When Kim Huber finally decided toread The Lady in the Box (McGov-ern, 1997) to her first graders, shewas not convinced that they wouldget much out of a book abouthomelessness. She wondered what

they would think about the maincharacter, a woman who was at-tempting to survive the winterliving in a cardboard box. In someways, Kim was also in a box at thattime, but her box was conceptual; it

caused her to think about literacyand what was appropriate for first-grade children in specific andsomewhat narrow ways. This boxpositioned her to choose “happy”books to read at story time and to

Out of the Box: Critical Literacyin a First-Grade Classroom

A teacher uses story time to open up space for building

awareness of critical literacy with rural white children.

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Christine H. Leland and Jerome C. Harste

with Kimberly R. Huber

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focus book discussions more onstory elements like beginning,middle, and end than on more ab-stract topics like equity and socialjustice.

Kim had been teaching first gradefor five years when she took a grad-uate class and was introduced to theidea of critical literacy. She hadnever considered the possibility ofreading books about tough socialissues to her students. Kim was in-trigued, but not convinced that shewanted to discuss what might beseen as controversial topics withchildren. Two years later, she wasstill interested in critical literacyand joined teachers who were inves-tigating critical literacy as part of auniversity-funded research project.

The “Collaborations for Peace” grantat Indiana University provided sup-port for groups of teachers at twodifferent sites to come together on amonthly basis to share the progressof their investigations of critical lit-eracy in K—8 classrooms. The grantalso provided a library of criticalpicture books and adolescent novels(Harste, Breau, Leland, Lewison,Ociepka & Vasquez, 2000; Leland &Harste, 2002) that participants couldtake back to their classrooms. Thesebooks typically focused on difficultsocial issues and involved situationswhere characters were marginalizedin some way as a result of the exist-ing systems of power. While the sto-ries rarely had happy endings whereall of the problems were solved,they did leave readers thinkingabout fairness and what could orshould be done differently (Leland,Harste, Ociepka, Lewison & Vasquez,1999).

One group of teachers involved inthis project worked in suburban andrural schools while the other groupconsisted of urban teachers from theIndianapolis Public Schools. Kimjoined the urban teachers since she

was geographically closer to them,but initially felt out of place sinceshe taught in a rural setting and hadno racial diversity in her classroom.Many of the books being exploredby the urban teachers focused onracism, and Kim wondered if herwhite students would be able toconnect to these stories. She lis-tened with interest to what otherteachers in the study group weresaying about their experiences withthe books, but she was not sure theywould mean as much to her stu-dents. It was with some apprehen-sion that she began reading booksfrom the peace grant library to herfirst graders late in the fall.

This article traces Kim’s preliminaryexploration of critical literacy andshares her conclusions. While sheinitially worried that her studentswould not be able to make personalconnections to stories that ad-dressed topics like homelessness,racism, and war, what she discov-ered was that they made strongerconnections to these books than tothe “happy books” that she usuallyread. And while she was not sur-prised that their awareness of socialissues showed considerable growthwhen she started to read books thatfocused on these topics, she did notexpect to find that the childrenwould start treating each other withmore compassion and understand-ing. She was also surprised to find

that they put considerably moreeffort into their written and artisticresponses, took on multiple perspec-tives, and made lots of intertextualconnections when they were react-ing to these books. She had manyquestions to consider: What made

books like The Lady in the Box sodifferent for these children? Could itbe that her classroom became a dif-ferent place when she started shar-ing the social issues books with herchildren at story time? These ques-tions and many others fueled Kim’sinquiry into the role that critical lit-eracy might be playing in theevolving culture of her classroom.

YOUR CULTURALNICHE MATTERS

“Culture is never static” because“the belief systems and practices as-sociated with cultural groups arealways under negotiation with newgenerations” (Lee, 2003, p. 4). As aresult, it is important that “educa-tional researchers understand thecultural niches in which youngpeople develop” (Lee, Spencer, &Harpalani, 2003, p. 6). Formal andinformal preschools and primaryschools constitute some of the mostsalient cultural niches in whichyoung people begin the process ofbecoming literate. It is in settingslike Kim Huber’s first-grade class-room that children expand their un-derstandings of the purposes ofliteracy and begin to see how liter-acy relates to their interactions withothers. The instructional approachesand the culture that children experi-ence in these settings play a majorrole in shaping their emerging iden-tities as cultural and literate beings.

Not all cultural niches are equal interms of the experiences they pro-vide for young children. In report-ing the findings from longitudinalcase studies of children’s literacydevelopment in early childhood andprimary school (Comber & Hill,

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Kim was intrigued, but not convinced that shewanted to discuss what might be seen as

controversial topics with children.

