The end.

When first entering this class, I would have said that I was a very open person to diverse literature. I also would have said that I knew a lot about diverse literature and its importance to include it in my future classroom. After this class, I can surprisingly and happily say that my thinking and knowledge has completely evolved into something much greater than I could have imagined.

The topic that I have learned the most about that I never had considered before is the insider/outsider debate. I had originally found this issue very interesting in the beginning of the year, and even after we learned about it, I was still pretty ignorant regarding this topic thinking that it didn’t matter. However, as the semester moved on, I found myself thinking more and more about how I couldn’t imagine someone else writing a story about something that they do not know. Now, I realize the importance of insider authors and the huge role they play in authentic diverse literature.

Another important thing I have realized is the extent of multicultural literature that is available or not available for my future classroom. I never thought that is was necessary to find high quality authentic literature. I used to think anything is better than nothing. But now I realized the importance of choosing and selecting high quality literature that represents and is available for ALL students, whether or not if they are included in the classroom or not.

Now, after this class, I will be very thoughtful in choosing literature that is for all students whether or not they are in the classroom. Multicultural literature is for all students whether or not they are included in my future classroom. Multicultural literature can bring so much to a classroom and to the students. Students will find it enjoyable, and they will gain information and challenge their previous ideas.

Critical Review of Monster- African American Children's Literature

Staunton, John A. “Monster”. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Newark: May 2002. Vol. 45, Iss.8; pg. 791.



There are many critical reviews on the book Monster by Walter Dean Myers focusing on violence in young adult literature. There was one in particular, that differed from the rest, which aided in critically analyzing Monster as a diverse literature. After reading this critical review by John Staunton, one will find that it is a very strong review which gives the reader a better insight of why and how Myer’s wrote Monster the way he did. Staunton has obviously read Myers past books and it was very beneficial to read about the other common themes and messages that are prevalent.

Staunton discusses that in his past memoir, Bad Boy, on the very first page Myers starts off "Each of us is born with a history already in place.... While we live our own individual lives, what has gone before us, our history always has some effect on us" (p. 1). After reading that quote about Myers past work it gave a lot of insight of how he wrote Monster. Staunton asserts that the “influence of history and culture upon individual identity is a common theme in Myers work.”

The theme that Staunton argued from Myers past books, brings up a very important question within multicultural literature that is not often focused on. How much does one’s history and culture really have an influence on individual identity? In Monster this is brought up in multiple ways and can have multiple interpretations. I am very curious to hear other people’s opinions and ideas!

Monster- African American Children's Literature

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.

Steve Harmon, who is a 16 year old, African American student interested in filmmaking. He is also in jail and on trial for his supposed role in a fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. “Monster” is what the prosecutor called him for supposedly being the lookout who gave the “all-clear” to the murderer. This book is uniquely written as Steve writes about his experiences in the form of a movie screenplay. The reader is taken on a roller coaster ride throughout the novel, constantly questioning whether Steve is guilty or innocent. Monster has won several awards including the Coretta Scott King Award, Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. It is also a National Book Award Finalist.


The first impression a reader will get from this book is a very strong one. The cover of Monster shows a negative image African American with the words “New York State Correctional,” along with an arrest sheet along with fingerprints. This plays an important role in how this story is portrayed because after seeing the cover, the reader will already create stereotypes and Steve’s history will already have an effect on them. However, within the first page of Monster, the reader is surprised when their stereotype of an African American juvenile delinquent states that “The best time to cry is at night when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and is screaming for help.” This image is a very strong image that will captivate readers from the very beginning. It also is a very strong image that will play an important role within the story as a diverse piece of literature, of how easily stereotypes can be created. This book is an authentic piece of diverse literature that provides knowledge and will change the way that students view the stereotypes of the typical “African American criminal” that is so often portrayed in the media. Monster will aid students in critically inquiring by questioning and challenging about this topic further.

Bright Eyes, Brown Skin- African American Children's Literature

Hudson, Cheryl Willis and Bernette G. Ford. Bright Eyes, Brown Skin. New Jersey: Just Us Books, 1990.




This book is in the form of a poem emphasizing the beauty and characteristics of all children and African American children in the form of the children enjoying typical activities at school. The children are very positive and portrayed as having lots of confidence and self-esteem. It celebrates a positive self-image of African American children by using phrases such as “teeth that glisten” and “very special hair and clothes.” This book is written by an insider author, Cheryl Willis Hudson, who is a co-founder of Just Us Books, Inc which is a premiere publisher of African American Interest books for children and young adults. Their website is a very valuable website for other high quality, authentic African American texts: www.justusbooks.com


This book is intended for students of preschool or kindergarten age. Hudson starts off the story as describing the characters in the story as “Bright eyes, brown skin.” This establishes with the readers the race of the characters in a very positive way. Hudson continues by very thoroughly depicting the children in the story as average, typical children by stating their characteristics that all children have such as “Bright eyes, cheeks that glow, chubby fingers, ticklish toes.” The drawings, which are also illustrated by an insider illustrator, George Ford, portray the children as regular students who go to school, and their routine activities. Hudson has done an excellent job of writing an authentic book that can build self esteem and positive self-image in African American readers. She is also successful in writing a book that outsiders can read and enjoy that will promote a message of inclusion and acceptance. Overall, this book is outstanding and should be included in every preschool classroom to promote a positive image and acceptance of African American students.

