Multicultural Children’s Literature: A Critical Issues Approach

Preparing K-12 teachers to address today′s social, cultural, and critical issues using multicultural children′s books

Written in an engaging style, this comprehensive text prepares K-12 teachers to address a wide range of contemporary social issues—such as violence, gender, war, terrorism, child labor, censorship, and disabilities—through multicultural children′s literature. Each chapter includes sample lessons plans designed to encourage critical and creative thinking at the elementary and secondary levels and an annotated bibliography that makes it easy for teachers and librarians to choose multicultural children books that address specific critical issues.

Key Features

• The evolution of multicultural children′s literature is covered, including discussion of controversies and issues around its definitions and uses.
• Reflection Questions for the Teacher provide readers with practical techniques they can use as they prepare lessons around a given critical issue.
• Sample Response Lessons demonstrate how to address critical issues using multicultural literature in K-12 classrooms.  
• An Annotated Bibliography at the end of each chapter lists specific multicultural children′s books organized around each critical issue.