Creating dialogic space around purposeful selection for reading and teaching diverse children’s literature

ABSTRACT

Diverse children’s literature can support understandings of our world as culturally, linguistically, and socially rich. It can cultivate empathy and understanding, and open a dialogic space of possibilities. In this article, we examine how purposefully selected children’s literature prepares needed conditions for dialogic space: difference in what is already known, and what is presented; multiplicity of many and other ways of interpreting and connecting; and uncertainty as there is no definitive or “right” answer for personal meaning-making. We show how purposefully selecting diverse children’s literature can create dialogic space in two classroom contexts. First, as Christina, a Black female teacher educator and librarian, teaches in a third-grade classroom of primarily Black students. Second, as she teaches a graduate-level teacher course on diverse children’s literature to mostly White pre-and-in-service teachers. We elucidate ways purposeful selection of diverse literature is a first step to engaging with critical inquiry and opening dialogic space.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional resources for classroom use

1. Woodson, J. (2013). This is the rope: A story from the great migration (J. Ransome, Illus.). Nancy Paulsen Books.

 A fictive memoir picture book. It shares the fictional story of a young girl who moves with her family from South Carolina to New York during the Great Migration (early 1900s — mid 1970s). The story was inspired by the author’s mother who moved from Greenville, South Carolina to Brooklyn, New York in 1968. Third-grade students/readers of the book from Anderson, South Carolina were able to make several connections to the story and its authorship.

2. Woodson, J. (2012). Each Kindness (E. B. White, Illus.). Nancy Paulsen Books.

 Winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor and The Jane Addams Peace Award. This picture book is a modern fable that teaches readers a lesson about kindness. The story is of a girl of modest means who is new to the school and tries to make friends with Chloe, the narrator. Despite the new girl’s best efforts, Choe is very unkind toward her. It is not until the girl leaves that Chloe recognizes the errors of her behavior — she missed an opportunity to have a friend. This story and its illustration of a young girl who appears to be socio-economically disadvantaged really resonated with the third-grade students/readers of the book from Anderson, South Carolina. Many of the students at this school and their families were similarly socio-economically disadvantaged resulting in their having to move a lot and finding it difficult to make friends.

3. Woodson, J. (2005). Show Way (H. Talbott, Illus.). Nancy Paulsen Books.

 Winner of a Newbery Honor. This is an African American picture book story of seven generations of women of Woodson’s family that begins in Virginia and ends in Brooklyn, NY. It offers a Show Way — quilts that served as roadmaps in the Underground Railroad and guided once enslaved African Americans to freedom in the northern U.S. - of Woodson’s family history. This story resonated with the third graders from Anderson, South Carolina because this was a story that was unfamiliar to them but spoke of African American cultural contributions (quilts and quilting) that was remarkably familiar. Many of the students had a quilt made by a grandmother or other member of their family at home.