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2000; Hill, Comber, Louden, Reid, &Rivalland 1998), Barbara Comber(2003) identifies “several worryingsigns” (p. 13) that emerge fromanalysis of these data. While thestudies suggest that most childrendo become proficient in their abilityto make meaning from text, theyalso suggest that even in preschooland the earliest years of formalschooling, children are acquiringqualitatively different repertoires ofliteracy practice. While some chil-dren are involved in communicativepractices that engage them in pro-duction, analysis, and response,others appear to be experiencing“piecemeal recycled literacies ofreplication and repetition” (p. 13).Common activities in the lattergroup include filling in blanks,copying letters or words, and color-ing in pictures. This is problematicbecause it means that some childrenare beginning their academic ca-reers with a limited and ultimatelydysfunctional view of what literacyis for and what it can do in theworld. Comber identifies this dispar-ity as an equity issue:

The absence of productive and ana-lytical practices from some children’sliterate repertoires is an urgentequity issue throughout schooling.Early childhood is a crucial site ofpractice because it is during thatperiod that children form initial rela-tionships with schooling and formallearning; it is there where they arefirst constituted as learners and therewhere most children are first consti-tuted as readers. (p. 14)

What is missing in these replicationand repetition settings is the involve-ment of young learners in deeperprocesses of critique and analysis. Incontrast, children who experience acritical approach to literacy learn to“read between the lines” and gener-ate alternative explanations regard-ing the author’s intent. They are

encouraged to take an active role inquestioning both the texts them-selves and the beliefs and personalexperiences they bring to them.

CONCEPTUAL FRAME

Conceptually, critical literacy is an-chored in Luke and Freebody’s(1997) “four resources model ofreading as social practice.” Thismodel describes four resources ortypes of knowledge that are essen-tial to the process of becoming atruly literate person: decoding prac-tices, text-meaning practices, prag-matic practices, and criticalpractices.

• According to the first view, readingis primarily a process of decoding,and the main function of reading in-struction is to help children breakthe code. This view moved in andout of prominence throughout thelatter half of the twentieth centuryand then vaulted into a position ofmajor importance when the secondBush administration came into officein 2000.

• The second perspective focuses ontext-meaning practices and the de-velopment of a reader who under-stands how to use textual andpersonal resources to produce ameaningful reading. This view wasintroduced during the 1970s and80s, when psycholinguistics andschema-theoretical notions ofreading emphasized reader–textconnections.

• The third view focuses on languagein use and what reading can accom-plish, pragmatically, in the realworld. This view evolved from socio-linguistic and socio-semiotic theoryduring the late 1980s and early 90s.

• Finally, the fourth perspective ad-dresses critical pra ctices. This viewsuggests that reading should be seenas a non-neutral form of cultural

practice. According to this view,texts position readers in specificways, and readers therefore need tobe able to understand how they arebeing positioned.

Questions such as “Whose story isthis?” “Who benefits from thisstory?” and “Whose voices are not

being heard?” invite readers to in-terrogate the systems of meaningthat operate both consciously andunconsciously in texts, as well as inmainstream culture, to privilegesome and marginalize others. Thus,a critical literacy approach includesa focus on social justice and the rolethat each of us plays in challengingor helping to perpetuate the injus-tices we identify in our world. Inthis sense, critically literate individ-uals are capable of taking socialaction to fight oppression andtransform their communities and realities.

The gap between the instruction thatmany children receive and the needfor greater cultural understanding isunfortunate given the fact that oursociety is becoming increasingly di-verse. James A. Banks (2003) arguesthat the world’s most serious prob-lems do not exist because peoplecannot read. These problems, hemaintains, exist because people fromdifferent cultures, races, and reli-gions have not been able to work to-gether to address multinationalissues like global warming, the AIDSepidemic, poverty, racism, sexism,and war. Banks recommends thatschools take on the role of helping

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Children whoexperience a criticalapproach to literacy

learn to “read betweenthe lines.”

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children “use knowledge to takeaction that will make the world ajust place in which to live and work”(p. 18). To prepare literate individu-als for the 21st century, we need todo more than teach them how todecode and comprehend texts. Whatis needed now is a critical under-standing of language as a culturalresource that can be used to chal-lenge or maintain systems of domi-nation (Janks, 2000).

What kind of teaching can helpyoung children to develop this typeof critical competence? Kim usedstory time as a way to begin open-ing up spaces for building criticalliteracy awareness in her classroom.Since she was participating in afunded research project, she kept ajournal and noted how the use ofthese books in her classroom ap-peared to be affecting her students.

