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Introduction
Well-analysed examples of students and teachers responding to picturebooks with diverse representation are more important than ever. Research exemplars of "how" to critically share picturebooks in the classroom are also needed as the field of children’s literature experiences a justice-oriented turn over the last decade. This special issue builds upon and extends the existing literature on classroom picturebook pedagogy, highlighting the affordances and tensions of exploring justice-oriented picturebooks featuring diverse representation in PK-12 classroom settings.
Drawing inspiration from the luminosity of the night sky, we believe that constellations can be a generative metaphor for framing a justice-oriented stance to picturebooks, and for picturebook learning and instruction. Constellations draw our gaze to the dynamic features and meaning-making opportunities that are animated in a relational landscape like a classroom. Just as a constellation brings luminosity to the night sky, so too can justice-oriented picturebooks captivate readers with print and illustrated features that burns bright and gather us together in solidarity.
In this special issue focused on pre-kindergarten through high school classroom instruction, we specifically seek empirical research that brings a critical literature response or an anti-racist/anti-oppressive lens to analysis of the classroom conditions, classroom commitments, classroom practices, and/or collaborations that mediate teachers’ and students’ critical encounters with justice-oriented picturebooks. With a particular focus on justice-oriented picturebooks, research featured in this special issue will offer insight into the ways children, youth, and their teachers engage with the unique multimodal features and sociocultural narratives found in these texts. It also contends with the tensions and challenges of engaging with these books in a contested sociopolitical climate and sheds light on the possibilities and potential of critical literature encounters in classroom spaces. The analyses featured will offer important theoretical and pedagogical foundations for critical picturebook curators (e.g., teachers, librarians, teacher educators) researching and teaching with the print and visual narratives within justice-oriented picturebooks that feature diverse racial, linguistic, ethnic, ability, and broader cultural representations.
Possible topics could include but are not limited to:
- Multimodal/multilingual critical literature response opportunities
- Justice-oriented picturebooks as mentor texts for writing
- Critical Visual Thinking Strategies
- Critical reading, writing, and redesign opportunities with children’s literature
- Teachers’ preparation and teaching of picturebooks with diverse representation
- Students’ critical literature discussions and picturebook clubs
- Teachers/students as critical picturebook curators
List of topic areas
- Children’s literature response
- Literacy
- Diversity
- Multimodality
- Picturebooks
- Classroom literature discussion
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.
Author guidelines must be strictly followed.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to "Please select the issue you are submitting to".
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1st February, 2025
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 1st May, 2025
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