Willow is thrilled the whole class - including her! - is invited to classmate Kristabelle’s fantastic birthday party, until the bossy birthday girl starts crossing guests off the list when they dare cross her. There are many books on bullying, but Willow’s story offers a unique look at how to handle the situation as a bystander.

Willow is thrilled the whole class - including her! - is invited to classmate Kristabelle’s fantastic birthday party, until the bossy birthday girl starts crossing guests off the list when they dare cross her. There are many books on bullying, but Willow’s story offers a unique look at how to handle the situation as a bystander.

Inviting multiple ways of critically engaging with literature, this text offers a fresh perspective on how to integrate children’s literature into and across the curriculum in effective, purposeful ways. Structured around three "mantras" that build on each other—Enjoy; Dig deeply; Take action—the book is rich with real examples of teachers implementing critical pedagogy. The materials and practical strategies focus on issues that impact children’s lives, building from students’ personal experiences and cultural knowledge to using language to question the everyday world, analyze popular culture and media, understand how power relationships are socially constructed, and consider actions that can be taken to promote social justice. Written for teachers and teacher educators, each chapter opens with three elements that are closely linked: classroom vignettes showcasing the use of literature and inviting conversation; three key principles elaborating the main theme of the chapter and connecting theory with practice; and related research on the topics and their importance for curriculum. Other chapter features include key issues in implementation, suggestions for working with linguistically and culturally diverse students, alternative approaches to assessment, and suggestions for further reading. A companion website to enrich and extend the text includes an annotated bibliography of literature selections, suggested text sets, resources by chapter, and ideas for professional development. Changes in the Second Edition: Voices from the Field vignettes include examples from inspiring educators who use trade books to promote critical thinking and diversity Updated chapters include information on new technology and electronic resources New references in the principles sections and new resources for further study New children’s books added throughout the chapters as well as to the companion website

Willow is worried that she won't smile right for her school picture. She chooses the perfect outfit and practices her smiles, but at the sight of the big lights and the camera's flash Willow's smile disappears! When an understanding teacher gives her the job of shaking a rubber chicken to help make her classmates laugh, Willow discovers that no two smiles are the same. And when itÕs her turn, she delivers a picture-perfect expression all her own. Parents and teachers will welcome this third story in the Willow series as a lead-in to Picture Day and to discussions about feelings. Willow's experience will help bring a level of comfort and familiarity to this sometimes-intimidating annual event. Charmingly told and illustrated, Willow's Smile will leave readers grinning from ear to ear.

Situated at the intersection of race and civics, this volume discusses how communities of color interpret and enact civics both within and beyond the classroom. Chapters focus on historical and contemporary topics ranging from issues facing Asian immigrant communities to the Black Lives Matter at School curriculum. Civic Engagement in Communities of Color will help classroom teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators identify where white-washed civics curricula fail students of color and begin to understand how marginalized communities conceive and enact civics without the deficit lens. It will also help education researchers understand the various frameworks that communities of color use to approach civics and civic education. Chapter authors include established and emerging civic education scholars, including Leilani Sabzalian, ArCasia James-Gallaway, Jesús Tirado, and Brittany Jones. Book Features: Reimagines civics teaching and learning in communities of color, expanding current frameworks for what civic education is and can be.Disrupts the idea that civics is a singular notion that should only be viewed through one specific lens.Provides specific examples showing how racially marginalized people have created their own civic spaces.Includes chapters on Black, Indigenous, Arab, Immigrant, South Asian American, and Southeast Asian American communities. Contributors: Annaly Babb-Guerra • Carla-Ann Brown • Aviv Cohen • Tommy Ender • Sabryna Groves • ArCasia James-Gallaway • Denisha Jones • Erica Kelly • Sarah Mathews • Timothy Monreal • Aline Muff • Natasha C. Murray-Everett • Tiffany Mitchell Patterson • Ritu Rakrishnan • Leilani Sabzalian • Crystal Simmons • Jesús Tirado • Van Anh Tran • Shianne Walker • Elizabeth Yeager Washington • Rasheeda West • Asif Wilson

This collection of essays explores a wealth of topics in children’s and young adult literature and culture. Contributions about picture-books include analyses of variants of the folktale “The Little Red Hen” and bullying. Race and gender are explored in essays about picture-books featuring children as consumable objects, about books focused on African American female athletes, and about young adult dystopian fiction. Gender itself is further explored in articles about Monster High, Joyce Carol Oates’s Beasts, and The Hunger Games and Divergent. Essays about fantasy literature include an exploration of environmentalism in Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus, a discussion of Severus Snape as a Judas figure, an explication of Chapter 5 of The Hobbit, and an analysis of ghosts and nationalism in Eva Ibbotson’s The Haunting of Granite Falls. An essay about Horrible Histories explores television, genre, and the way history is coded. Other contributions explore how teaching literature to reluctant readers can be effective through multimodal texts and how Harry Potter has played a role in the popularity of young adult literature for adult readers.

Today's students need to be able to do more than score well on tests—they must be creative thinkers and problem solvers. The tools in this book will help teachers and parents start students on the path to becoming innovative, successful individuals in the 21st century workforce. The children in classrooms today will soon become adult members of society: they will need to apply divergent thinking skills to be effective in all aspects of their lives, regardless of their specific occupation. How well your students meet complicated challenges and take advantage of the opportunities before them decades down the road will depend largely upon the kind of thinking they are trained and encouraged to do today. This book provides a game plan for busy librarians and teachers to develop their students' abilities to arrive at new ideas by utilizing children's books at hand. Following an introduction in which the author defines divergent thinking, discusses its characteristics, and establishes its vital importance, chapters dedicated to types of literature for children such as fantasy, poetry, and non-fiction present specific titles and relevant activities geared to fostering divergent thinking in young minds. Parents will find the recommendations of the kinds of books to read with their children and explanations of how to engage their children in conversations that will help their creative thinking skills extremely beneficial. The book also includes a case study of a fourth-grade class that applied the principles of divergent thinking to imagine innovative designs and come up with new ideas while studying a social studies/science unit on ecology.