EVOLVING ATTITUDESAND SKILLSAwareness of Social Issues:Asking New Questions

One of the first patterns Kim noticedwas an increase in the children’sawareness of social issues. Afterreading The Lady in the Box, shewrote an entry entitled “Critical Lit-eracy Impact May at First AppearMinimal, But Don’t Let Looks De-ceive You into Thinking NothingHas Happened.” This entry relatedthe experiences of her students inparticipating in a schoolwide projectto collect canned goods.

Our school had been collecting fooditems for the local food pantry sincejust before Thanksgiving. Unfortu-nately the emphasis was to collectmore than the other schools in ourdistrict so we could retain our title ofbeing the most responsive to the needsof others. We had reminders eachmorning and right before going homefor the day. There was even a contest

set up to see which class could bringin the most items. My children hadbeen bringing in items since that firstday, and would often mention theythought we would win. When theymade these statements, I counteredwith comments that had to do withhow many people we were able to helpwith these items. But it just didn’tseem to get through to the children.

Most of what they brought camein during that first week. We hadcollected 90 items and the childrenwere telling me their parents saidthey couldn’t bring anything else.Then I read the book The Lady in theBox. The very next day, the childrencame in loaded down with moreitems. No one made a comment aboutwinning, but instead they talked ofhow the food items could help others.What really amazed me was that ithad taken fifteen days to collect 90items, but in just three days, we wenton to collect a total of 205 items.What was even more impressive tome was the change in the children’sattitudes. Instead of looking to win,they were now focused on helpingothers. (Journal, 12–02)

Kim noticed further evidence of thechildren’s growing awareness ofsocial issues in January after read-ing Fly Away Home (Bunting, 1991)to the class. This was another bookabout homelessness and featured a father and son who lived in anairport.

On the one-hundredth day of school,we did our traditional writing on thetopic of “If I had one hundred dol-lars.” Sixty-six percent of the classwrote the usual responses such as,“If I had $100, I would biu me a

hors. I alwas wuntit a hors” and “If Ihad $100, I would by a Voltswaginjetu. Win I groe up I would praktisdriving it.” The surprising thing wasthat the issue of homelessnesspopped up in 33% of their re-sponses. One child wrote, “If I had$100, I would give pepele mony to bya hause. I wont to be nise to otherpepel that don’t have homes.” An-other wrote, “If I had $100 I wouldgive the homelis pepol my mone be-cause I like to give.” A third childwrote, “If I had $100, I would bythem, stuff, for the homeless people.”(Journal, 01–03)

In addition to expressing a desire tohelp homeless people like the onesin the books Kim had shared withthem, the children also began to askquestions about why these peoplewere homeless in the first place.They noted that the characters inboth books used to have homes butin each case, something happenedto change this situation. Dorrie (TheLady in the Box) lost her homewhen she lost her job, and the boyin the airport (Fly Away Home) lost

his home when his mother died.Many of the children were surprisedand upset to learn that people couldlose their homes for something that“wasn’t their fault.” Some madeconnections to times in their ownlives when someone lost a job or aworking family member died ormoved away. One child argued thatpeople need to have homes whilethey’re looking for new or betterjobs and another asked why otherpeople didn’t help them find homes.Phrases like “it’s not fair” and “how

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Kim used story time as a way to begin opening up spaces for building critical literacy awareness

in her classroom.

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are people supposed to live?” cameup many times during the discus-sions of these books.

Getting Along with Others

Kim also noted that her studentsseemed to be getting along witheach other better than other groupsshe had taught in the past. Afterreading Freedom Summer (Wiles,2001), she made the following entryin her journal:

One thing, which may at first glanceseem insignificant, is how well mystudents get along with each other.This is my seventh year teaching andalways by February, they are gripingat each other over trivial issues. Itmay be an attempt to police the roomand make sure I notice that someonehas broken a rule or it may be a dis-agreement between friends. (The pasttwo years have been almost unbear-able by February.) Whatever it is, itdisrupts the harmony and distracts usfrom the business at hand. This yearhas been different from any otheryear that I have experienced. Whileother teachers complained about thenitpicking behavior going on in theirrooms, I had to sit in silence becauseI was not experiencing this with mystudents. When I mentioned that wehaven’t had these kinds of problems,they looked at me like I was trying tocover something up.

