1975), Jipson & Paley (1991) and Gray (2009) conclude
that educators decide based on readability formulas, vocabulary, high-interest books for
developing readers, and books that avoid controversial themes. When selecting books for
classroom use, teachers indicate that they are much less concerned with the aesthetic and
personal connections that students might have with the books.
At the same time, teachers are open to a wider spectrum of books and are willing to look
beyond the State Standards (Adams, 1998; Giordano, 2011; Williams & Bauer, 2006). For
instance, Pritchard, Buchanan & Powell-Brown’s (2005) study involved U.S. pre-service and in-
service elementary school teachers selecting books from a set created from the European
Picturebook Collection. The scholars documented that the selection of children’s books was based on empathy, a wealth of knowledge and cultural understanding and other personal responses, such as aesthetic likes and dislikes. They concluded that transactions with international texts were closely connected to the teachers’ active engagement, connections, and
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interpretations. For instance, pre-service and elementary teachers looked closely at the verbal text and illustrations and conducted activities based on their interpretations of the books. They also participated in discussions, in which they concluded that illustrations add many insights to the verbal stories (p. 85). The researchers emphasized the need for further research on the selection and usage of international children’s literature.
According to the studies discussed above, factors other than the Common Core requirements and connections to instructional practices of reading are seldom emphasized, but the inclusion of international children’s literature into the school curriculum, while rare at the elementary school level, can be beneficial and valuable.
Research Design: People, Picturebooks, and Processes
The data shared here is a part of the larger three-month qualitative study that investigates what happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks. Trained as an elementary school teacher and experienced in teaching children’s literature and oral language to pre-service early childhood education teachers who will be teaching literature in elementary schools, I have a strong understanding of the role of elementary school teachers in children’s lives. Through response-centered and literature-based curricula, elementary school teachers not only help develop lifelong readers in the classroom, but also shape their students’ lives. They help youth understand the power of books and build knowledge and understanding about themselves, as well as their local and global world (Galda,
Sipe, Liang, & Cullinan, 2014; Kiefer & Tyson, 2014). Educators need to escort students to higher levels of thinking during their full tenure at elementary school by bringing strategically chosen books that might “open road maps” to think critically about the places that students have
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never visited (Wooten & Cullinan, 2015, p. xviii). Consequently, it is imperative to study how
elementary school teachers transact with the international children’s picturebooks.
Participants
This case study involved five elementary-school teachers bound by their profession, geographical location, and interests in learning more about international children’s picturebooks.
During my recruitment process, my friends and colleagues referred prospective teachers who
might fit my recruitment criteria and be willing to participate. Once I collected a list of prospective participants, I communicated with each of them via email to introduce my study and
invite them to participate.
The participants were selected based on the following criteria:
4. The participants identify as in-service elementary school teachers (K–5).
5. The participants are interested in culturally diverse literature, including international
children’s literature.
6. The participants have access to the Internet.
Originally, six people met the selection criteria and were willing to participate in the
research. However, one person was unable to participate. Therefore, I had a total of five
participants who fully participated in the study. The first step of the study included an online survey used to collect basic demographic information about each participant.
All of the teachers reside in the U.S. Southeast and have an average of 11-15 years of teaching experience. All of them were also eager to participate in a study involving international children’s literature. Some of the teachers stated they have participated in several professional
development seminars focused on children’s literature, but they still felt they needed more
experiences working with international children’s literature. With regard to culturally diverse
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literature in general, the participants indicated that school classrooms are ideal for introducing
the concepts of diversity and cultural consciousness. In addition, the teachers understand the role
of diverse literature in portraying different cultures in various ways. Table 2.1 provides basic information about the teachers (all names are pseudonyms).
Table 2.1 Summary of the data collected through online survey
Participant5 Ethnicity Age Years Highest Grades Opinion of Teaching Degree Teaching Culturally in Next Year Diverse Elementary Children’s School Literature Lynn White, 25- 6-10 Ed.S. 2nd Grade International non- 34 Literature Hispanic brings a new awareness of the world and a new perspective of a different people group to the classroom.
Blaine White, 35- 16-20 M.Ed. 5th Grade The stories are non- 44 all the same, but Hispanic the telling is what makes them unique.
Tiffany White, 35- 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I believe books non- 44 help make Hispanic connections. They also give children life experiences, without leaving their home.
Beth White, 25- 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I think it is non- 34 important in the Hispanic classroom and would like to
5 All names of the participants are pseudonyms
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learn more about it!
Leah White, 25- 6-10 Ed.S. 4th Grade, 5th Through diverse non- 34 Grade literature, Hispanic students have the chance to be exposed to other cultures in a more meaningful way, instead of through food, dance and dressing-up.
I also consider myself a participant in my study. I transacted with the picturebooks during the selection process. In addition, my participation in the book dialogues with the elementary school teachers resulted in the participants’ responses being influenced by my responses, and my responses being influenced by the participants’ responses.
International Picturebooks
I chose the international picturebooks using the criteria set by the United States Board for
Books for Young Readers, as well as the criteria for the Mildred L. Batchelder Award, an award given to the most outstanding book originally published in language other than English. I selected picturebooks that do not have generic plots or settings. In essence, I selected international picturebooks with distinct cultural markers, as conveyed via verbal and visual narratives (e.g. distinct cultural settings, national food, the artistic style popular in particular areas, within a particular time-frame, etc.). I acknowledge that this was my recognition of cultural markers and that the participants might not see the same markers as being cultural. I also
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intentionally included picturebooks that I both liked and disliked. Table 1.2 shares information about each of the picturebooks used in this study.
Data Collection and Analysis
The study was conducted in the summer of 2015, when school was not in session and when teachers ostensibly had more time. I utilized several sources of data in this study: a) a demographic survey for each teacher; b) one initial semi-structured interview per teacher, each lasting 30-60 minutes; c) the teachers’ open-ended book dialogues with me that lasted between
60 and 90 minutes; d) my interview notes and dialogic memos; and the eight selected picturebooks. I requested follow-up interviews with all five teachers; however, four teachers declined due to hectic summer schedules with their children and one teacher initially agreed but shared limited information. All the above-mentioned data sources were used in the analysis.
After the recruitment of the teachers, I conducted initial interviews with them and provided each of them with a set of eight international picturebooks. I asked the teachers to share with me any thoughts they had while reading the books. This participant-initiated communication could happen in any way and at any time. Only one teacher initiated communication about the books she was reading in the form of an Excel file that contained her comments about each book. The teachers took up to two weeks to read all of the books. After each teacher shared she had read the books and wanted to discuss them, we arranged to meet at a mutually agreeable location, often a coffee shop. At the end of the study, the teachers chose two books from the provided set to keep and to the use in their classrooms.
I used Stewart’s (2011) transactional analysis (TA) process to analyze the collected data.
TA combines elements of thematic analysis and narrative to study the specific ways participants’ experiences are shaped as they transact with others as well as the texts they read (Stewart, 2011).
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All aspects of this study, from the reading of the picturebooks to the sharing and discussion of
the teachers’ responses and then to the dialogic memos, were transactional spaces in which the meaning-making process occurs “through dialogue in the research situation” (Stewart, 2011, p.
286). An essential part of TA is the process of writing dialogic memos. These memos act as a
research tool to explore the dialogue during the interview situation and its influence on the
process of meaning making. Consequently, the dialogue memos provide an opportunity to build
new understandings that happen during the research process (Stewart, 2011, p. 286). Such an
approach closely relates to Bakhtin’s and Rosenblatt’s theories and highlights how dialogue and
experience activated in written or oral dialogue co-construct the ideologies of individuals.
My analysis process occurred in six steps. The first step included my initial reading of
and listening to all of my data. I also transcribed all of the interviews and book dialogues. The
review and transcription processes were critical to the overall study since the transcripts became
the basis for the analysis. I had to ensure I accurately transferred the data from an audio format into a written text format. Also, the process of transcription allowed me to establish an initial
understanding of the collected data.
The second step was my initial coding of the data. I kept the research questions in mind
and looked for common segments or features within the dataset. For example, when I talked to
Beth about Jimmy the Greatest!, a brightly illustrated picturebook, she indicated that “I don’t
know, just that it’s brightly colored. I think about kids and I know that that’s what grabs them
when they’re looking at picture books, the illustrations.” Instantly, I understood that this
statement belongs to the second research question of the study, since it relates to the ideologies
illuminated through teachers’ transactions with children’s books. Similarly, I realized that the
main keywords of this sentence include phrases such as “brightly colored” and “I know that
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that’s what grabs them.” Therefore, I coded this phrase as illustrations grab kid’s attention to
help me answer my second research question. As the result of the second step, I obtained several
groups of the data points that formed common segments. I found data patterns within the data set
and coded them according to the context.
My third analytic step involved my review and grouping of the codes together to create larger themes and sub-themes. For example, the code illustrations grab kid’s attention fit into the broader category of “learning through illustrations”. In essence, I created a preliminary thematic map identifying themes and their interrelationships. At the same time, I need further analysis to
review the validity of the structure.
During the fourth step I reviewed all the codes and themes and made sure they fit into the
thematic map I created. The process begins with initial codes and ends with an overall thematic
map. Initially, I verified that I had used the initial codes appropriately and corrected any
shortfalls in the process. I also updated several codes that did not identify the data correctly.
Then, I looked at my code groupings on the sub-theme level and checked the correctness of the
relationships between initial codes and sub-themes. In addition, I reviewed the relevancy of the
major themes identified. I also checked the thematic map to see the overall story of the data. For
instance, a theme of “learning through illustrations” from the previous example fits well into the
major category of Ideologies of International Children’s Literature as a Tool for Learning.
In the fifth step I defined each theme and performed a detailed analysis. I specifically
looked at each major theme to grasp the meaning behind it, the relationship with other themes,
and its relevance to my research questions. During this analysis I clearly established the story of
each theme and corrected any left-over deficiencies. The sixth and final step consisted of
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finalizing the themes and compiling theme analysis narratives as defined by the thematic map created earlier in the process. These themes contributed to the conclusions discussed below.
Findings
In this article, I attempt to answer the following question: What ideologies of international children’s picturebooks are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse? Due to the length of this article, I discuss two of the identified themes using transactional analysis: ideologies of international children’s literature as a tool for learning and visual images as indicators of internationalism in the picturebooks. Overall, the findings indicate that teachers used efferent stances towards the selected international picturebooks and focused on their use in the classroom, thus confirming the ideology of the picturebook as a tool for learning. These findings align with other studies such as ones conducted by McKeon (1975), Jipson & Paley (1991) and Gray (2009) and indicate that “international” aspects of the books don’t seem to resonate with the elementary school teachers. A focus on curriculum seems to prevail over any other considerations. The teachers only paid attention to
“international” features of the picturebooks when directly asked.
International Children’s Literature as a Learning Tool
The most common ideology expressed by all of the teachers in their responses and discussions is how international children’s literature serves as a tool for learning and reflects the in-service teachers’ ideology of the role of children’s literature in the students’ academic lives.
Admittedly, one of the follow-up interview questions specifically asked how the picturebooks might fit into the classroom. Teachers’ responses to that question focused on instructional possibilities with the picturebooks; however, curricular use of the books often guided my individual conversations with the teachers. They would often steer our discussions to ones of the
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instructional value of the books. Blaine commented that the picturebooks might be used for teaching writing. For instance, with regards to the German import, Mr. Squirrel and the Moon in which the visuals carry the storyline, she said: “This would be more of a creative writing type thing.” She also shared about the Indian import, Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit, a story which offers readers an uncommon model of narrative writing in the U.S.: “I would include it in a writing lesson, to say what not to do.” Blaine’s comments show that she has a clear understanding of what type of writing she wants to include in classroom writing activities and these books align with her purpose and goals. Similarly, for Beth it is also important to teach writing : “I guess I could see that it’s [Polish import, The Table that Run Away to the Woods] really talking about writing and how your ideas in writing take root and can come to life.”
For Lynn and Tiffany, classroom discussions and performative responses (Sipe, 2008) to the international picturebooks were important partners in the reading experience of the picturebooks. For example, while talking about the contemporary realistic fiction that involves multiple cultures and cultural artifacts from Brazil, What a Party!, Tiffany shared:
I thought that it would lead to a lot of non-fiction research, as well as other discussions
that educators could bring in to the classroom and make it even more fun. If you did have
other cultures in the classroom, they could bring in their favorite dish and that sort of
thing.