Jamal's Busy Day -African American Children's Literature

Hudson, Wade. Jamal’s Busy Day. New Jersey: Just Us Books, 1991.




Jamal is a smart, strong, motivated, energetic, young African American who is shown making all the preparations for school that day. After getting ready and having breakfast with his parents, an architect and an accountant, Jamal goes to school. Throughout Jamal’s “busy day,” Jamal compares his “work” to the work of his parents such as doing reports, working with numbers and taking a crowded bus home. This book is written by an insider author, Wade Hudson, who is a co-founder of Just Us Books, Inc which is a premiere publisher of African American Interest books for children and young adults. Their website is a very valuable website for other high quality, authentic African American texts: http://www.justusbooks.com/


This book is labeled as apart of the “Feel Good Series” which is truly what this book accomplishes. Jamal is portrayed as an empowered child, who is very motivated and has a strong work ethic. His parents are depicted as serious professionals, who are both in much respected professions. The way in which this book is written sends a message to students that working hard pays off and can make you happy. It emphasizes a successful African American family through pictures drawn by George Ford. This book is essential in every classroom as a piece of diverse literature because it is a positive portrayal of an African American family that is not only average, but better than average. It encourages a positive self-image to African American readers while illustrating the characters in a realistic matter. It also promotes to outsiders acceptance and respect.

The Final Project!

There have been many inspirations for me in choosing African American Children’s Literature as my final research topic. The first inspiration is reading an article by Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords on code-switching for African Americans who you the BEV (Black English vernacular) in my TE 301 class. This article really sparked my interest, because before reading this article I had never considered the idea of how to effectively teach mainstream English and the BEV. I am also inspired by student teaching in an urban school district where there is a high percentage of African American students. Within this experience, I have felt like this group of students is not included in school libraries or classroom assignments. I think that it is so important for children of underrepresented groups to feel included in classroom literature. So it is my goal to find authentic, high quality pieces of literature that share knowledge and information with students but are also enjoyable for students. Right now, I am very excited to read Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. It has won many awards for its high quality of text. I am enthusiastic to put it to our class standards of analyzing diverse literature! Through doing this project, I hope to improve my skills on critically analyzing books, specifically focusing on African American children’s literature, which will aid me in choosing books for my future classroom library.

I am in TE 448 for many reasons. The main reason I took this class was for professional development, because multicultural literature was an area where I felt my knowledge was lacking. I joined this class to become more familiar with multicultural literature. I wanted to extend my current knowledge about diversity in children’s literature to become a more critical reader. I am now very interested in becoming more acquainted with rich, high quality, authentic literature that I can use in my future classroom along with valid professional resources that I will be able to come back to later on. “Children deserve the best, they deserve, authenticity and truth, and they deserve books of artistic and literary merit.” (Ada, 37)

This class connects to my professional goals in many ways. For myself, as a professional, it helps me get closer to my goal of creating my own beliefs and strategy of how to select authentic literature. It also helps me strengthen my ability to critically read diverse texts. For my future classroom, this class helps me accomplish my goal of creating a classroom community where all students feel, respected and appreciated for who they are.

Issues of diversity play a very important role in literacy teaching and learning because literature has great power to represent a generalization, stereotype or image to children regardless of if it is positive or negative. This means that there is even more pressure on the educator to make sure they are choosing high quality texts that accurately and authentically represents an underrepresented group.


Ignorance is one of the biggest weaknesses in our society. I feel that multicultural education is essential in every classroom and curriculum to help alleviate this problem. It helps students understand and gain an appreciation for underrepresented groups in the world or those groups who are defined by other features of class, race, gender, etc. Multicultural education is important because it helps promote student to appreciate diversity and varying perspectives on social issues. Multicultural literature is beneficial because it offers knowledge and information on different perspective of something than what we aren’t normally used to. As we have learned from reading works by Rudine Sims Bishop, “Students who retain such a perspective, because they have learned to take their privilege as a given and have not been taught to question the status quo, are likely to perpetuate the discrimination and oppression that multicultural education is supposed to eliminate.” (Bishop, 5) Multicultural literature also helps students make a connection to their own lives. Bishop states that “students who do not see any reflections of themselves or who see only distorted or comical ones come to understand that they have little value in society in general and in school in particular.”(Bishop, 5) It applies to all students, whether they can relate and make a personal connection, or learn something new about a different group.