I didn’t totally realize the signifi-cance until our school counselorcame into our room to talk aboutchoices we make when handling dis-agreements that children have witheach other. When she asked for ex-amples from my children, they lookedat her and waited with raised eye-brows. She waited and then promptedthem for examples. “What do you doif you lose your pencil and you needit to do your work?” Their response,“Ask a neighbor to borrow one.” Shedid not get the response that she ex-pected and went on to explain howchildren have minor disagreements.

My children looked from her to me,and back again. That was when itstruck me how different the atmos-phere in my room was this year. Mystudents bend over backwards to helpeach other and to help me. It wasunfathomable to them to considerdisagreements when they reallydidn’t have any to consider. Myquestion then was, can the use ofsocial issue books in a classroomcreate an environment of acceptanceand good will? I have examined thisfrom every angle I can think of andcan come to no other conclusion.Other than the inclusion of thesebooks on a regular basis, I can thinkof no other changes I have madesince last year that might explain my children’s behavior. (Journal,02–03)

Freedom Summer tells the story ofhow some white people in onesouthern town decided to fill uptheir public swimming pool with tarrather than allow black people toswim there after segregation becameillegal. Kim reported that her chil-dren were “visibly shocked” whenthey realized what was going onwith the pool being filled in. Theybrought up the issue of fairness sev-eral times and repeatedly asked whysome people thought they werebetter than others. They were angrythat these people refused to sharethe pool and were amazed that theywould rather close it down for goodthan let black people swim there.Kim noted that the children engagedin numerous conversations aboutrace after she read this book, andmany concluded that it was “mean”to treat people unfairly because ofrace. Kim hypothesized that bookslike Freedom Summer opened aspace for her children to “figure outwhere someone else is comingfrom” and encouraged them to“look for solutions that were fair in-stead of getting involved in uselesspower struggles” (interview, 03–04).

Quality of Children’s Writing

By February, Kim noticed changesin the quality of her children’s writ-ing when they were responding tobooks in the critical text set. At thispoint she read So Far from the Sea(Bunting, 1996), a story that re-counts one Japanese Americanfamily’s experiences with the hor-rors of internment camps during thesecond World War. Her journalentry documents her observations:

One of the things I have been reallysurprised about when I use criticalliteracy books with my children ishow they respond to them. Theywrite more than usual if I ask themto write when they respond. (Journal,02–03)

While Kim did not collect samplesto show the quality of her students’writing for a non-critical book,much can be inferred from thesamples she collected after readingcritical books. What becomes imme-

diately obvious is the amount oftext generated by these first graders.And the extensive writing was notdone by a handful of students, butby all of them. A representative ex-ample is the set of papers that Kimcollected after reading Fly AwayHome (Bunting, 1991). She invitedthe children to write down anyquestions they would like to ask theboy who lived in the airport and tosay what they would do to help ifthey could do anything. The chil-dren generated numerous questions

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Kim noticed changesin the quality of herchildren’s writingwhen they were

responding to books in the critical text set.

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and most of them filled the entireside of the paper. They also did notskimp on words in describing whatthey would do to help. One childwho was identified by Kim as a typ-ically reluctant writer generatedthree thoughtful questions andended by saying: “I wolld let themlive with me if he was cold I wolldlet him cuvr up in my worm bedand win he is tird he can sleep inmy bed.” When responding to abook that he thought was impor-tant, this child was clearly willingto write.

Quality of Children’s Art

Kim noticed a similar type of energywith the children’s artistic endeav-ors when they were responding tobooks in the critical text set. Shemade the following observationsabout the drawings that were gener-ated in response to So Far from theSea (Bunting, 1998).

What was quite apparent with thisactivity was the amount of effort theyput into their drawings. Usually, theyare just drawing to get an assignmentdone and quickly slap any old thingdown. Not with these drawings. Myroom was completely silent while theyworked. They waited patiently to havea chance to look more closely at thebook, and their drawings were phe-nomenal. They added details in a waythat I never see in any of their otherwork. I observed a number of childrendrawing, and then erasing and draw-ing again, sometimes several timesuntil they got it the way they wanted.When I took their drawings to meetwith the Peace Collaboration group,they were surprised at the quality ofthe drawings and asked if theyalways produced work like this. I hadto reply that this was an exception.Occasionally one or two children willtake their time and create a detaileddrawing, but never the whole class asit was with this set of drawings. Is itbecause they take their work seriously

since they are dealing with topics andissues that seem adult to them?(Journal, 02–03)

Figure 1 shows four children’sresponses to So Far from the Sea(Bunting, 1998), a book about theinternment of Japanese-Americancitizens during World War II. The children’s attentiveness to re-creating details like the highfences, barbed wire, and guns documents Kim’s observation that they put considerable time and effort into these drawings. Kim also noted that the conversa-tions about this book were ongoingfor many weeks and served as ascaffold for pushing the children’sthinking and for giving them aplatform to share their thoughts.She recalled that when children

wanted to make a point about an-other unfair situation, they fre-quently made references to theJapanese internment camp andhow armed soldiers had come totake a little boy in a Cub Scoutuniform from his home. They criti-cized the actions of the soldiersand empathized with the innocentchild who had not done anythingto deserve this treatment. In thiscase, art was a useful sign systemfor helping to develop the chil-dren’s critical awareness.