Not only does Tiffany want to create a platform for research and discussion, but she also wants to create a response where children will need to bring cultural artifacts, food in this case. This also aligns with Tiffany’s initial ideology about culturally diverse children’s literature as she indicated that international literature helps students make connections. In addition, this excerpt provides an example of heteroglossia and pinpoints the intersection of authoritative discourse
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(‘fun culture of food” as an indicator of diversity) and internally-persuasive discourse (non- fiction research and discussion of standards).
For Lynn, the humor in the Portuguese import, My Neighbor is A Dog, a story portraying various animal characters moving into an apartment building, mattered for the inclusion of the book in her class. She said: “I think it would be great to read aloud; I think the kids would really get into it and again, it would give them really great ideas of trying to turn an inanimate object into a character.” Here Lynn presents the ideology of using read-aloud to teach character development and writing to students and how humor is a viable springboard for creative compositions.
The teachers also connected the instructional value of the picturebooks with curricular topics as connected to Common Core State Standards while also continuing the theme of collaborative learning. Leah stated that the picturebook The Table that Ran Away to the Woods is a good book to teach about civil rights, because the book talks about the table that one day decided to stand-up for itself and ran away to the woods to reconnect with its roots.
I feel like that book would be really great because I do not know much about that area
and the history (civil rights) of what was going on at that time, but I feel like, together
with my students, we could learn about it, we could talk about what the book means and
all that stuff.
Like Tiffany, Leah sees the value of this book for classroom use and the potential for collaborative learning (Gray, 2009) due to the readers’ limited understandings of the history (“ . .
. together with my students, we could learn about it, we could talk about what the book means . .
.”). Books such as The Table That Ran Away to the Woods and What A Party! can help foster a genuine act of inquiry for both her and her students and foster authentic learning experiences.
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When discussing the import from Spain, The Sky of Afghanistan, a book about the atrocities of war in Afghanistan, several teachers mentioned Leah’s connection between The
Table That Ran Away to the Woods, historical wars and the lasting effects. It is also important to note here that even though the books are not historical, the teachers make connections to history
(e.g. civil rights movement). As the result, the connections made by teachers illustrate how international picturebooks can connect seemingly disparate concepts and content, thus helping bridge ideas and assist in fostering curriculum-specific objectives.
The Idea of Message in International Picturebooks
The idea of a book with a message and lesson is highly ideological. It comes from the root that children’s literature is a tool for teaching of not only academic content but also how we live and believe (Nodelman & Reimer, 2003; Panaou, 2008). Hunt (2011) elucidates that the notion of children’s literature has been connected to the concept of “children” through the years
(p. 43). Thus, teachers have often seen children’s literature as a message-maker with regards to its usage and the purpose of its usage. Thus, the excerpt from Blaine’s comments in the discussion about Hope Is the Girl Selling Fruit, clearly shows this particular search for a message through efferent reading:
But at the end of the book you have to ask yourself…’Why did she write the book?’ But
if we are going to use it in the classroom, what’s the point? What point could we make
with this book? There is not a lesson learned, really, that I could find. I didn’t really find
the lesson that was learned.”
Blaine’s reference to a lesson above is about the author’s inability, in her opinion, to convey adequately the important life lesson of connecting with people. Thus, while Blaine admitted
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earlier that the book could be an example of a story that does not have a happy ending, it fails to
“teaching kids how to connect with people” and thus is not an ideal book for her classroom.
As illustrated by Blaine’s comments about Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit, the teachers’
focus on the books’ instructional values was not limited to curriculum. Teachers also recognized and highlighted the more universal concepts of humanity. More universal concepts of humanity
were also recognized and highlighted. Another example of extending beyond standards-based
curricula is Beth’s focus on how What A Party! can help generate cultural understanding: “I
think it would be a great way to teach kids about being understanding of the differences, maybe
even at the beginning of the year, or when a new student moves in to a classroom.” This excerpt
provides an example of teacher’s ideology of using the culturally diverse literature to promote
tolerance among different cultures. It also highlights the alignment with the ideology that such
literature is important, as indicated by Beth’s answers to the initial survey questions, where she
suggested that more diverse literature is necessary.
While conceptualizing the first theme, I noted the teachers’ ideological positioning as
educators and their inability to break from that ideological positioning. They determined
appropriate ways of using the selected international picturebooks in their classrooms whether
they connected to curricula or cultural understandings.
Negotiating Cultural Voices in International Picturebooks
The teachers’ responses to and discussions of the eight international picturebooks
involved the concept of the picturebooks’ propriety for young children based on adults’ (teachers
and parents) perspectives. The teachers mostly emphasized appropriateness in terms of age,
experience and fear. Lynn shared that the picturebook The Sky of Afghanistan is for older
children:
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“Definitely for the upper grades; when you are specifically talking about war, I think it
would be a great tool. And I think you could use it in the lower grades as well, because it
is not explicitly violent, it does not give jarring examples, you know what I mean? So, I
think you could still use it in the lower grades to introduce, I don’t know. I feel like I
would have to be careful with my younger ones, because of the parents. I feel like parents
might wonder why we were discussing war and so I would read it for sure, I think we
could use it.”
Lynn’s commentary reflects not only an ideological stance, but also the efferent stance towards reading the picturebook (Rosenblatt, 1978). It shows that the participant regarded the picturebook as a tool for teaching and socializing (Panaou, 2008). It also shows that Lynn sees the theme of war as a sensitive and often challenging topic for adults (Baer, 2000; Crawford &
Roberts, 2012; Kidd, 2005; Salisbury & Styles, 2012; Evans, 2015). This excerpt also represents heteroglossia, since Lynn’s discussion of sensitive topics being appropriate for older children represents authoritative discourse, while her negotiation of a possibility to use the book for younger children highlights internally-persuasive discourse with her ultimately concluding that despite the book’s “appropriateness for older children,” she could still “use it” with younger children.
Leah’s acknowledgement of the power of parental approval when reading children’s literature for classroom use also occurred during our discussion of Anna’s Heaven, a book about one family’s struggle through the loss of a mother. “I thought that was really beautiful, but I can already hear parents emailing me, why are you reading about death with my - because some people are so - they do not want their kids to know anything about real life at all.” While Lynn opted to act on her internally persuasive voice and share The Sky of Afghanistan with her
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younger students, the authoritative discourse of the parents and concepts of mature concepts led
her to decide not to include it in her classroom.
Sensitive topics are similar across cultures, but the exposure to and talking about and
through such topics are culturally specific (Salisbury & Styles, 2012). Some cultures, especially
in the West, believe that children should be protected from the dangerous things in life, as well
as in literature. Difficult subjects are often censored and specifically avoided (Evans, 2015). The
excerpts from the teachers’ utterances show that they will be hesitant to use picturebooks with
sensitive topics, because of parental censorship and, as consequence, their own censorship.
The discourses about what constitutes “authentic culture” were clearly present when the
teachers discussed What a Party! On the one hand, Tiffany and Beth liked how the book
introduced different foods and their connections to each culture and Lynn and Blaine expressed their enjoyment of the myriad representations of ethnicities and cultures. Their identification and enthusiasm toward cultural variety indicates how the ideology of multiplicity is an indicator of internationalism. It also suggests teachers’ appreciation for “melting pot” literature (Sims
Bishop, 1982), or literature that suggests cultural homogeneity and, at times, might promote stereotypical understandings of particular cultures. Interestingly, Leah was the only teacher to address the limitations of international books that emphasize the similarities of people and cultures despite their cultural uniqueness.
To me, it was like so stereotypical. Every kid had only a name that represented their
culture and a food and a bird. My school is an International Baccalaureate school and I
had to go to training this year and we talked a little bit about how badly we handle the
international part, by representing everyone by food and cultural dress. That is clearly not
what this country is about at all.
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For Leah, this reaction conveys the idea that “melting pot” children’s literature serves to
foster stereotypes. It also allows us to see how Leah activates her prior knowledge and
experiences as she reads and how such knowledge and experiences help form her ideological
belief about children’s literature and cultural diversity.
Skimming the Surface: Visual Images as Indicators of Internationalism
The second theme, visual images as indicators of internationalism in the picturebooks, reflects how the teachers responded to the international picturebooks often without particular attention to any explicit or implicit indication of the books’ international content. It was only when they were directly asked, “What do you think makes this book international?” that the
teachers explicitly shared that the visual elements of the picturebooks were the sole international
indicators for them.
During our dialogue about My Neighbor is a Dog, Tiffany and I discussed how the
illustrations were a primary way of her understanding of the ideological messages in the story. In
this story, the female protagonist watches various animals moving into the neighborhood and
embraces their arrival while her parents are wary of the new neighbors and eventually move out
of the neighborhood. The neighbors—anthropomorphized animals of various species who speak
different languages—represent the diversity in the world and their interactions with each other
symbolize how difficult it is to generate understandings not only between cultures but also
generations. My Neighbor is a Dog offers an example of heteroglossia, in which the voices of
parents, the girl, and the neighbors intersect to promote the meaning-making process. While I
believed the verbal narrative emphasized the global concept of migration and xenophobia,
Tiffany identified the diversity of animal images as being the indicators of internationalism and
remained resolute in her determinations.
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Similarly, Leah stated that the visual appearance of geographical landscapes and people marked the book as international, despite the book title’s explicit reference to another country
(The Sky of Afghanistan). When asked what if anything indicated the book was international,
Leah shared:
It is definitely focused on this particular country of Afghanistan. It’s talking about
dreams; it’s almost like you’re dreaming for a better place or things to get better. I would
think that the international factor of it is that it is focused on this particular place.
While Leah clearly has read The Sky of Afghanistan, as indicated by her identification of the
book’s overarching message of dreams and hopes, she focuses on the tangible images of
landscape and clothing not typically seen in the United States.
Continuing the pattern of visual cultural markers, both Blaine’s and Lynn’s identification
of “international” was grounded in illustrations, yet they also connected the term “international”
with personal feelings of disconnect. For Blaine, the only picturebook in the set that she
considered international is Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit. In Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit,
Blaine did not like the layout, storyline, and felt a lack of synergy between the verbal and visual
texts. The writing was far from what her understanding of a children’s book of literary quality
should be and she felt that illustrations were disconnected from the text. All of these reasons for
identifying Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit as international suggest Blaine is defining
“international” as “different” and “foreign.” Lynn also shared how her dislike of the book
contributed to her identification of the book being “international.” Lynn shared: “I feel like you
immediately anticipate that it’s an international author and illustrator. I know this is not really
nice, but it’s kind of boring to me. The illustrations, I don’t know, it doesn’t suck me in just
based on the illustrations alone.”
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When I brought up other indicators of internationalism (e.g. the use of both Hindi and
English, the different narrative structure) in our conversation, Blaine’s response was
“interesting,” and she segued to another topic. Blaine’s initial admission about how the book invites anticipation of being “international,” her connection between international and “different” or “foreign,” and her disinterest in continuing to discuss not only what makes the book international but also why such indicators suggest internationalism, like other aspects of diversity, are difficult concepts to reflect upon and discuss with others. Thus, finding tangible, visual markers of internationalism may be the most dominant method of remaining in one’s ideological comfort zone while also supporting cultural diversity.
In summary, it appears that the teachers’ ideologies of children’s literature are mostly informed by physical or tangible identifiers most commonly found in the illustrations. In every instance, the teachers identified something as international only when they could “see it,” without thinking deeper about the meaning behind those obvious elements, especially when considering many of the books were translated into English yet still maintained cultural codes within the words chosen (e.g. “bells chiming”).
Discussion
Overall, the elementary school in-service teachers’ responses reflect that they adopted an efferent attitude while reading the selected picturebooks. According to Rosenblatt (1978), the efferent attitude represents a focus on the information that readers can use from the texts.
Rosenblatt (1978) also argues that reading is always on the continuum between the aesthetic and the efferent. This connection therefore means that while approaching the ideologies represented in the international children’s literature and activating their own ideologies through the multiplicity of written discourses (Bakhtin, 1982), the teachers activated and understood those
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discourses that were indicative of their professional positioning. Thus, as exemplified by their
transaction excerpts shared here, I see that the ideological points of view and information that
teachers took from the books are closely connected to official reading discourses. The discourses
that I see represent common assumptions related to connecting children with literature, such as
the age of the reading audience, the visual appeal to a particular reading audience, mature
content and authentic representations of diverse literature (Nodelman & Reimer, 2003; Sipe,
2008; Stephens, 1992).
The teachers focused on using the selected international picturebooks in their classes and
included various instructional approaches such as read-alouds, reader-centered activities focused
on performance and expression, and touchstone texts for writing. They also thought through the
curriculum connections and how to use international picturebooks to teach particular topics.
These practices again show that while their stance for reading shifted, it remained within the
paradigm of literary instruction. Although I believe they enjoyed reading the selected
international picturebooks, they adopted their professional stance when reading and discussing
the picturebooks. No teacher shared that she would like to include a particular picturebook, just
because she, to use Roseblatt’s (1978) term, lived through the picturebook.
