Education - Children's and young adult's literature

The purpose of this article is to provide essential criteria that a middle school teacher may use as a guide to self-select appropriate picture books for the content areas of language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics. General factors for consideration include a book's intensity of information, ability to meet high literary standards, and portrayal of diversity. By incorporating picture books in content area classrooms, teachers can provide a wider variety of reading material to enhance their curricula. Teachers should use the elements addressed in this article as guidelines and should consider those that are most appropriate for their purpose, and some guidelines may be applied across content areas.

When students can imagine themselves in the world of a novel, when they can understand the worldviews that inform characters' attitudes and beliefs, then it becomes possible for them to develop empathy for characters whose lives are different from their own. How can teachers help students understand and empathize with characters whose lives are far removed from their own, a process that can often be uncomfortable and that is at times hindered by students' preconceived notions of others? The author addressed these issues by implementing a novel study of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" in a predominantly middle-class ninth-grade classroom. In this article, the author discusses how she used African picture books to help American students develop empathy and cultural knowledge in their reading of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and imagine alternative views of Africa and of themselves--new views that led several of them to take their first steps in advocating for a more just world.