Seeing a Bigger Picture:Intertextual Connections and Multiple Perspectives

Kim observed that book discussionsin her class were beginning to becharacterized by the inclusion of in-tertextual connections and refer-

ences to multiple perspectives. Chil-dren were bringing up other titlesand other authors to help them situ-ate every new book she shared. InApril, she addressed this topic in herjournal.

Today, we read The Other Side byJacqueline Woodson. As I showed thechildren the book, one of them men-tioned that the same author wroteVisiting Day, the book we read abouta child visiting her father in prison.They immediately settled down andgave me their full attention.

More intertextual connections fol-lowed as Kim began to read thisbook aloud.

“That summer the fence thatstretched through our town seemedbigger. We lived in a yellow house on

one side of it. White people lived onthe other. And Mama said, ‘Don’tclimb over that fence when you play.’She said it wasn’t safe.”

Kim noted that the children imme-diately seized on the words “itwasn’t safe.” She wondered if thisrelated directly to their exposure toother books addressing race relationissues. Even on the first page, theyhad already identified the threat aswhite people. One child made aconnection to Rosa Parks, thewoman who was told to give herseat on the bus to a white man(Miller, 1998). Others brought upthe books Martin’s Big Words (Rap-paport, 2001) and Freedom Summer(Wiles, 2001) (Journal, 04–03).

Other books that Kim shared withher children seemed to invite con-versations about multiple perspec-

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Kim observed that book discussions in her class werebeginning to be characterized by the inclusion of

intertextual connections and references to multipleperspectives.

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Figure 1. Children’s artistic responses to SSoo FFaarr ffrroomm tthhee SSeeaa..

“The Japanese were surrounded by Army guys”

“A kid is in the camp and the sun is really reallymad”

“My picture is a picture of the camp in thestory”

“It was not fair that they locked some peopleup.”

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tives and how individuals might seethe same events differently. Stars inthe Darkness (Joosse, 2002) relateswhat happens to a family when theolder brother gets involved in agang. The story shows how threecharacters (the mother, the olderbrother, and the younger brother)see the situation from their ownunique perspectives. Kim discussedthe idea of multiple perspectiveswith her children and then invitedthem to draw each character andwrite what that person was thinkingabout during the story. Figure 2shows one child’s example and sug-gests that he was able to sort outthe different views of the charac-ters. He reported that Mama wasthinking about Richard’s gang ac-tivities, little brother was thinkingthe same thing (and crying, accord-ing to the picture), and Richard wasthinking that he didn’t want anyoneto know what he was doing.

Kim also shared a note from theauthor with her children. This note,which comes at the end of the book,explains what gangs offer to kidslike Richard—a sense of belonging, a

feeling of security, and sometimeseven basic necessities like food andclothing. She reported that the chil-dren discussed this note at lengthand that several made a connectionbetween poverty and the attractionof gangs. One child hypothesizedthat Richard probably wouldn’t havebeen in a gang in the first place ifhis family had enough money to buy“important stuff like food, clothes,and toys.” Although this child didnot interrogate the underlying soci-etal structures that produce andmaintain poverty, his comment sug-gests that he was beginning to un-derstand how poverty positionspeople and limits their choices.

Along similar lines, Kim asked thechildren to imagine what the swansand the peacocks in Feathers andFools (Fox, 1989) were feeling onthe inside and the outside as theywere deciding whether they wouldgo to war with each other. Figure 3shows two children’s responses.These examples suggest that thechildren were able to “read betweenthe lines” and recognize how de-ceiving appearances can be. They

looked beyond the braggadocio andmilitaristic posturing of the swansand peacocks and concluded thatfear was driving their destructivebehavior.

DISRUPTING THE NORMAL

As the school year drew to a close,Kim reflected on what had tran-spired in her classroom after sharinga number of the critical picturebooks with her children.