To the teachers, the selected international picturebooks were also similar to the U.S. picturebooks. They did not voluntarily discuss cultural markers of internationalism; they only identified what about the books they considered to be international when explicitly asked.
Additionally, our conversations about those visual markers of internationalism were limited in terms of breadth and depth. Thus, the reading of the international picturebooks seemed to be akin to reading from a general U.S. body of children’s literature. While the books seemed to be a conduit for communicating global awareness and the interconnectedness of cultures (Liang,
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Watkins, & Williams, 2013) for the teachers, they didn’t seem to exit their comfort zones
(Roxburgh, 2004) while reading and during our dialogues.
As a participant of this study who has read the picturebooks selected and dialogized with the participants, I documented what ideologies I recognized in these picturebooks and what these ideologies activated in me in my dialogic memos. I approached the study with the expectation that cultural markers (e.g. race, food, geographical location) would play a big role in the participants’ responses to the picturebooks, that these cultural markers would promote the fostering of world-mindedness (Short, 2011), that they would encourage multiple stories that are often not heard in the U.S. or that they would add some international “flavor” to the stories, showing that all individuals are both the citizens of our nations and of the planet. For example, I anticipated books such as Anna’s Heaven that discuss serious topics such as family loss would generate comments and dialogue about how grief is culturally constructed. Yet that did not occur. This could be because the teachers’ experiences with children’s literature may be so ingrained into the culture of school or of literature as a “teaching tool” that they cannot completely step away from the authoritative discourse of school and the role of literature in school. Additionally, while I believe that international picturebooks can provide readers with greater opportunities to discuss their own beliefs, I also understand from the teachers’ responses that such opportunities were not actualized. On the one hand, the reasons for this issue could lie in the teachers’ inability to independently recognize the ideologies or because they take ideologies for granted. On the other hand, I think that the stance the reader adopts influences not only the reading process, but the visibility of particular ideologies.
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Next Steps
The teachers’ responses to the ideologies of international children’s books show that they looked at the picturebooks in an efferent way and with an obviously pedagogical agenda. Their responses, diverse in content yet uniform in stance, reminds me that we, as readers, are culturally bound (Soter, 1997). However, this culture might not only be a societal culture, but also a professional culture and a culture that often demands a particular stance toward reading that is grounded in developing students’ academic capabilities. Nevertheless, I should acknowledge that reading with this particular stance and referring to the professional discourses might fail to reinforce children’s books that will add to what Larrick (1965) called the diversification of children’s literature, which is highly needed within the U.S. Moreover, I understand that the challenge to broaden the geographical barriers (Batchelder, 1966), may be even bigger than imagined and that offering multiple perspectives about the lives of many cultural groups around the world in order to weave intercultural understanding may necessitate continued, focused professional development with teachers to help remind them that the pleasures of children’s literature can extend beyond curricular comprehension and literacy skills.
As part of the larger umbrella of multicultural children’s literature, international children’s literature can be “windows and mirrors” (Bishop, 1994; Smith, 1997), both of which allow readers not only to see the world around them through the windows, but to see themselves and/or their experiences mirrored in literature. With diverse literature, educators can effectively and thoughtfully acknowledge, understand, and value differences, as well as recognize the commonalities of humanity. Being exposed to multiple ideologies through literature will definitely widen cultural horizons (Soter, 1997). Critical content analysis and visual literacy skills (Stephens, 1992) might become two tools that I would like to encourage teachers to use
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extensively, when reading the international picturebooks. The greatest challenge here is how to offer workshops for teachers that include such approaches, especially when such practices are not well-aligned with high-stakes, multiple-choice assessments that dictate both students’ and teachers’ placements in school. Thus, the challenge is for educators to face, acknowledge and think about how to address the problem in a contemporary realm. Such a challenge may become a stimulus to include international children’s literature into teaching plans and classroom discussions more actively in order to ensure that international children’s books end up in the hands of the younger and older 21st century cosmopolitan readers.
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Table 2.2. International Picturebooks Selection List International Genre Country Award or Cultural Markers Book Summary Picturebook and Source Language of Origin Buitrago, J. (2012). Contemporary Spain; A Kirkus Best Distinct cultural setting in This is an inspirational book Jimmy the greatest! Realistic Spanish Children's Book a small Caribbean town about a young village boy who Translated by Elisa Fiction of 2012 with landscapes and dreams of becoming a great Amado. Toronto, patterns of life that differ boxer and soon realizes that he ON: Groundwood New York from the mainstream U. does not need to leave his Books. Public Library S. patterns. The houses hometown to become one. Top 100 Books are different, as well as for Children the people and their and Youth, activities around them. 2012
Themerson, S. Fantasy Poland; USBBY Difference in This artistically illustrated (2012). The table Polish Outstanding authorstrator’s picturebook classic tells a story that ran away to the International perspective. This is an of a table that one day decided to woods. Translated Books list avant-garde-style collage, run away into the wild and by Tate Publishing. published first in Poland reclaim its previous existence as Mustang, OK: Tate in 1940. This type of a tree. Publishing. collage was popular, particularly in Soviet Union.
Machado, A.M. Contemporary Brazil; USBBY Internationalism through An open-ended invitation to the (2013). What a Realistic Portuguese Outstanding verbal and visual parts. boy’s birthday party results in party! Translated by Fiction International People celebrate their joyful and humorous unintended Elisa Amado. Books list, 2014 birthdays by bringing consequences. Toronto, ON: together national foods Groundwood Books and traditions.
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Martins, I.M. Fantasy Portugal; “How Does The basic plot is familiar. The book tells a story of a young (2013). My Portuguese This Translate A dog moves into a new girl, who welcomes some unique neighbor is a dog. Column” building. However, the and strange neighbors into her Translated by John narration itself sounds apartment complex, while her Herring. Toronto, different from the books parents disapprove of them. ON: Owlkids about dogs published in Books. the U. S. mainstream children’s literature.
Das, A. (2014). Contemporary India; Outstanding Illustrations depict Indian This unconventional picturebook Hope is a girl Realistic English International national clothing, portray is about a young girl who travels selling fruit. Fiction Books list, 2015 distinct cultural settings on a train and meets another poor Translated by Gita that are more typical for a girl, through whom a larger story Wolf & Susheela particular geographical of the life of an independent Varadajan. Chennai, area. woman in the city is told. India: Tara Books. Eulate, A. (2012). Contemporary Spain; “How Does Distinct cultural setting The book tells a story of one The sky of Realistic Spanish This Translate and people’s national Afghan girl’s striving for peace Afghanistan. Fiction Column”; costumes are represented in her own country. Translated by Jon 2012 via illustrations in the Brokenbrow. Moonbeam book, yet it also refers to Madrid, Spain: Award a universal phenomenon: Cuento de Luz. war and the people’s desire for peace.
Hole, S. (2014). Fantasy Norway; “How Does Illustrations depict a This whimsical picturebook Anna’s Heaven. Norwegian This Translate distinct cultural setting. represents a struggle of a father Translated by Don Column” The narrative sounds and a child caused by the loss of Bartlett. Grand different from the U. S. the mother and a search for Rapids, MI: mainstream children’s peace. Eerdmans Books for literature. Young Readers.
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Meschenmoser, S. Fantasy Germany; “How Does Difference in writer’s When Mr. Squirrel wakes up to a (2015). Mr. Squirrel German This Translate perspective through both large roll of yellow cheese that and the Moon. Column” verbal and visual landed on his tree, he mistakenly Translated by David narrative. The theme believes that it is the moon and Henry Wilson. New deals with the emotional tries to get rid of it before York, NY: world. someone accuses him of stealing NorthSouth Books. it.
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CHAPTER 5
A SPACE FOR VISUAL LITERACY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’
DIALOGUES WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS6
6 Lushchevska, O. A space for visual literacy in elementary school teachers’ dialogues with international children’s picturebooks. To be submitted to The Reading Teacher.
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Abstract
Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of language and reading and Louise
Rosenblatt’s theory of transactional reading, this study examines the ways five in-service
elementary school teachers transacted with international picturebooks. The research shows how,
through responding to the selected international picturebooks, teachers engaged in visual literacy. The purpose of this article is to recognize the ways in which reading international children’s literature can play a significant role in the development of visual literacy practices in the classroom. Developing visual literacy creates a pathway to the deeper enjoyment and understanding of the pictorial elements of picturebooks and will help students to recognize and appreciate the lives of people within pluralistic U.S. cultures, as well as global cultures whose stories are often under-represented in the U.S.
Introduction
The nature of picturebooks is exciting, unique, and complex. As an art form,
picturebooks offer profound experiences to readers by meeting their worlds and other worlds via
an authentic approach to art (Machado, 2010). As cultural artifacts, picturebooks are a rich
source of cultural values, beliefs, and practices that reflect a flourishing mosaic of our pluralistic
society. As literature, picturebooks represent a unique genre where words, images, and ideas
collaborate “to evoke an emotional and intellectual response” (Keifer, 2010, p. 156). For Sipe
(2008), therefore, picturebooks are multimodal art objects with a complex synergy. The key to the understanding of a picturebook depends on summing up the verbal texts with the sign system of illustrations to achieve an authentic whole (p. 23). In the 21st century, discussions of
picturebooks have extended to graphica and scholars as Perry Nodelman (2012) and Philip Nel
(2012) have attempted to clarify the distinction and draw some boundaries between the two
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formats. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly even published a special themed issue
addressing this very topic in 2013.
The perspectives of international creators of picturebooks can add significantly to the
diverse body of picturebooks and inspire young readers in the U.S. International picturebooks
can take readers far beyond a single perspective and spark the readers’ imagination, helping them
to recognize and appreciate the lives of people in other parts of the world, whose stories are often
under-represented in the U.S. Thus, picturebooks from other countries are similar to
picturebooks originally published in the U.S., yet they are also distinctively different. They offer
an emphasis on the connection between literature and readers and introduce the capacity for
dialogue, understanding, and respect across an “interconnected, yet deeply divided world”
(Galda, Sipe, Liang, & Cullinan, 2014, p. 47; Hancock, 2003; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2010, p. 86;
Jewett, 2011; Liang, Watkins, & Williams, 2012; Short, Evans, & Hiderbrand, 2011).
Since international children’s picturebooks convey ideologies that can be adjusted to the culture in which the book is being published and can be distinctly different from, or even unnoticeable, by a target audience, international picturebooks are likely to foster aesthetic reception or resistance and many readers may regard them as exotic, peculiar, and quaint
(Matulka, 2008; Nikolajeva, 2010; Soter, 1997; Stan, 1999). Moreover, international children’s books stir up some of the comfortably organized norms of people’s lives in the U.S. and take readers out of their comfort zones, by showing even familiar things in a new light (Roxburgh,
2004).
Visual literacy, as a process of creating meaning from visual elements (Serafini, 2013), is a viable approach to using international children’s literature to bring new types of reading experiences. Developing visual literacy in order to appreciate a variety of perspectives of
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international picturebooks may serve as an important pathway to provide readers with a visual
aesthetic experience. It may also require them to become active readers by thinking deeply about
the images and the text. Through inviting readers to slow down thoughtfully and to understand deeply what the illustrations tell and how they work together with the verbal narrative, teachers may provide the space for children to respond to illustrations, visual lettering, and text as significant elements of building visual literacy (Doonan; 1992; Gamble & Yates, 2008; Matulka,
2008; Pantaleo, 2012; Sipe, 2008; Villareal, Minton & Martinez, 2015).
Teachers can support students’ visual literacy capabilities by first considering what
readers can bring to the texts and what might create a challenge for students when responding to some particular pictorial and verbal elements. For example, teachers may use an authentic picture of a cultural location to draw attention to an unknown cultural landscape that is represented in illustrations. They may use the picture to discuss its connection to, extension of, or disconnection from the verbal elements. Teachers can also help children to explore the role of paratextual elements (e.g. endpages, front or back matter) in picturebook narratives and investigate the usage of art media and the emotional appeal of colors, among other activities.
Such opportunities can contribute to develop students’ visual literacy skills (Elkins, 2010;
Martens et al, 2012; Serafini, 2011).
While motivating and engaging readers in visual literacy practices, teachers pay attention to the fact that reading is a complex all-inclusive process in which a reader approaches visual and verbal texts with a unique and particular experience. It is a transactional process, a lived-through experience and an event in which the reader has to be able to demonstrate intellectual potentialities and emotional readiness. The reader activates a variety of previously obtained or desired experiences (life occurrences, obtained knowledge, psychological insights, etc.) when
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reading (Rosenblatt, 1978). By participating in classroom discussions, students learn to respond to literature and acquire the needed practice to engage in and understand deeply the multiplicity of the visual and verbal elements of picturebooks.
