Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children's Literature

<p>"Children’s literature is a contested terrain, as is multicultural education. Taken together, they pose a formidable challenge to both classroom teachers and academics…. Rather than deny the inherent conflicts and tensions in the field, in Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors, Maria José Botelho and Masha Kabakow Rudman confront, deconstruct, and reconstruct these terrains by proposing a reframing of the field…. Surely all of us – children, teachers, and academics – can benefit from this more expansive understanding of what it means to read books." Sonia Nieto, From the Foreword</p><p>Critical multicultural analysis provides a philosophical shift for teaching literature, constructing curriculum, and taking up issues of diversity and social justice. It problematizes children’s literature, offers a way of reading power, explores the complex web of sociopolitical relations, and deconstructs taken-for-granted assumptions about language, meaning, reading, and literature: it is literary study as sociopolitical change. </p><p>Bringing a critical lens to the study of multiculturalism in children’s literature, this book prepares teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of children’s literature to analyze the ideological dimensions of reading and studying literature. Each chapter includes recommendations for classroom application, classroom research, and further reading. Helpful end-of-book appendixes include a list of children’s book awards, lists of publishers, diagrams of the power continuum and the theoretical framework of critical multicultural analysis, and lists of selected children’s literature journals and online resources. </p> <p>Foreword, Sonia Nieto</p><p>Preface</p><p>Acknowledgments</p><p>Chapter 1 The Metaphors We Read By: Theoretical Foundations </p><p>Chapter 2 The Historical Construction of Children’s Literature </p><p>Chapter 3 Reading Literacy Narratives</p><p>Chapter 4 Deconstructing Multiculturalism in Children’s Literature </p><p>Chapter 5 Theorizing Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature</p><p>Chapter 6 Doors to the Diaspora: The Social Construction of Race </p><p>Chapter 7 Leaving Poverty Behind: The Social Construction of Class</p><p>Chapter 8 Genres as Social Constructions: The Intertextuality of Children’s Literature</p><p>Chapter 9 Cinderella: The Social Construction of Gender</p><p>Chapter 10 Shock of Hair: The Endurance of Hair as a Cultural Theme in Children’s Literature</p><p>Chapter 11 Teaching Critical Multicultural Analysis</p><p>Further Dialogue with Mingshui Cai, Patrick Shannon, and Junko Yokota</p><p>APPENDICES</p><p>Appendix A Children’s Book Awards</p><p>Appendix B Children’s Book Publishers</p><p>Appendix C Power Continuum: How Power is Exercised</p><p>Appendix D Critical Multicultural Analysis</p><p>Appendix E The Publishing Practices of the Mexican American Migrant Farmworker Text Collection </p><p>Appendix F Children’s Literature Journals</p><p>Appendix G Online Resources</p>