In my wildest dreams, I would neverhave thought my students wouldhave come so far in just one schoolyear. At the beginning of the year,they simply saw a book as being fortheir enjoyment, like a Disney experi-ence. They now look critically attexts, looking for clues into themeaning the author intended. Theyhave examined books for hidden as-sumptions and have looked at howthe readers are being positionedthrough these texts. (Journal, 04–03)

An example of this type of criticalanalysis occurred as the childrenstudied an illustration in The OtherSide (Woodson, 2001) that shows

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Figure 2. Children’s responses showing multiple perspectives.

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the main characters (a black girland a white girl) with their mothersas they passed by each other intown. One child pointed out howthe two girls and their mothers wereall wearing the same kind of cloth-ing (shiny black shoes, white gloves,and “fancy dresses”). Another childsurmised that the author [illustrator]probably did this on purpose tomake people see how similar theywere. “If she wanted us to think thatthey were really different, she

wouldn’t have done that.” Other ex-amples from the same book focusedon the author’s [illustrator’s] pur-pose in making the young black girllook “strong and powerful” in thepicture after the rain stopped and inmaking the white girl look “sad andlonely” as she sat on the fence atthe beginning of the book.

Kim also considered the role thesebooks were playing in acquaintingher rural children with issues of di-

versity that often seemed invisiblein their monocultural setting.

Without exposure to race, how wouldmy children ever get past the differ-ences to see what is similar? And ina small, white town, they might beadults before they know someonewho is black. By that time, aftergoing so long, it will be hard to teardown the fences of mistrust of some-one who looks different. How muchmore important it becomes in a rural

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a. One reported, “The swans were mean on theoutside [and] they were going to fight.”

c. Another child observed, “They think they aretough on the outside,”

d. “but they aren’t. They’re scared.”

Figure 3. Children’s multiple perspectives to FFeeaatthheerrss aanndd FFoooollss..

b. But turning the paper over reveals that thischild was aware of another perspective as well:“The swans were scared in the inside [and] theydidn’t know what to do.”

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area like this to expose the childrento other groups. (Journal, 04–03)

Kim’s observations stress the impor-tance of encouraging children to in-terrogate what they see ascommonplace or “normal.” In anall-white community, it can become“normal” to assume that people ofcolor are somehow “different” andmaybe even “dangerous.” An exam-ple of this dominant discourse wasshared by a student teacher whowas momentarily stunned when achild in her classroom stated duringa literature discussion that “Allblack people carry guns and killpeople.” When the student teachersuggested that this might be astereotype and not true, the childresponded adamantly that it wastrue because his parents told him so(Leland & Harste, 2003).

POSSIBILITIES FORTAKING ACTION

The Other Side is a picture book thatturns the tables and challenges thedominant discourse. Suddenly it’sthe black people who are in dangerand the white people who are thedangerous ones. What is significanthere is how quickly Kim’s childrenpicked up on this perspective. Sev-eral examples of their writing makethis point. One child wrote, “Theythought that the white people wouldkill the black people. They can’t siton the fence.” Two other childrenwrote, “They don’t want their chil-dren to go on the other side becausethe white people might kill the blackpeople” and “One’s mom didn’t wanther to go over the fence because shesaid ‘There’s danger.’ The danger wasthe other side. The white people werethe danger.” It would have beenmore predictable to find childrengrowing up in a homogeneous whitecommunity reflecting the stereotypi-cal view that African Americans areto be feared. The Other Side offered

these children the perspective thatblack people sometimes live in fearof dangerous white people.

It is also important to note that thechildren responded to this story bygenerating ideas for improving thesituation between the neighbors.One student wrote, “They could playtogether if the fence got knockeddown,” and another predicted thatthey would all become friends oncethat happens: “When they knock thefence down, the black and whitepeople can play together and theirmoms can meet each other and theycan give their phone number andthey will have a lot of fun.” Clearly

these children saw the fence as anobstacle, but they appeared to un-derstand that communication wasthe real issue. We can hypothesizethat their life experiences have ledthem to conclude that meetingpeople, exchanging phone numbers,and interacting (“playing together”)are important steps in forming posi-tive social relationships. Just as theswans and peacocks in Feathers andFools (Fox, 1989) needed to get overtheir fear of difference in order toappreciate each others’ talents andskills, children and parents alsoneed to get over their fears ofpeople who are perceived as differ-ent or “other.” These fears might becommon and “normal,” but theyneed to be challenged.

