Embracing, Evaluating, and Examining African American Children's and Young Adult Literature / Edition 1

by Wanda M. Brooks, Jonda C. McNair

Overview

Serious scholarship on African American children's and young adult literature is a relatively recent phenomenon. To date, only a handful of book-length works—aside from doctoral dissertations—have been devoted to the exploration of this body of work and the historical works that are at its foundation. Embracing, Evaluating, and Examining African American Children's and Young Adult Literature features 12 original essays that present research related to African American children's literature—books intended for youth that are written by and about African Americans—conducted by scholars from leading academic institutions.

Editors Wanda M. Brooks and Jonda C. McNair offer a bouquet of diverse perspectives on African American children's and young adult literature, focusing attention on texts, on readers, and on pedagogical strategies that have the potential to bring the texts and the readers together. Beginning with a foreword by one of the leading scholars in the field of African American children's and young adult literature, Rudine Sims Bishop, the varied disciplinary perspectives put forth in this book will inspire others to embrace, evaluate, and examine African American children's and young adult literature for many years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810860278
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/13/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Wanda M. Brooks is Assistant Professor of elementary/reading education in the College of Education at Temple University.

Jonda C. McNair is Assistant Professor of Reading Education in the Eugene T. Moore School of Education at Clemson University.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Foreword
Part 2 Preface
Part 3 Part I: Textual Analysis
Chapter 4 1. A Comparative Analysis ofThe Brownies' Book and Contemporary African American Children's Literature Written by Patricia C. McKissack
Chapter 5 2. "The Random Brushing of Birds": Representations of African American Women in Biographies
Chapter 6 3. Following Tradition: Young Adult Literature as Neo-slave Narrative
Chapter 7 4. Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and the Roots of African American Children's Literature
Chapter 8 5. A Triumphant Mulatto: Racial Construction in Mildred Taylor'sThe Land
Part 9 Part II: Reader Response Research and Theory
Chapter 10 6. Historical Fiction and Cultural Evocations in a Community-Based Literary Club
Chapter 11 7. My Boys and My Books: Engaging African American Young Men in Emancipatory Reading
Chapter 12 8. Reader Responses to African American Children's Literature: A Sociolinguistic Perspective
Chapter 13 9. Reading Our Richly Diverse World: Conceptualizing a Response Development Zone
Part 14 Part III: Pedagogical Issues
Chapter 15 10. African American Children's Literature in Rural Schools
Chapter 16 11. Where Life and Children's Literature Meet: African American Males in the Elementary Grades
Chapter 17 12. Fences, Physical and Proverbial: Pre-service Teachers' Engagement withThe Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson
Part 18 Index
Part 19 About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

The selections in this book take research, theory, and practice about African American literature to a more profound level than ever before and provide important directions for examining other multicultural literature.

Barbara Kiefer

This carefully edited volume adds significantly to the professional and scholarly body of work concerning African American literature for children and adults. This book will, I hope, open up conversations among people from a variety of disciplines; the resulting sharing will be enriching for everyone.

Language Arts

The selections in this book take research, theory, and practice about African American literature to a more profound level than ever before and provide important directions for examining other multicultural literature.--Barbara Kiefer, Charlotte Huck Professor, The Ohio State University

A broad picture of what is currently being done in this field....Literature scholars, literacy researchers, and teachers should all find relevance in these essays...--School Library Journal, 4/1/2008

This carefully edited volume adds significantly to the professional and scholarly body of work concerning African American literature for children and adults. This book will, I hope, open up conversations among people from a variety of disciplines; the resulting sharing will be enriching for everyone.--Language Arts, January 1, 2010

From the Publisher

Brooks and McNair have compiled 12 scholarly studies about the use of books by and about African-American children and young adults in classrooms across the United States. Selections include a detailed textual analysis of the work of Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes; a sociolinguistic perspective on readers' response to books containing African-American Vernacular English; and a detailed study of the books used as classroom read-alouds by teachers in rural schools, which found that only three percent were about African Americans. While each study is complete in and of itself, the text as a whole gives a broad picture of what is currently being done in this field, both in K-12 classrooms and college classes that emphasize children's literature. In her foreword, Rudine Sims Bishop says, "Literature scholars, literacy researchers, and teachers should all find relevance in these essays." This reviewer agrees.-Wendy Smith-D'Arezzo, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD

School Library Journal