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Book Review: Strategic Selection of Children's and Young Adult Literature

Lists of recommended texts for children and young adults are readily available to teachers and parents from sources such as authors, bloggers, teachers, and publishers. Of current interest to educators are the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (2010), which provides lists of titles intended to reflect the complexity, quality, and range of texts for each grade level, from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Appendix B of the same document includes excerpts from a wide range of texts (without images). A cautionary note regarding book selection is offered in the introduction to Appendix B. “The choices should serve as useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality, and range for their own classrooms [emphasis added]. They expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010, Appendix B, p. 2). We echo this advice and suggest that the resources we have noted here are places to begin, but should not be the only way to select texts. In this article, we discuss “strategic selection” based on the characteristics of written text and images we consider to be critical as teachers and parents choose books for children and young adults. As co-authors we approach children’s and young adult literature from two very different stances/lenses. Laura Jiménez’s research focuses on the cognitive processes used while reading and the ways different genres, topics, and media influence those processes. Kristin McIlhagga’s research focuses on understanding the ways literature is conceptualized across multiple domains and how we can utilize these different conceptions in teacher education. In writing this article, we were informed by both perspectives as we focused on strategies educators and parents can use to select complex children’s and adolescent literature to support both student achievement and the development of independent engaged readers. Throughout the article we refer to relevant research as well as our own experiences as readers and teachers. In the beginning, we address the reader as “you” to focus attention on the personal stance taken by the reader as well as the pedagogical stance typically taken by teachers. In preparing this article, we were required to transfer the oral form of a presentation to the written form of a text. The process proved to be challenging for several reasons, but paramount among them is our inability to provide the experience of readalouds and to show the picturebooks and graphic novels to which we refer. While some titles will be mentioned to illustrate ideas and concepts, we avoid replicating lists of texts and instead, recommend that readers apply our suggestions to already existing lists or titles. It is our hope that the book selections referred to in this article will be used to illustrate our perspective rather than serve as a definitive resource. We begin with a specific example from the children’s classic, Charlotte’s Web (White, 1952), to situate the reader as we move through topics that include: the ways of reading, the affordances of aesthetics, student motivation to read, and the literacy-literature divide. Then we consider text complexity, Lexile measures, and visual elements in children’s and adolescent literature. Through these discussions, we hope to provide a broader understanding of the ways educators and parents can, and are advised to think about literature in classrooms and homes. We turn now to Charlotte’s Web (White, 1952) and ask you to read the first three pages of the text as indicated below. Since we are unable to provide the shared experience of a read-aloud to allow you to hear the sounds of the language, we ask you to read the text aloud to yourself and keep the book available as we continue our discussion.