Stories that disrupt what is seen asnormal are important. In this case, apicture book experience (The OtherSide) provided an opportunity for

Kim’s children to see the worldthrough a different lens. It allowedthem to look at race issues throughthe eyes of an African Americanchild and to consider the role thatwhite people have played in keepingthe two races apart and on unequalfooting. Their idea of knocking thefence down and playing togetherdemonstrates that they were payingattention to their own personal andcultural resources and thinkingabout how to take social action tomake the world a better place for allchildren. It can be argued that thisstance was not achieved after hear-ing one story or discussing one in-stance of marginalization. Kimengaged her first graders in criticalconversations about importantsocial issues for the better part of aschool year. She herself disruptedcommonplace teaching norms byenlarging the literacy curriculum ofher first grade to the point where itincluded more than decoding andcomprehension. The addition ofbooks that addressed difficult socialissues added a new dimension thathad not been in her classroom pre-viously and is not often found inwork with young children.

In reality, Kim had challenged twotraditional views that tend to be thedominant discourse in both schoolsand the larger culture. First, shechallenged the view that literacy ismainly a question of decoding andmaking meaning. Second, she chal-lenged what many teachers andparents perceive as common senseregarding appropriate subjectmatter for story time with youngchildren. This view positions chil-dren as needing protection fromcomplexity and unpleasant topics.As a result, the common sense ap-proach leads teachers and parentsto choose stories that have simpleplot lines and “happily ever after”endings that tie up all loose ends.The thinking is that these stories

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Many children aredeeply concerned

about these difficultissues when they walkinto our classrooms.

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are appropriate for children becausethey do not introduce multifacetedissues that might be too abstract forthem to understand. This view ofchildren’s capacity to understanddifficult issues has been challengedby researchers like Corsaro(1997) and Dyson (1993) who sug-gest that children often use play ac-tivities to address complex issuesthat concern them. While we mightwish that children did not have todeal with issues like racism,poverty, and war, the fact of thematter is that many children aredeeply concerned about these diffi-cult issues when they walk into ourclassrooms. Ignoring what theyneed help to understand and dealwith is not productive or humane.

A HAPPY ENDING?Since the dominant national dis-course on literacy acquisition ap-pears to be bogged down in the firsttwo resources identified by Lukeand Freebody (1997), it is hard toimagine a happy ending for thispiece. But maybe that is to be ex-pected, given the fact that happyendings typically do not occur ineither the books in the critical liter-acy text set or in life in general. AsKim wrote in her journal:

These children do not all have tidyhappy endings in their lives. Usingcritical texts opens their eyes and myown to world issues. This helps tocreate understanding and providesconnections for kids whose lives do

not fit what they think is normal—such as the family of four with bothparents and a dog in the backyard.(Journal, 03–03)

Even so, there is still somethinghopeful that emerges from thistext—the validation that individualteachers can still make a difference.And like Kim, they might get moti-vated to begin stepping out of theirown instructional boxes. For whilemany classroom reading programsare now micro-managed to thepoint of becoming scripts thatteachers are asked to “stand anddeliver,” the time-honored institu-tion of story time leaves a tinychink in the armor. Books that areread to children can also be dis-cussed with them. The topics

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Comber, B., Thomson, P., & Wells, M. (2001). Critical Lit-eracy Finds a “Place”: Writing and Social Action in aLow-Income Australian Grade 2/3 Classroom. The Ele-mentary School Journal, 101, 251–264.

• This study focuses on a critical literacy project inwhich a complex set of literate practices taught thegrade 2/3 children about power and the possibilitiesfor local civic action. The study discusses how chil-dren’s writing can be a key element in developing“critical literacies” in elementary settings and howsuch classroom writing can mediate emotions, intel-lectual and academic learning, social practice, andpolitical activism.

Heffernan, L., & Lewison, M. (2003). Social NarrativeWriting: (Re)constructing Kid Culture in the Writer’sWorkshop. Language Arts, 80, 435–443.

• This study provides a rich description of whathappened when third-grade children moved frompersonal to social narratives in writing workshop.Students shared cultural resources as they took onthe identities, dilemmas, and obstacles of self and

others; used writing as a means for constructing andanalyzing shared social worlds; and created storiesas tools for social action in their school lives.

Vasquez, V. (2001). Negotiating a Critical Literacy Cur-riculum with Young Children. (Phi Delta Kappa Inter-national Research Bulletin No. 29). Bloomington, IN: PhiDelta Kappa.

• Vasquez engaged in teacher research to explorehow multiple literacies are constructed through arange of practices, looking at what happens whencritical literacy generates learning opportunities toexplore problems associated with inequitable socialpractices and issues of difference and diversity. Dataanalysis revealed that in her junior kindergarten, lit-eracy was seen as social transformation whereissues were acted upon to effect change and to ne-gotiate and sustain curriculum, as well as to gener-ate possible curricular engagements. In addition,children began raising issues of equity and socialjustice in their homes.