When considering the inclusion of a wide variety of international picturebooks in the classroom, we should remember that teachers often are “on the front line of advocating” particular titles (Voelker, 2013, p.25). Teachers often have to negotiate school curriculum and the State Common Core Standards when selecting books for their classrooms (Jiménez and
McIlhagga, 2013; Jipson & Paley, 1991; McKeon, 1975; Williams & Bauer, 2006). Teachers also take into consideration the aesthetic and personal connections that students might have with the books (Gray, 2009; Williams & Bauer, 2006). Critical examination of the books can also occur during the selection process. Thus, teachers use their personal and professional knowledge as well as their skills, experiences and values to unite readers with books.
The purpose of this article is to discuss how in-service elementary school teachers responded to selected international picturebooks and how their responses inform the ways in which they already engage in visual literacy and can help their students cultivating their visual literacy capabilities. Specifically I discuss how the teachers gravitated toward the artistic elements and design principles of the picturebooks when reading and discussing them. Their predilection for the visual narrative and the opportunities to engage in visual literacy indicate that visual literacy occupies a significant part of their overall aesthetic reception and meaning-making process. In addition, this study offers insight into how international children’s literature, often regarded as “exotic” or “distinctly different,” can easily be a part of the U.S. classroom libraries and curricular resources.
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Pause and Ponder • What makes the book international?
• Why is it important to see the perspectives of international creators of the
picturebooks?
• How do the perspectives of international creators support or constrain visual literacy
skills?
Scholarly Framework
This study draws on the dialogic theories of language and reading by scholar Mikhail
Bakhtin (1895-1975). His dialogic theories of language and reading encompass the theories of language, representation, and interpretation (Davidson, 1993). In particular, he elucidates on how the reader is involved in discourses of the text. While reading, the reader experiences tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces. Centripetal forces unify the verbal-ideological worlds and centrifugal forces pull them apart. Thus, understanding and interpreting the particular discourse in a text is actively connected with the verbal-ideological world (Bakhtin, 1981).
International children’s literature, just as any literature text in general, bears a multiplicity of ideological perspectives and aligns with the idea of multivoicedness, or hetoroglossia.
Heteroglossia is the diversity of many voices or languages and their conflicting coexistence, which basically serve as an impetus for a variety of discourses, based on social speech types, speech genres and ideologies (Bakhtin, 1981). For example, the picturebook The Table That Ran
Away to the Woods interweaves authoritative discourse of the Polish society of the 1940s, the discourse of the avant-garde movement, as well as the internally-persuasive discourses of the author, illustrator and translator.
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This study also draws on Louise Rosenblatt’s (1904-2005) theoretical approach to
reading as a transaction, during which the reader goes through a lived-through experience in a reading event and recreates texts by activating multiple experiences. Reading is a complex, ongoing, multilayered process in which separate elements become a whole (Rosenblatt, 1978, pp.
16-17). This idea relates to Bakhtin’s notion that language is societal and intrinsic to reading, and, while reading the text, the reader uses the language to decode, understand, and interpret it.
Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of language and reading
transact with one another. For both Rosenblatt and Bakhtin, the relationship between the reader,
the text, and the context are three important and essential components for active reading and
critical understanding. They represent reading as a constructive and deconstructive processes as well as a creative process. The usage of a hybrid lens, based on Rosenblatt’s transactional theory and Bakhtin’s dialogic theories of language and reading, helped me: 1) to understand the ways the teachers respond to “text worlds and lived worlds” (Galda & Beach, 2001, p. 71), in order to see how readers actively relate to selected texts; and 2) to recognize the visual grammar and story grammar of international children’s literature, as illuminated through the teachers’ transaction with the selected international picturebooks.
The study also draws on research that explains the complexities and uniqueness of the format of picturebooks. The key to understanding depends on combining the verbal texts with the sign system of illustrations, to achieve an authentic whole. In a picturebook, words and pictures relate to each other in many complex ways, for example, re-reading, reviewing, turning to previous pages, slowing down, and reinterpreting (Sipe, 2008, p. 27). Reading picturebooks enables, if not requires, one to slow down and critically explore (Doonan, 1992; Matulka, 2008;
Nikolajeva & Scott, 2001; Pantaleo, 2012; Salisbury & Styles, 2012) in order to understand what
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the illustrations reveal and how they work together with the verbal part. This process of reading corresponds to visual literacy, the concept coined by John Debes (1968), which means an ability to read, interpret, and understand a visual text and is fundamental to human learning and understanding. It allows contacting, comprehending, and enjoying images with deeper analytic thinking. For in-service teachers, visual literacy is a highly valued and required skill included in the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices &
Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Serafini (2013) suggests that visual literacy skills need to adapt to changes in context and establish a set of social practices to understand the images they come across. Also, in our visually dominated and saturated world, people who can engage in visual literacy can become more critically aware of “the fictional universe and the real world” (Campagnaro, 2015, p. 121).
The Design of the Project
The research presented here comes from a six-month qualitative case study that investigates what happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected international children’s picturebooks. Specifically, in this article I look at how elementary school teachers utilized their visual literacy skills to derive meaning from the visual elements of the selected international picturebooks.
Conducting a qualitative case study (Merriam, 1998) enabled me to focus on the book selections of five in-service elementary school teachers who expressed keen interest in culturally-diverse children’s literature, including international children’s picturebooks. I have constructed the case by bringing together the elementary school teachers and international children’s picturebooks to create the bounded system. I also established a setting in which the case study was performed. The recruitment process included asking my colleagues and friends to
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refer me the teachers who might meet the qualification criteria and were willing to participate in the study. I used the following selection criteria to screen and qualify teachers for participation:
1. The participants identify as in-service elementary school teachers (K–5).
2. The participants are interested in culturally diverse literature, including international
children’s literature.
3. The participants have access to the Internet.
All of the teachers lived in the Southeast US, had at least six years of elementary-level teaching experience, and considered international literature to be important conduits of cultural awareness and understanding and the consideration of new perspectives. All teachers completed an online survey that provided me with some basic information about each teacher. Table 3.1 provides an overview of the teachers’ expertise and beliefs about culturally diverse children’s literature.
Table 3.1 Teacher Information
Participa Ethnicity Age Years Highest Grades Opinion of Culturally nt7 Teaching in Degree Teaching Diverse Children’s Elementary Next Literature School Year Lynn White, 25-34 6-10 Ed.S. 2nd Grade International Literature non- brings a new awareness Hispanic of the world and a new perspective of a different people group to the classroom. Blaine White, 35-44 16-20 M.Ed. 5th Grade The stories are all the non- same, but the telling is Hispanic what makes them unique. Tiffany White, 35-44 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I believe books help non- make connections. Hispanic They also give children life experiences,
7 All names of the participants are pseudonyms
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without them leaving their home. Beth White, 25-34 11-15 M.Ed. 5th Grade I think it is important in non- the classroom and Hispanic would like to learn more about it! Leah White, 25-34 6-10 Ed.S. 4th Grade, Through diverse non- 5th Grade literature, students have Hispanic the chance to be exposed to other cultures in a more meaningful way, instead of through food, dance and dressing-up.
Data Sources
For the purposes of the study, I utilized several sources of data, including the
demographic survey mentioned above, initial semi-structured interviews with each teacher prior to them reading the international picturebooks, open-ended book dialogues about the picturebooks, my interview notes and dialogic memos, and eight selected picturebooks. I used all
data sources in the analysis.
I selected the eight international picturebooks for in-service elementary school teachers to read, respond, and evaluate based on the selection criteria set by the United States Board for
Books for Young Readers (see http://www.usbby.org/list_oibl.html), as well as the Mildred L.
Batchelder Award, (see
http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/batchelderaward/batchelderpast). Additionally,
using previous considerations obtained from a critical content analysis of international books
from Outstanding International Books list (Liang, Watkins, & Williams, 2013), I selected
international picturebooks that did not have generic plots or settings. Rather, the books strongly
emphasize building cultural awareness and a deeper exploration of cultural experience (Liang,
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Watkins, & Williams, 2013, p. 22). I therefore selected international picturebooks with distinct cultural markers, as conveyed via verbal and visual narratives (e.g. distinct cultural settings, national food, artistic style popular in some particular areas in a particular time-frame, etc.).
Liang, Watkins, & Williams (2013) explain that distinct international settings, internationalism through art, and differences in artistic styles and representations of plots are cultural markers that will give an impression and understanding of literature written outside of the U. S. and will inspire readers’ imaginations, as they depict a new myriad of political, social and ideological platforms. While I selected books with distinct cultural markers, I tried not to include the picturebooks with obvious cultural markers that would “exoticize” the book, such as The
Amazing Discoveries of Ibn Sina by Fatima Sharafeddine. I also included picturebooks involving people, animals, and inanimate objects (see Table 3.2). I purchased 40 picturebooks
(five sets of eight picturebooks) and gave the set to each participant to read and discuss.
Table 3.2. International Picturebooks Selection List
International Genre Country Award or Cultural Book Picturebook and Source Markers Summary Language of Origin Buitrago, J. Contemporar Spain; A Kirkus Distinct This is an (2012). Jimmy y Realistic Spanish Best cultural setting inspirational the greatest! Fiction Children's in a small book about a Translated by Book of Caribbean town young village Elisa Amado. 2012 with landscapes boy who Toronto, ON: and patterns of dreams of Groundwood New life that differ becoming a Books. York Public from the great boxer Library Top mainstream U. and soon 100 Books S. patterns. The realizes that he for Children houses are does not need and Youth, different, as to leave his 2012 well as the hometown to people and become one. their activities around them.
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Themerson, S. Fantasy Poland; USBBY Difference in This (2012). The Polish Outstanding authorstrator’s artistically table that ran Internationa perspective. illustrated away to the l Books list This is an picturebook woods. avant-garde- classic tells a Translated by style collage, story of a table Tate published first that one day Publishing. in Poland in decided to run Mustang, OK: 1940. This type away into the Tate of collage was wild and Publishing. popular, reclaim its particularly in previous Soviet Union. existence as a tree. Machado, Contemporar Brazil; USBBY Internationalis An open- A.M. (2013). y Realistic Portugues Outstanding m through ended What a party! Fiction e Internationa verbal and invitation to Translated by l Books list, visual parts. the boy’s Elisa Amado. 2014 People birthday party Toronto, ON: celebrate their results in Groundwood birthdays by joyful and Books. bringing humorous together unintended national foods consequences. and traditions. Martins, I.M. Fantasy Portugal; “How Does The basic plot The book tells (2013). My Portugues This is familiar. A a story of a neighbor is a e Translate dog moves into young girl, dog. Column” a new building. who welcomes Translated by However, the some unique John Herring. narration itself and strange Toronto, ON: sounds neighbors into Owlkids different from her apartment Books. the books about complex, dogs published while her in the U. S. parents mainstream disapprove of children’s them. literature. Das, A. Contemporar India; Outstanding Illustrations This (2014). Hope y Realistic English Internationa depict Indian unconventiona is a girl selling Fiction l Books list, national l picturebook fruit. 2015 costumes, is about a Translated by portray distinct young girl Gita Wolf & cultural settings who travels on Susheela that are more a train and
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Varadajan. typical for a meets another Chennai, particular poor girl, India: Tara geographical through whom Books. area. a larger story of the life of an independent woman in the city is told. Eulate, A. Contemporar Spain; “How Does Distinct The book tells (2012). The y Realistic Spanish This cultural setting a story of one sky of Fiction Translate and people’s Afghan girl’s Afghanistan. Column”; national striving for Translated by 201 costumes are peace in her Jon 2 represented via own country. Brokenbrow. Moonbeam illustrations in Madrid, Spain: Award the book, yet it Cuento de Luz. also refers to a universal phenomenon: war and the people’s desire for peace. Hole, S. Fantasy Norway; “How Does Illustrations This (2014). Anna’s Norwegia This depict a distinct whimsical Heaven. n Translate cultural setting. picturebook Translated by Column” The narrative represents a Don Bartlett. sounds struggle of a Grand Rapids, different from father and a MI: Eerdmans the U. S. child caused Books for mainstream by the loss of Young children’s the mother and Readers. literature. a search for peace. Meschenmoser Fantasy Germany; “How Does Difference in When Mr. , S. (2015). German This writer’s Squirrel wakes Mr. Squirrel Translate perspective up to a large and the Moon. Column” through both roll of yellow Translated by verbal and cheese that David Henry visual landed on his Wilson. New narrative. The tree, he York, NY: theme deals mistakenly NorthSouth with the believes that it Books. emotional is the moon world. and tries to get rid of it before
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someone accuses him of stealing it.