—Karen Smith

Research on Critical Literacy with Young Children

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of these books can be revisitedthrough writing and art. Kim’sstory shows how teachers can takesmall steps as they begin to intro-duce children to new perspectives.Without causing too much of aruckus, critical literacy can startseeping into the culture of a class-room. Children and teachers alikecan question the assumptions thatdrive what goes on in their class-room, their school, and their com-munity. There are mandates inschools today that make even themost dedicated and experiencedteachers among us think aboutchanging careers. If there is anyhope to be found, it might well bein the realization that we can stillcreate cultural niches where thechildren (and we ourselves) can de-velop as critically literate beingswho are going to keep trying tomake the world a better place.

Children’s Books Cited

Bunting, E. (1991). Fly away home. NewYork: Clarion.

Bunting, E. (1998). So far from the sea. NewYork: Clarion.

Fox, M. (1989). Feathers and fools. NewYork: Harcourt Brace.

Joosse, B. (2002). Stars in the darkness. SanFrancisco: Chronicle.

McGovern, A. (1997). The lady in the box.New York: Turtle.

Miller, W. (1998). The bus ride. New York:Lee & Low.

Rappaport, D. (2001). Martin’s big words.New York: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion.

Wiles, D. (2001). Freedom summer. NewYork: Atheneum.

Woodson, J. (2001). The other side. NewYork: Putnam.

Woodson, J. (2002). Visiting day. New York:Scholastic.

References

Banks, J. (2003). Teaching literacy for socialjustice and global citizenship. LanguageArts, 81, 18–19.

Comber, B. (2003). Critical literacy: Powerand pleasure with language in the earlyyears. In V. Vasquez & B. Comber (Eds.),Critical perspectives in literacy: Demon-strations of curricular possibilities (pp. 4–18). Handout for a pre-convention insti-tute of the International Reading Asso-ciation, Orlando, FL. (Reprinted from TheAustralian Journal of Language and Lit-eracy, 2001, 24(3), 168–181.)

Comber, B., & Hill, S. (2000). Socio-economic disadvantage, literacy and social justice; Learning from longitudinal case study research. TheAustralian Educational Researcher,27 (3), 79–97.

Corsaro, W. (1997). The sociology of child-hood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine ForgePress.

Dyson, A. H. (1993). Social worlds of chil-dren learning to write in an urban pri-mary school. New York: Teachers CollegePress.

Harste, J., Breau, A., Leland, C., Lewison, M.,Ociepka, A., & Vasquez, V. (2000). Sup-porting critical conversations in class-rooms. In K. M. Pierce (Ed.), Adventuringwith books (12th ed., pp. 506–554).Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Hill, S., Comber, B., Louden, B., Reid, J., &Rivalland, J. (1998). 100 children go toschool: Connections and disconnectionsin literacy experience prior to school andin the first year of school, 3 volumereport. Canberra, Australia: Department

for Education, Employment, Training andYouth Affairs.

Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diver-sity, and design: A synthesis for criticalliteracy education. Educational Review,52(2), 15–30.

Lee, C. (2003). Why we need to re-think raceand ethnicity in educational research.Educational Researcher, 32(5), 3–5.

Lee, C., Spencer, M., & Harpalani, V. (2003).“Every shut eye ain’t sleep”: Studyinghow people live culturally. EducationalResearcher, 32(5), 6–13.

Leland, C., & Harste, J. (2003). “It made mehurt inside: Exploring tough socialissues through critical literacy. Journalof Reading Education, 20 (2), 7–15.

Leland, C., & Harste, J., with reviewers (inalphabetical order): Berghoff, B., Bomer,R., Flint, A. S., & Lewison, M. (2002).Critical literacy. In J. Kristo & A. McClure(Eds.), Adventuring with books (13th ed.,pp. 465–487). Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Leland, C., Harste, J., Ociepka, A., Lewison,M., & Vasquez, V. (1999). Exploring criti-cal literacy: You can hear a pin drop.Language Arts, 77, 70–77.

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1997). Shaping thesocial practices of reading. In S. Mus-pratt, A. Luke, & P. Freebody (Eds.) Con-structing critical literacies (pp. 185–225).Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

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Chris Leland and Jerry Harste areprofessors in the Department of LanguageEducation at Indiana University. Chris teaches in Indianapolis (IUPUI) and Jerry teaches in Bloomington. KimHuber teaches first grade at the NorthSalem Elementary School in North Salem,Indiana and is finishing a master’s degree at IUPUI.

Author Biographies

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