The Reading and Responding Processes
In this study, the in-service elementary school teachers individually read and responded to eight selected international picturebooks during the summer. I then dialogued with each of the teachers about their readings, their explorations of the texts and the elements of the picturebooks.
The teachers’ responses and subsequent discussions about the picturebooks with me illuminated how they used their visual literacy skills to read, interpret, and understand international books written in English. The teachers also provided other ways of “seeing” international picturebooks and their possible positions in the classroom.
To ensure the teachers responded as authentically as possible, I asked the teachers to individually read their books at their own pace and send me any responses as desired. These responses ranged from an excel file of notes about every book to spontaneous text messages about the books while reading them. After each teacher had read all of the eight books, we met and discussed their responses. At the conclusion of our conversations, the teachers identified which two books they would like to own and were given new copies of those books.
I modified Stewart’s (2001) transactional analysis (TA) to analyze the teachers’ responses. TA represents a blend of thematic analysis and narrative analysis (Stewart, 2011).
While coding the teachers’ responses and interview transcripts, I created dialogic memos that enabled me to transact not only with the teachers’ responses but also with myself, with my beliefs and how those beliefs were in concert with or in opposition to the teachers’ beliefs.
These memos were part of my multi-step analytic process that included initiating codes, refining
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and merging codes, and then developing themes from those codes as well as my dialogic memos and the picturebooks themselves.
My initial coding process involved looking at each utterance in the data as it related to my research questions and creating a code that represented the main idea of the utterance. For example, when talking about the book What a Party!, Leah stated: “I loved the colors, definitely had some symbolic meaning there with the colors.” It appeared that this phrase falls under the first research question of the study in regards to the aesthetics of reading. I also identified the key phrase of this utterance, such as “symbolic meaning.” I decided to code this phrase as symbolic meaning in colors. In my next step, I reviewed all the created codes and determined any and all relationships between the codes; for example, the code symbolic meaning in colors relates to a broader category of visual literacy. I then proceeded to create a preliminary thematic map that illustrated the group relationships between codes and refined my final coding groups. At this stage in the process, visual literacy informed the creation of the larger theme of Making Space for Visual Literacy through International Picturebooks. I then performed further refinement through ongoing comparative reviews of the data to ensure the themes accurately represented the data as a whole.
Making Space for Visual Literacy through International Picturebooks
Currently, scholars postulate that readers often gravitate towards the visual and that visual images often dominate over the verbal part (Martens et al, 2012; Serafini, 2011; Sipe
2008). Visual literacy is also part of the recursive act of text-image-image-text reading, whereas the reader continually goes back and forth between text and image and creates meaning based on what happens with both (Arizpe & Styles, 2003). My findings indicate that verbal response to the international picturebooks opened the space for visual literacy, even though I did not ask the
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teachers specifically about visual elements in the texts. Although the verbal texts of the
picturebooks were important to the teachers, they adopted an aesthetic stance (Rosenblatt, 1978)
towards the visual texts and established their preferences and attitudes toward the picturebooks
based on the meaning they derived from the images. The teachers’ responses indicated that the
teachers “lived-through” the texts (Rosenblatt, 1978), and got actively involved in the aesthetic
potential and interpretation of illustrations. However, elementary school teachers seldom went
beyond the like/dislike stage. In the following section, I share excerpts from various data sources
that reveal the kind of visual aspects that the teachers drew upon, to support their aesthetic stance
towards the selected international picturebooks.
Color
Color is the “most basic feature” of picturebooks. It conveys the setting, theme, and
mood as well as represents character and personality traits (Galda, Sipe, Liang, & Cullinan,
2013; Matulka, 2008; Lewis, 2001; Pantaleo, 2012). Colors are also often situated in a cultural
context (Kiefer & Tyson, 2013; Sipe, 2008) and in this research context, color clearly captured
the teachers’ attention and often guided their responses to and reception of the picturebooks.
Color was an initial criterion for the teachers’ acceptance or rejection of the book in
terms of both appeal and value. The teachers made comments about how they found the color pleasing and suitable for the young readers. They also mentioned the strong, bold, bright colors, which contributed to the books’ emotional appeal. For example, while responding to why she liked the picturebook Jimmy the Greatest!, Beth shared: “I don’t know, just that it’s brightly colored. I think about kids and I know that that’s what grabs them when they’re looking at picture books, the illustrations.” Additionally, when discussing Mr. Squirrel and the Moon, Beth shared how focusing on the illustrations enables readers to develop their visual literacy
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capabilities. Comments such as “ . . . the way they portray the moon as the big, giant yellow
circle and then everything else is kind of a more dull color, it really keeps the focus on what the
story’s about” reminds us of how illustrations can be integral to comprehension. Thus, not only
does color influence Beth’s aesthetic stance, but it also has cultural and ideological associations
(Salisbury & Styles, 2012; Sipe, 2010). Children are attracted to brightly colored books and as an
educator, Beth is an expert of what children like and how she can help students comprehend the
text through the illustrations. Beth’s aesthetic and efferent stances reflect Rosenblatt’s ideas that
readers typically read across a continuum of aesthetic-efferent response. As exemplified by
Beth, although the reader aesthetically enjoys reading, some attention can be focused on what and how the text can be used after reading.
Color also initially contributed to some teachers’ aesthetic resistance. Blaine routinely included color scheme as one of her evaluative criteria and expressed her initial resistance to picturebooks that used color to entertain readers but not necessarily contribute to deeper meaning. When discussing My Neighbor is a Dog, a colorfully illustrated picturebook, Blaine commented on how the three primary colors—red, white, and blue—were “cute” but did not do much more than please the eye. However, as our book dialogues continued and expanded to other aspects of the book, such as the visual appeal of the animal characters and the overall message, Blaine indicated she would use the book in the classroom, focusing on the more redeeming qualities. Blaine also selected My Neighbor is a Dog as one of the two books she wanted to keep. Both Beth’s and Blaine’s commentaries serve as representative of how color engaged, informed, and repelled the teachers.
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Picturebook Design Elements as a Tool for Visual Literacy
Picturebooks extend beyond the primary visual and written narrative to include every
aspect of the book. Design elements such as typography and layout also constitute aesthetic
responses from readers. Blaine’s enjoyment of The Table that Run Away to the Woods, a
picturebook containing various unusual textual designs, largely stemmed from the book’s
typography: “I love the way he does his words, uses the font….even the font throughout looks
very much like wood, like it’s straightened and paned. So, I loved that.” To Blaine the font plays
a very significant role in the overall reception of the picturebook. She used her visual literacy
skills and established a connection between the font and the storyline, seeing font as a
continuation path for the table to get back to its roots and become a tree again. For Leah, the
presentation and layout of the text in The Table that Run Away to the Woods contributed to her
positive response and her emotional investment: “I’ve loved the presentation of the text, the way
that it moved across the pages and different colors and things like that . . . I kept turning the
pages, turning the pages and then . . . the way it ended was . . . I couldn’t anticipate what was
going to happen . . . . ” As indicated in this excerpt, the partnership of lot and design compels
Leah to engage in the meaning-making process, anticipate the ending, and become surprised by
the ending, despite her understanding.
In summary, various elements of book design served as a link between the text and visual elements. In this case, visual literacy played an important role in the aesthetic perception of the selected picturebooks allowing teachers to construct meaning and pushing them to establish emotional connections to the text as well as rely on visual elements. Teachers’ aesthetic reception of a book’s design also served as a great source of deeper level of thinking to derive meaning and understanding. This relationship is especially true with the spread of the
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postmodern picturebooks that use font and design differently. Also, postmodern picturebooks are
very common in certain countries such as Australia, Canada, and others. These books utilize
various unique design techniques to create meaning and might be another great tool for teachers
to develop visual literacy when looking at picturebooks.
Paratexts, features of the picturebook outside of the primary narrative such as the title
page, endpapers, the half-title page, preface, foreword, dedication, copyright, and colophon, support the overall design of the picturebook (Matulka, 2008) and contribute to the books’ aesthetics through rich visual stimulation. While all of the books have multiple paratextual features, the teachers seem to focus only on the endpapers. Endpapers are not only decorative but also critical to some storylines, often setting the mood, offering clues to the storyline, or providing glimpses about the overall theme. Endpapers represent a very important aspect of the picturebook and serve as an additional tool to utilize visual literacy skills and facilitate the understanding and overall message of the picturebook. Blaine found the endpapers of Anna’s
Heaven, a book about one family’s search for peace, to be thought-provoking: “It’s kind of disturbing. I don’t know if you noticed at the beginning, it’s nails coming down out of the sky and then strawberries.” Lynn also discusses the endpaper from Anna’s Heaven. She comments:
“…the endpapers had the strawberries and so it switches. It switches from the hardness of the nail to the juiciness and sweetness of the strawberry at the end. I mean, you could just do a whole lesson just on the endpaper.” These excerpts show that both Blaine and Lynn found the endpapers of this particular picturebook aesthetically disturbing and emotionally rich. In addition, Blaine’s and Lynn’s varied responses to the endpapers suggest that paratextual features might serve as a basis for the meaning-making process as they inevitably contain various cultural markers that add to the overall aesthetic perception of the picturebook. Therefore, the paratextual
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features, such as the endpapers of Anna’s Heaven, represent a significant part of visual literacy
and provide a mechanism to jump-start the reception process, thereby allowing the reader to
delve deeper into understanding the storylines.
Teachers’ discussions of the role of the visual landscape of the storyline and the
picturebook itself in their transactions with the books position the role of illustrator as cultural
designer. All of the teachers discussed how the visual, not the verbal, helped them identify the
books’ international settings. They recognized Columbia as the representative country in Jimmy
the Greatest!, a book about a young boy’s desire to become a famous boxer, and they understood
how the map in The Sky of Afghanistan, a book about the desire for peace in war-torn
Afghanistan, offered not only a tangible visual of the setting but also a tangible visual of the casualties of war. The teachers also extended their understanding of how symbols they perceived as national were actually global symbols (i.e. Sonja Wimmer’s illustration of flowers coming out of tanks in The Sky of Afghanistan). Interestingly, while the teachers focused on landscapes to help them make meaning of the stories, research indicates that the verbal and visual depictions of characters tend to be critical to readers’ meaning-making processes.
Illustrations often help readers understand the complexities of characters with regard to their feelings, motivations, and goals (Prior, Willson, & Martinez, 2012). With the exception of the teachers’ brief discussion of characters in relation to color and a casual mention of comical looking characters in Jimmy the Greatest!, the teachers did not discuss how the visuals were critical to their understandings of the characters. With regard to international storylines, it is the setting that mattered most.
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What I Learned
The interview excerpts and the comments that I shared demonstrate that in-service elementary school teachers transact with the selected international picturebooks with some level of aesthetic response. Consistent with the aesthetic stance, their response often involved referential and cognitive elements. Within their responses, their selective attention was focused
on some specific aspects of the visual elements and their subsequent discussions of the books
expanded their focus on the visual elements of the picturebooks. Thus, their lived-through
experience transformed into efferent reading of the texts. Through their book dialogues with me they demonstrated how they embraced visual elements and discussed a multiplicity of meanings
constructed through their transaction with the selected picturebooks. For instance, the discussion
of color reflected their engagement, resistance, and analytical thinking. Referring to endpapers,
they expressed serious involvement with the images and the emotional insights that they provide.
The teachers conjectured about some symbolism and concluded their interpretations.
The visual information definitely helped them to discuss the picturebooks, yet they omitted many visual clues. While discussing color, design, some paratexts, symbolism in illustrations, the representation of the character and landscapes, teachers shared many opinions,
yet they did not talk about other traditional elements of visual design, such as line, shape, value,
space, texture, perspective, and composition (Kiefer & Tyson, 2014; Sipe, 2010).
What was also noticeably absent from our discussions was an extension beyond the
immediate eye. Teachers did not talk extensively about the styles of art and artistic media. Only
some teachers mentioned the cultural codes embedded in illustrations. These codes contributed
to recognizing international geographical areas. In general, teachers did not refer to many visual
markers in the selected international picturebooks. All these insights have important
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consequences for how educators use picturebooks in the classroom. For example, teachers may
not be able to foster fruitful discussions based on cultural connections and global consciousness.
As a result, the international interconnectedness would not be highlighted.
This research highlights how teachers’ authentic responses can favor basic elements of visual literacy, but teachers did not notice deeper connections and meaning. Possibly the teachers have not learned or experienced such connections, or perhaps part of the U.S. testing culture focuses on getting the tests done rather than engaging in deep conversations. The reasons for many omissions can lie, as Matulka (2008) explains, in the ability of a person to recall only the colors and some patterns, while other visual stimuli are often difficult to recall (p. 141). Wade and Swanson (2001) indicate that, from various visual cues, individuals refer back to the most meaningful of them. Each person might find some meaningful elements, which is consistent with heteroglossia. Therefore, for me, the most essential issue here is the possibility of creating a platform for the teachers to use visual elements to understand the texts actively, while developing more tools for aesthetic pleasure. In or out of the classroom, teachers can play an important role in fostering skills of visual literacy, in order to help children to be active receptacles and aesthetically appreciate the art of picturebooks.
What to Do in the Classroom
Teachers need to create possibilities for discussions of visual elements with children, not
only to stimulate their deeper understanding and foster their visual skills, but to stimulate own
visual ability to recognize, read and make sense of the broader and deeper visual images. Relying
on visual literacy skills can help understand “foreign” texts, such as those written in languages
not of the dominant culture. However, as my research indicates, elementary school teachers may
not readily proceed beyond the like/dislike stage. However, they pay attention to visual elements
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and make attempts to derive deeper meaning from the intersection of visual elements and text.
Unfortunately, in the contexts of this study, their reception of the eight picturebooks lacked
broader understandings and critical thinking. Therefore, I strongly believe that teachers need
opportunities to engage in rich discussions with international children’s literature so that they
can, in turn, facilitate discussions in the classroom. Visual literacy is one avenue by which teachers can begin to think about not only increasing students’ visual literacy skills but also discussing cultural codes of aesthetics and symbolism. Participating in professional development seminars involving both international picturebooks and visual literacy strategies can be the first step in providing teachers with tools and knowledge to facilitate such discussions in their classrooms.
Despite the many factors that influence the teachers’ selection of literature for the classroom, I believe another factor can and should be the visual interest in the books. Such interest can be both positive and negative; the key is that the visuals provoke interest so that they can draw readers in and enrich students’ aesthetic appreciation (Matulka, 2008; Prior, Willson, &
Martinez, 2012; Sipe, 2008). Teachers can use multiple examples of single- and double-page spreads to demonstrate visual grammar. For example, using the second double-spread of the international picturebook The Sky of Afghanistan, the teacher can introduce the importance of line. Here the line guides the view through the page and unites this double-spread with the next one; it also invites the reader to predict the next scene. A line can also help demonstrate artistic technique by illuminating what media the artist uses in her illustrations. Using the double- spreads from the two picturebooks, Anna’s Heaven and The Table that Run Away into the
Woods, teachers can invite students to talk about the use of mixed-media and what insights these two different mixed-media techniques might provide with regard to the mood of the characters.
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Using some double-spreads from Jimmy the Greatest! and Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit, teachers can introduce perspective. While the illustrations in the story of Jimmy the Greatest! shift from easy-going to dramatic and to easy-going again, the picturebook Hope is the Girl
Selling Fruit engages in a highly dramatic perspective, allowing the reader to see two developing storylines. This alteration will expand the teacher’s own knowledge of visual grammar and introduce some elements of visual grammar to the children. They also can use these two picturebooks to talk about the geographical setting, as discussed in book dialogues. Thus, they will expose children to geographical settings other than the U.S. What a Party! can activate some cultural connections as well.
Reading aloud and prompting questions, with the emphasis on visual elements, can be useful. For instance, when reading My Neighbor is a Dog, teachers might emphasize shapes. The illustrations are rounded and curved. Children might discuss what they feel about such curved forms. In contrast, the double-spread of The Table that Runs Away might serve to demonstrate illustrations with sharp edges. Exploring shapes together, both teachers and children will learn from each other and see a multiplicity of meanings that connect us to the visual image. They will also learn to acknowledge different opinions, because some shapes will result in both aesthetic pleasure and resistance.
“Close looking” (Doonan, 1993) sessions can also provide possibilities for a detailed analysis of color, shape, patterns, rhythms and schemas. For instance, in the picturebook Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit, Das uses a lot of shapes and lines to create rhythm for the story. At the same time, the use of shape proposes an interesting angle to pinpoint – a pattern of the traditional
Mathila folk art. Thus, the teacher and students will benefit from looking, not only at the elements of visual grammar, but from also at a pattern of art, which might be new to them.
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Furthermore, the implementation of an art-based response can help teachers and children visually decode and recreate some particular elements. The endpapers of Anna’s Heaven might serve as a proper example not only to recognize and recreate the images but to discuss their symbolism. In addition, the styles of illustrations in the selected international picturebooks will reflect the styles of art used for illustrating books in other countries. For instance, The Table that
Runs Away is an example of European Avant-Garde, which was popular in Poland as well as
many other Eastern European countries during the Soviet era. Yet, My Neighbor is the Dog,
which also implements features of Avant-Garde, was only recently published in Portugal. These two books show that Avant-Garde not only originated and became popular in Western European countries in the 20th century, but is also popular in many countries in the world today (Druker &
Kümmerling-Meibauer, 2015). This phenomenon speaks to our international interconnectedness and also shows how some styles of art can be both national and global.
No doubt, the perspectives of international creators and the inclusion of international picturebooks can add significantly to fostering visual literacy. They will broaden the horizons of teachers and children so that they begin to imagine, recognize, and appreciate patterns of the lives of people in other parts in the world. They will activate meaningful messages and discourses, show patterns of art and serve as an impetus for critical discussions. If our global society has taken a pictorial turn (Sipe, 2008, p. 22), then expanding, strengthening, and fostering the development of skills for visual literacy by using international picturebooks is a solid step towards helping children become active and critical readers, while the teachers also grow as active and critical readers themselves.
List of recommendations for drawing on illustrations to foster visual literacy
Pause and Ponder Before Classroom Activities Did I look closer and dig deeper into the pictures of the picturebook that I am planning to use?
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What artistic elements stood out for me? What do I need to revisit? How did this examination contribute to my overall understanding of the picturebook? What activity can I use to develop the students’ visual literacy skill?
Prompts to Close Looking Sessions in Classroom
1. Look at the cover illustration of Hope is the Girl Selling Fruit.
• What main colors are used in the picturebook?
• What are your feelings right know? What elements on the cover make you feel this
way? Why?
2. Look at the first double-spread (unpaged) and fourth double-spread (unpaged).
• What place do illustrations have?
• What do illustrations tell you about the characters?
3. Look at the second double-spread.
• Why do the girls stand in this way?
• Whose perspective do the illustrations show? How does that affect your
understanding of the story?
4. Look at the fifth double-spread.
• Where is the main character placed on the page?
• What does her posture tell us about her?
5. Look at the tenth double-spread.
• What technique does the illustrator use to create train pathways?
• How does the illustrator use lines and shapes?
• What attracts your attention most? Why?
6. Read afterward: “Amrita’s Journey.”
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• What did you learn about the style of the art she uses?
• What style does this art resemble?
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CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
When I considered doing my research in international children’s literature and focused on the broadening of geographical barriers and diversification with international children’s literature, I regarded myself a reader of international children’s literature. I felt that my research was personally motivated and I was in progress of evolving as a future expert of international children’s literature. However, the teachers of my study stated that they were not exposed enough to international children’s picturebooks. They often experienced limited cultural awareness (Davila, 2012, p. 5). Although they longed to augment their classrooms with international children’s literature, they did not know how. Dialogizing with the elementary school in-service teachers and transacting with the picturebooks, interviews and dialogues manuscripts, I learned that we not only come from different cultural and linguistic discourses, but also, as Bakhtin shared (1981) struggle through them.
The aim of my study was to understand better how to bring awareness to educators about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and talk to educators about international children’s literature. Now, I must admit that there were two components that helped me on my path of this research: dialogue and tension which lead to curiosity about a deeper understanding of what beliefs and ideologies contributed to the positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum. Tensions in transaction led me into many dialogues with myself throughout each day of my research journey. The dialogic memos that I created helped me to document my own experiences and thinking on the path of understanding the data.
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Dialogues became the climate (Fecho & Botzakis, 2007), which helped me to create
beneficially open atmosphere for critical broadminded conversations. They became a research
space and transactional space in which understanding was constructed “in research situation”
(Stewart, 2011, p. 286). They also showed a big tension with ambiguity not to come to one
“right” reception of the particular picturebook or a particular reaction to a certain picturebook.
I understood that the process of making connections, sharing, and reflecting was
important (Corapi & Short, 2015). This process not only brought the visible components of the picturebooks into discussion, but it also showed what was previously not focused on and should
be highlighted in the future, so the shift of paradigm might occur. However, I also learned that
this shift might not be easy; it is complex and multilayered. For instance, Leah and I did not
come to mutual understanding about A Sky of Afghanistan. She felt she learned a lot from me
about the picturebooks that represent war, but she herself was uncomfortable and not ready to
both read and use such picturebooks. Additionally, she experienced a high level of tension in
regard to curriculum connections. While I understood Leah’s insight, I felt that accepting this
was challenging. I believed that reading the picturebook about the war might be very purposeful
and involving, reflecting back on history and contemporary conflict and war satiations. However,
this conversation requires space in curriculum and a personal comfort in raising the questions in
practice.
When I consider and acknowledge the in-service elementary school teachers’ positions on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum of reader response, I think about Rosenblatt’s
(1978, p. 81) statement, “Reading is a complex process in which a literary work comes into existence and a meaning is formed.” Additionally, I see how our own ideologies are not just natural. Similar to transaction process of reading, ideologies activated during the reading and
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talking are based on our experience and knowledge. I not only understand that through verbal
discourse the teachers illuminated their personal and professional school-based stances for reading but also notice how some of them were just using their personal or professional stories.
Additionally, I noticed how some of my personal and professional stories differ from theirs,
which, of course, speaks for our multivoiced society, termed by Bakhtin as heteroglossic. We all
reflect and represent our linguistic, cultural, personal similarities and differences through the
verbal discourse, and activate them during the reading process as we strive to understand a
particular text.
This study demonstrates how five in-service elementary school teachers responded to selected international children’s picturebooks and shared ideologies of international children’s literature that were illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse. Learning and understanding how to bring awareness to educators about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and talk to educators about international children’s literature more effectively were the key objectives of the research. While
much have been theorized and suggested about the inclusion of international children’s literature
into classrooms and what experience it has to offer, the present study suggests that while the
teachers responded differently to the selected texts there were threads of cultural similarities
rooted in their professional identities. While some responded focusing on their own feelings,
experience and aesthetics, the teachers often gravitated to discourses that are their professional
discourses or reflect practices in their schools or/and classrooms.
As I discussed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5, the data revealed that the opportunity to read,
respond, discuss and dialogize about the international picturebooks supports visual and verbal
aesthetic awareness and sheds some light on personal and social connections of in-service
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elementary school teachers. In particular, all the teachers’ responses related to the aesthetic
reception-resistance continuum of reader response could be divided into four major categories: a)
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks; b) Verbal Aesthetics of International
Children’s Picturebooks; c) Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s
Books for Classroom Use; d) International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers.
The responses reflected some major discourses shared by the teachers through their transactions
with the international children’s picturebooks. In most cases, teachers exhibited positive
aesthetic responses to the selected picturebooks, dialogizing about their personal and
professional attitudes towards the visual and verbal elements of the books. Some examples of
aesthetic resistance were present during the interviews, especially towards the picturebook Hope
is the Girl Selling Fruit. However, most teachers used efferent stance to come up with various
ideas for using the selected picturebooks in their classrooms, including the ones they personally
resisted.
Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks
This category encompasses all the responses related to color palette, media and artistic
style of picturebooks. Color, in particular, evoked the highest response rate and contributed the
most to the aesthetic response of the teachers. In addition, the symbolism in illustrations as well
as overall artistic style was reflected in the teacher’s transaction with the selected picturebooks.
Visual literacy preoccupied the responses of the teachers, who mostly focused their attention on
visual grammar and paratext, including such attributes as landscapes and character
representation. Interestingly, none of the teachers emphasized international features of the
international children’s picturebooks, until specifically being asked about them.
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Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks
This category includes the participants’ responses related to verbal elements of the selected picturebooks, such as writing choice, style and narrative. While these responses were relatively infrequent, most teachers focused their responses on plot development and endings, while a couple paid attention to rhythm and poetic flow of the international children’s picturebooks. At the same time, a couple of teachers exhibited resistance to the word choice that is directly related to the quality of translation and particular context.
Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s Books for Classroom
Use
All of the teachers exhibited instances of efferent reading and approached the selected picturebooks with special attention to the way they could use these particular picturebooks in classroom settings and connected to the Common Core State Standards. As the result, teachers paid specific attention to messages, lessons and themes within texts to determine the best ways of using the picturebooks in the classroom. Specifically, the teachers tied each book to the particular topic taught in class and determined how the book could fit into the program. Most commonly, they connected the picturebooks to various historical contexts, as well as writing topics.
International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers
This category included responses related to personal connections and social experiences.
As the result, this category encompasses some of the strongest participant responses, especially when personal relations were involved. The teachers’ transactions with the selected picturebooks brought up some personal memories and intertextual links that resulted in references to past life experiences and previously read titles. However, this category also revealed some concerns, not
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included in any other category. In particular, the teachers were concerned that some of the picturebooks did not meet their expectations in depicting a particular setting or situation resulting in personal resistance to the book. At the same time, certain book attributes enhanced the overall reader response and established an emotional connection to the particular picturebook. For example, some international references show that the international exchange of knowledge and experience is built into the responses. This can result in the inclusion of the picturebook in the classroom, further activating knowledge about the students’ personal connection to international references.
As I explained in Chapter 3, the teachers need some sophisticated ways to activate and re- activate ideologies imbedded in the international picturebooks. To look at teachers’ responses as they relate to ideologies of international children’s books is to realize that teachers looked at the picturebooks in an efferent way and with obvious pedagogical agenda. In particular, I divided all the participant responses related to the ideologies in the selected picturebooks into three major categories: a) Ideology of Elementary School Teachers towards the Appropriateness of
International Children’s Books Use in the Classroom; b) International Children’s Literature as a
Conduit to a Response-Centered Classroom; c) Visual Images as Indicators of Internationalism in Picturebooks. The teachers shared their views on using the selected international picturebooks in the class, based on some specific reader-response activities. They also looked at the curriculum connections and how to use international picturebooks to teach particular topics.
Most teachers adopted their professional stance in reading and talking about the picturebooks.
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Ideology of Elementary School Teachers towards the Appropriateness of International
Children’s Books Use in the Classroom
This category includes all the responses related to the teachers’ ideological positioning as educators and reflects the teachers’ professional attitude towards the selected picturebooks. All of the teachers looked at the appropriateness of visual elements to younger children, and this perspective reflected a common ideology that the audience of the picturebook is predominantly young students. Teachers rely on their personal tastes, attitudes and beliefs in determining which book might be appreciated by students. Most teachers also discussed controversial and sensitive topics represented in the selected picturebooks. At the same time, teachers’ perceptions of the parents’ reactions to such topics determined the appropriateness of those topics for classroom discussions. The teachers themselves were eager to introduce sensitive topics in the classroom and build discussion arounds them, but were concerned that the parents would not approve such discussions. In addition, the teachers extensively emphasized the cultural references and connections apparent in the selected picturebooks. This emphasis reflects the view of most educators that seeing many ethnicities in literature is beneficial for enhancing an understanding among cultures. However, most teachers seemed to embrace “melting pot” children’s literature that has the potential to foster cultural stereotypes.
International Children’s Literature as a Conduit to a Response-Centered Classroom
This category encompasses the significance of the particular international picturebooks for classroom practices. It reflects the teachers’ analytical thinking and deals with the opportunity to include the books for some specific purpose. It reflects the in-service teachers’ ideology of the role of children’s literature in the students’ academic lives. Considering the themes and Common Core State Standards, the teachers identified the connections to the classes
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that they planned to teach. The teachers highlighted their professional school-based stances for reading and thus their ideologies that speak about uniting the readers in some school-oriented practices. They acted as experts in using literature in the classroom. However, this understanding also shows that the teachers did not discuss ideologies that could differ sharply.
Visual Images as Indicators of Internationalism in Picturebooks
This category includes the responses related to the visual and verbal elements that are specific to cultural markers. The teachers’ responses suggest that they transacted with the international picturebooks often without paying particular attention to cultural markers. In most cases, the teachers discussed international features of the selected picturebooks only when being directly asked about them. Otherwise, the teachers mentioned the country where the action takes place as an indicator of its internationality. Only a couple of teachers commented on the usage of language as the international element. To the teachers, the selected international picturebooks were similar to the U.S. picturebooks. From this angle, the reading of the international picturebooks served as reading from a general U.S. body of children’s literature. The selected international picturebooks did not take the teachers out of their comfort zones and as a result did not become a conduit for communicating global awareness and the interconnectedness of cultures.
In their article “A Step Toward Global Awareness: An Examination of USBBY
Outstanding International Books for the Primary Grades,” Liang, Watkins, & Williams (2013)
propose that it is necessary for the educators to place specific emphasis on the fact that the book
is international, because most students might not differentiate this specific factor by themselves
and realize all the opportunities that international literature provides. The research revealed that
the opportunity to read and discuss the international picturebooks develops visual and verbal
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aesthetic awareness, emphasizes personal and social connections and promotes the idea of the usage of international picturebooks in the classroom. However, it also showed a clear need to cultivate a more specific attitude towards the purposes and values of the international picturebooks. If teachers and educators are not specifically involved in the discussions on the international origin of the picturebooks and existing cultural markers, they mostly take them as obvious. We, as educators, need to foster more imperative involvement of the teachers and educators to notice, respond, if possible, and recognize international subjects, characters, landscapes, examples of arts, etc. Such a challenge may become a stimulus to include international children’s literature more actively into our own teaching plans and into our classrooms, to ensure that the international children’s books end up in the hands of the younger and older 21st century cosmopolitan readers.
Implications for Practice and Research
My dissertation offers several implications for practice and further research. As I discussed in Chapter 5, visual elements and visual literacy contributed greatly to both reader- response and ideological stances of the study teachers. It became clear from the study that visual elements influence the way we respond to the picturebooks and the way we interpret them. Thus, thinking about this unique feature of picturebooks, I believe there are benefits in actually slowing down to understand deeply how the image works with the text in the picturebook (Doonan, 1992;
Pantaleo, 2012). For example, I suggest that before teachers bring the international picturebook in the classroom, they should be very clear about how they will discuss the visual elements of the picturebook, what benefits and knowledge they will provide to the students on how to look at and slowly read the picturebooks to unpack the ideologies embedded within. In this way teachers will significantly improve students’ learning capabilities. However, as Chapter 5 shows, the in-
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service elementary school teachers are often not ready to discuss international picturebooks or
lack some knowledge and experience in visual literacy. Therefore, education and discussion are
imperative for university and college educators to support in-service teachers in their learning.
Because our global society takes a pictorial turn (Sipe, 2008), educational specialists and
experts need to help pre-service and in-service teachers expand, strengthen, and foster
development of skills for visual literacy. The international picturebooks, then, will provide a
solid step into helping in-service teachers to become active and critical readers. They will
provide an extraordinary range of exciting material and will showcase different ideas that are distinctively and commonly shared among the international picturebooks (Damrosch & Pike,
2008).
Along with visual literacy, I think it might be helpful to renew the practices of culturally
responsive and sensitive education (Corapi and Short, 2015). As Chapter 4 shows, teachers place
significant emphasis on Common Core requirements. Thus, we should help teachers to adapt
international literature to their curriculum needs. I acknowledge that it is general and obvious
implication, but as this study shows in-service elementary school teachers often felt that they had
either lack of knowledge or did not have opportunities or time to think about what international
children’s literature might bring to their classrooms. Moreover, in thinking about teachers’
positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance continuum of reader response, I understood that
teachers found it difficult to shift their thinking from common core standards-focused to their personal thoughts. Thus, I’d like to help teachers unite their personal experience and common core standards or at least allow for both to co-exist. However, looking at this problem closer and learning more about curriculum, I understand that bringing the innovations into the classroom practices is a serious challenge. However, I believe that such challenge is a pleasurable one. It is
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a way to hold themselves and others accountable and to be able to meet the unique requirements
of multifaceted culture of the U. S. and be able to learn from other nations not only their superb
ideas, but their ways of constructing dialogues and modes of communication through the
picturebooks, through children’s literature per se.
A major emphasis when working with in-service teachers should be to introduce “a
varied literary landscape” to achieve the most positive results. One important way is to adopt a
comparativist stance. I obtained an MA degree in comparative literature and I strongly believe
that a comparative lens definitely helps to comprehend texts that originated in different cultures.
In particular, while working with a comparative lens, we can see and better interpret what is
culturally distant to us. To notice this difference, we need to not only activate our inner personal dialogues, but to bring our thoughts into discussions to pinpoint tensions and then negotiate them through the larger discussion group. Many scholars (e.g. Lehman, Freeman, & Scharer, 2010;
Corapi & Short, 2015) advise us to think about cross-cultural curriculum in the practices of inclusion of international children’s literature and to create special units that will help to see literary landscapes broader and deeper. They also believe that this inclusion will help to connect global and local cultures and see issues in historical and contemporary contexts. As Corapi and
Short (2015) share: “Students will benefit most when intercultural insights are integrated” (p.
35). Thus, I believe that there should be a way of grouping.
Speculating on a world literature inclusive approach, Damrosch and Pike (2008) propose to engage works from a variety of literature landscapes in double conversations emphasizing (1) culture of origin and (2) focusing on a context into which literary works travel away from home
(p. xxvii). A model for reading that they discuss might call for some modifications depending upon the needs of classrooms and activities. Yet, this model is a definite tool to show different
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ideas as to what is called literature and what type of literature it is all along the range of cultures.
Thus, two text grouping will help to see what is commonly shared and what is distinctive for the literary texts from a variety of cultures. Two groupings are: (1) The Perspective grouping, the purpose of which is to provide cultural context and giving insights of representation of multiple life issues as well as strategies and styles of how they are created in literature form; and (2) The
Resonance grouping, the purpose of which is linking literary works across time and space. I think that if we work with these two types of grouping, we will carefully practice deep thinking and visual analysis. In this way we will learn how to discuss different constructions of children’s picturebooks from a number of different countries.
Textset developments are other practices that often become useful to look at with a comparative lens. This practice is indeed powerful. Teaching a children’s literature course for undergraduate, early childhood education students, I saw how while working on textset units, students started to think how to not only include different genres but make their textsets culturally responsive. Such practices indeed demonstrate culturally responsive engagement and solid consciously thoughtful preparation process. My students were thinking ahead about possible special needs of cosmopolitan students of 21st century. Yet, I also noticed that they lacked a tool to find and create units that would meet multivoicedness of cultures and would lead themselves and their students to further explorations of languages and cultures. This research study not only strengthened my beliefs but showed that reader responses and reflective thinking often lack in possibilities to include verbal and visual ideological and linguistic complexities into dialogues. Thus, I believe that we, as educators, need to work in unity to help ourselves and our students to use literature frameworks that will resonate with multiple ideologies and will foster understanding of cultural commonalities and differences with recognizing many complexities. I
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want to believe such endeavors will lead to global broadmindedness, culturally-conscious
acceptance, and intercultural understanding.
As a final tool, as evidenced in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, in-service elementary school teachers may wish to be more metacognitively aware of their personal or professional stances when reading as well as more cognizant of others’ stances. Sipe (2008) and Stephens (1992) elucidate on the need to acknowledge our own ideologies critically and openly; doing so involves making intertextual links that are activated through dialogue. Bakhtin points out that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon (1981). Thus, to hear how people talk and what they say about the picturebooks and ideologies that are activated is essential. Listening means learning as it leads to understanding and learning is cumulative (Fecho & Botzakis, 2007, p. 553). In the process of dialogue individual voices are important. They create centrifugal and centripetal tensions (Fecho
& Botzakis, 2007. p. 553) and they show a better range of perspectives.
The very idea of a dialogic classroom as a platform for a wide variety of responses and a classroom that might engage a teacher and students in dialogue is also an imperative. The idea of
dialogic classroom can be unified with Slyk’s (1997) idea of cultural zones, which is based on
facilitating students’ discussions without a solid interference. The teacher serves as a facilitator.
Yet, if teachers are open in exercising personal engagement of students into the dialogues and
discussions, they need to start with themselves. They need to activate their own ideologies and
see what possibilities they might offer for students’ further engagement. And, this is another
important task for academia. We need to, as Corapi and Short (2015) argue, help our students,
pre-service and in-service teachers, to move from “local (familiar) to global (unfamiliar)
contexts” (p. 44).
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Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I want to encourage academic researchers and practitioners to work more with educators in schools. I believe that teachers in my study bring many perspectives on how we need to navigate to take an inclusive approach with international children’s literature. They will show how we can stir up some of the comfortably organized norms of people’s lives in the U. S. and take readers out of their comfort zones by showing even familiar things in a new light (Roxburgh, 2004). We can also offer various communicative outlets and ideological positioning to help transform students of the 21st century into a community of critical thinkers. By initiating and establishing a varied literary landscapes in which international children’s literature is included, discussed and analyzed, together we may co- construct school learning environments to diversify and promote the capacity for a dialogue to understand and respect each other and acknowledge each other as broadminded actors for both local and global social responsibilities.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. (C. Emerson & M Holquist, Trans.), In M.
Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (pp. 259-422).
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Corapi, S., & Short, K. G. (2015). Exploring international and intercultural understanding
through global literature. Worlds of Words. Retrieved from
http://wowlit.org/Documents/InterculturalUnderstanding.pdf
Damrosch D. & Pike, D.L. (Eds.). (2008). The Longman anthology: World literature. New York,
NY: Pearson.
181
Davila, D. (2012). In the figured worlds of culture and religion: Prospective teachers' discourse
around Latino children's literature. (Electronic Thesis or Dissertation). Retrieved from
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/
Doonan, J. (1992). Looking at pictures in picture books. Stroud, UK: Thimble Press.
Fecho, B. & Botzakis, S. (2007). Feasts of becoming: Imagining a literacy classroom based on
dialogic beliefs. International Reading Association 50(7), 548-558.
Lehman, B.A., Freeman, E.B., & Scharer, P.L. (2010). Reading globally, K-8: Connecting
students to the world through literature. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Liang, L.A., Watkins, N.M., & Williams, V.S. (2013). A Step Toward Global Awareness: An
examination of USBBY outstanding international books for the primary grades. Journal
of Children’s Literature, 39(1), 16-24.
Pantaleo, S. (2012). Exploring grade 7 students’ responses to Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree.
Children’s Literature in Education, 43(1), 51-71.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary
work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Roxburgh, S. (2004). The myopic American. School Library Journal, 50(1), 48-50.
Sipe, L. R. (2008). Storytime: Young children’s literary understanding in the classroom. New
York: Teacher’s College Press.
Slyck, P. V. (1997). Repositioning ourselves in the contact zone. College English 59(2), 149-
170.
Stevens, J. (1992). Language and ideology in children’s fiction. London, UK: Longman.
Stewart, T.T. (2011). Transactional analysis: Conceptualizing a framework for illuminating
human experience. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 10(3), 282-295.
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APPENDIX A
Description of Themes
IDEOLOGICAL TRANSACTIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
TEACHERS’ DIALOGUES WITH INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S PICTUREBOOKS
Research Questions:
1. What happens when in-service elementary school teachers transact with selected
international children’s picturebooks?
a. What contributes to their positioning on the aesthetic reception-resistance
continuum of reader response?
b. What ideologies of international children’s picturebooks are illuminated through
the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse?
FINAL THEMES
QUESTION A
THEME 1. International Books as Extended Personal and Social Storytellers
(subthemes: the personal experience and knowledge; the intertextual connections; the classroom
role)
This category includes all responses in which teachers respond to the texts and indicate
that they connect the texts in the selected picturebooks to their lives and to other literature texts
and products. The texts of picturebooks seem to illuminate some personal stories and knowledge
and experience of other cultural products. This category comprised approximately 15.0% of the
coded data.
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THEME 2. Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks (subthemes: art media and color pallet; visual peritext; verbal communication)
This category contains all responses that deal with style and color pallet and visual peritext in picturebooks. It also reflects a critical and analytical approach to the visual components of picturebooks. The teachers make comments on the color choice of the illustrator and what it contributes; the connection between the pictures and words; elements of peritext (e.g. endpages); visual representation of characters. This category comprises about 31.8% of the coded data.
THEME 3. Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s Picturebooks (subthemes: verbal communication; elements of narrative)
This category consists of all responses that deal with verbal elements of the picturebooks.
It includes participants’ discussion of verbal representation of characters, elements of narrative
(plot (endings) and writing choice and style (rhythm and rhyme, poetic flow, busy writing). This category comprises about 26.1% of the coded data.
THEME 4. Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening International Children’s
Books for Classroom Use
This category includes responses that suggest reading as efferent with a special search of messages, lessons and themes within the texts in order to use them in the classroom. Verbal responses in this category show that in-service elementary teachers approached the picturebooks as tools for a specific purpose. This category comprises only about 27.1% of the coded data.
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QUESTION B
THEME 1. Elementary School Teachers’ Beliefs towards the Appropriateness of
International Children’s Books Use in the Classroom (subthemes: age appropriateness,
cultural experience)
This category reveals teachers’ ideological positioning as educators. They constructed the
appropriate ways of using the books in the classrooms. They made comments that reflected their
beliefs from the professional stance. For example, they discussed appropriateness of visual
elements to younger children; the ways why some particular titles should be suitable for older reader, reasons why some picturebooks might become controversial or sensitive and result in parents’ censorship, and the cultural references and connections. This category comprises only about 12% of the coded data.
THEME 2. International Children’s Literature as a Conduit to a Response-
Centered Classroom
This category encompasses the significance of the particular selected international picturebooks for the classroom practices. It reflects the teachers’ analytical thinking dealing with
opportunity to include the books for some specific purpose. It reflects in-service teachers’
ideology of the role of children’s literature in children’s academic lives. For example, they
discussed what picturebooks might serve as impetus to raise a critical conversation and to create
a fruitful discussion, what lessons they might create in connection to the picturebooks or/and
how they can connect the picturebooks to some lessons they plant to teach, the ways how some
picturebooks meet the goals of their curriculum. This category comprised approximately 71.3%
of the group data.
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THEME 3. Visual Images as Indicators of Internationalism in Picturebooks
This category suggests that the teachers respond to the international picturebooks often with/ without a particular attention to cultural markers. Yet, when asked the question “What do you think makes this international?” (see Appendix #), the texts became the platform to talks about some visual and verbal elements specific to cultural markers. This category provides glimpses of what the teachers regard to be international. This category comprises only about
16.7% of the coded data.
Research Theme Group Total Question Percentage Percentage A Visual Aesthetics of International Children’s 36.8% 18.4% Picturebooks A Verbal Aesthetics of International Children’s 21.1% 10.5% Picturebooks A Efferent Reading as a Method for Screening 27.1% 13.6% International Children’s Books for Classroom Use A International Books as Extended Personal and Social 15.0% 7.5% Storytellers A Total 100% B Ideology of Elementary School Teachers towards 12.0% 6.0% the Appropriateness of International Children’s Books Use in the Classroom B International Children’s Literature as a Conduit to a 71.3% 35.6% Response-Centered Classroom B Cultural Markers as Indicators of Internationalism in 16.7% 8.4% Picturebooks B Total 100% 100%
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APPENDIX B
Letter of Consent of Study
Dear Participant,
You are invited to participate in my research project titled “Ideological Transactions: A
Case Study of Elementary School Teachers’ Dialogues with International Children’s
Picturebooks.”
Purpose of the Study:
Through this research study, I hope to understand how in-service elementary school teachers respond to selected international picturebooks and what ideological constructs of international children’s literature are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through dialogue.
Study Procedures:
If you decide to be part of this study, you will be asked to:
1) Participate in a brief online survey that will ask you to provide some basic demographic
information and determine you eligibility for the study.
2) Participate in an initial semi-structured interview. The interview will last no more than
40-60 minutes and will be conducted at your convenience. It will be conducted at the
very beginning of the study and will consist of several questions tied to international
children’s literature. At the conclusion of this interview I will provide you with selected
international picturebooks to respond to in a form that is convenient to you (notes, initiate
conversations, etc.)
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3) Participate in a dialogue about the picturebooks either face-to-face or via skype.
4) Participate in one to two follow-up interviews regarding the details and specificities of
your open-ended book response.
Your participation in this study is voluntary, and you may withdraw from the study at any time. I will not use your name or school in any publications or presentations about this research.
If you want to stop participating in this project, you are free to do so at any time. You can also choose not to answer any questions that you don‘t wish to answer. If you choose to withdraw, I will retain and analyze already collected data relating to the subject up to the time of your withdrawal. There will be no monetary incentive for participating in this study; however, I will give you two books of your choosing to express my gratitude and thank you for your participation.
I will answer any further questions about the research now or during the course of the project, and can be reached by telephone at: 847-903-8789.
Sincerely,
Oksana Lushchevska
______
Researcher‘s Signature Date
Telephone: 847-903-8789
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Email: [email protected]
My signature below indicates that I understand the research study described above.
All of my questions have been answered to my satisfaction and I agree to participate in this study. I will be given a signed copy of this form.
______
Signature of Participant Date
Please sign both copies, keep one and return one to the researcher.
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APPENDIX C
International Children's Books Research
Hello! I am Oksana Lushchevska from the University of Georgia and I am conducting
some research about international children's literature. Through this research, entitled
“Ideological Transactions: A Case Study of Elementary School Teachers’ Dialogues with
International Children’s Picturebooks,” I hope to understand how in-service elementary school
teachers respond to selected international picturebooks and what ideological constructs of
international children’s literature are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as
represented through dialogue. The purpose of my study is three-fold. First, I aim to understand how in-service elementary school teachers respond to selected international children’s picturebooks. Second, I want to investigate what ideological constructs of international children’s literature are illuminated through the teachers’ transactions, as represented through discourse. Third, I want to better understand how to bring awareness to educators about international children’s literature, in particular how to introduce, connect, and talk to educators about international children’s literature.
I have contacted you because I understand from mutual friends or acquaintances that you are an in-service elementary school teacher, who is interested in culturally diverse literature, including international children’s literature and have access to internet, which fits our criteria for participation. If this is not true please delete this email.
Your participation involves the following:
1) demographic survey;
2) one initial and up to two follow-up semi-structured interviews (60-90 minutes each);
3) 8 open-ended book responses;
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If you wish to participate, please contact me either by email ([email protected]) or phone
(847-903-8789).
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. Thank you again for helping me better match readers with books!
Sincerely,
Oksana Lushchevska Department of Language and Literacy Education 301 N Aderhold Hall College of Education The University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 [email protected] 847-903-8789
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APPENDIX D
INTERVIEW PROTOCOLS
Initial Interview Protocol
Introduction: Thank you for agreeing to participate in my study. I am very much interested in hearing your opinion about these picturebooks. Before we do that I’d like to talk about your thoughts about and experiences with international children’s literature.
For this interview, my questions are to help me start a conversation regarding international children’s books. Our conversation today will be no longer than an hour. Please know that you don’t have to answer any question you don’t wish to answer. Also, we would like to audio record these interviews to ensure what we write down is correct. Is this OK? If not, we’ll just take notes as we talk.
Interview:
• For now, could you please share, what comes to your mind when you hear diverse children’s literature”? • What is international children’s literature? How would you define it? Example of it? • Do you read international children’s literature? Example of it? • How do you get access to international children’s literature? • How do you think international books differ from books published in the U. S., if they do?
Thank you for sharing your experience with me! It was a great pleasure talking to you!
Are there any questions you want to ask me or any comments that you want to share?
Probing questions:
• Why do you think so? • Can you share more?
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Book Dialogs Protocol
• Establishing rapport. Greeting. Asking the opening question: How are you? How are
things?
• An Introduction to Discussion: I am very much interested in hearing your opinion about
these picturebooks. Which book do you want to discuss first?
• Please share what makes you think so…
• Tell me more about this…
• What do you think makes this international?
• What about this images…?
• Why do you think it is…?
• How do you feel about this description…?
• Yes, I see. To me this description is… Would you think it might be…?
• How is it similar… different…?
• What’s you feelings about this type of dressing/food/landscape?
• Why is this perspective bothering/inviting/interesting/intriguing/fascinating…?
• Please explain why it is novelty…
• Share please what it tells to you…
• My experience shows similar/different… Why do you think this … stand for this…
• Tell me more about this…
• Describe your experience with…
• If you need to compare this to that… what would be the features you are going to pay attention to?
• What are the reasons you don’t like this…?
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• Specify please…
• Share if you would include this picturebook in the classroom use…
• What are the factors that influence you…?
• Share more about this….
• What was the experience for you to read this…?
• Is there anything else that...?
Probing questions:
• Why do you think so?
• What are your thoughts on?
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Follow-Up Interview Open-Ended Protocol
Introduction: I am so glad that you completed your open-ended book responses and are willing to speak with me about some of your answers. Thank you!
For this interview, my questions are to help me better understand what you have shared in the open-ended book responses. Our conversation today will be no longer than an hour. Please know that you don’t have to answer any question you don’t wish to answer. Also, we would like to audio record these interviews to ensure what we write down is correct. Is this OK? If not, we’ll just take notes as we talk.
Interview: Interview questions will be created based on the open-ended book responses.
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