The thing that most concerns me about multicultural literature is that it is very difficult and hard to find “the perfect book.” I feel that there are millions of books which accurately portray an experience, but at the same time, offer a perspective that is degrading to another group. Of course, I will never find a “perfect book.” Instead I will just need to learn to adapt to creating effective lesson plans that offer varying perspectives of issues, which help correct misconceptions and stereotypes.

Children's Literary Awards

Children's literary awards play a very important role in the world of children's literature. I believe that these awards are very beneficial because it allows teachers and students to know and be informed about exceptional pieces of literature that can be trusted quality pieces of literature. Readers depend on the awards for recommendations on which books they should buy or use in their classroom. Awards are also great because they give recognition to authors who have excelled and deserve to be honored for their work. If an author were to win an award this would increase their production and sales and motivate them to write more quality pieces of literature.

These awards can be controversial because some ask the question "Why are there different awards for specific cultures, races and ethnicities?" To me, the answer to this question is very easily answered. To "insiders," or members of the group, not all books accurately portray their group and are not considered a valid piece of diverse literature. I believe that there are different awards created because some groups probably felt like they were being left out or underrepresented in children's literature and wanted to create a motivating and driving force for more quality pieces of work. To "outsiders" these awards are very beneficial because they educate "outsiders" on what "insiders" believe to be high quality texts. This way, if you were an "outsider," or knowledgeable about a specific group, you could trust the "insiders" and you would know what texts would accurately portray a group.

Finally, I think that there should be awards for specific types of literature because it gives awards to authors who do exceptional work and to motivate them to do more. It also lets readers know what they should be reading.

Bronx Masquerade

After reading the book Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes, I had several questions that I was pondering while reading the book. My initial questions I had while reading started off at a very basic level asking questions such as: Why did Nikki Grimes choose to write the text in a series of autobiographical writing, poems and reactions from the narrator? What impact do you think that this type of writing had on the reader? Once I started to think about answers to that question I came up with another question after reading “Ain’t I Fine” by Martin: How did Grimes writing parts of the text in black modes of discourse add to the text? In the article, Martin discusses the topic of African American Discourse and the Black English Vernacular. He states that:
“I would argue that for African American children…can function in the same way that verbal training in black modes of discourse always has: to teach them linguistic skills that will help them to survive and negotiate relationships with other people. On the other hand, this inclusion exposes non-African American children to an important African American linguistic tradition…a practice that has traditionally been stigmatized as a sign of ignorance and its speaker labeled uneducated.” This particularly interested me and was significant while reading because this is a topic that we read and discussed a lot in my ENG 302 class that I took in the Spring of 2006 and in my TE 401 class that I took last Fall.

When considering these questions, please start with page 7 when Tyrone, the narrator first is introduced. “School ain’t nothing but a joke. My moms don t want to hear that, but if it weren’t for Wesley and my other homeys, I wouldn’t even be here aiight?” This is an example of the Black English vernacular that is used throughout the text by the narrator. What effect does this have on the text? Do you think this type of language adds to a stereotype or generalization of African Americans? There are other instances where this sort of speech goes on throughout the book. How do you think “insiders” would respond to this type speech being a norm in this book?
Another question I had thought of originally is What impact do you think that this type of writing (writing in poems, responses, etc) had on the reader? On page 160, Shelia is quoted as saying “He made me change my mind about him that day. Maybe I can change people’s minds about me too.” How do you think that the student’s reactions to each other’s poems and stories affected the reader’s opinion of these characters? Are you more likely to agree with a character, such as Shelia, on issues of inclusion because she explicitly stated her opinion?

On page 164 Tyrone discusses how he connected with different students in his class due to their personal poems and style in writing them. “I feel that even though the people in our class are all different colors and some of you speak a different language and everything, I feel like we connected. I feel like I know you now.” This passage is one of the most powerful sections in the end of the story, and I feel like it gives a lot of insight to the reader in a lot of questions. How do you interpret this passage in considering the above questions? Why did Grimes include this passage towards the end of the book? Do you think that Grimes is speaking to the reader of her opinion on inclusion?

These questions are very important in our on-going discussion of diversity and inclusion. In my TE 401 class, we read an article called “Codeswitching: Tools of Language and Culture Transform the Dialectally Diverse Classroom” by Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords which talks about issues of how to deal with the black English vernacular in the classroom. Wheeler and Swords argues that teachers should teach students how to “codeswitch” and only be able to use BEV in certain situations that way African American students can be more successful in the classroom and on standardized tests. “Beyond linguistic structure, cultural conflicts lie at the heart of why American Schools fail.” (Wheeler, Swords page 472) This quote also deals with another overall theme in Bronx Masquerade, in which the reason why Mr. Ward allows students to start writing poetry is because it is one of the only reasons how he can get students to connect to literature and apply skills they were learning in class. Otherwise they would not have participated. This is a very important topic that educators do not know how to deal with. Some argue that teachers should embrace a student’s dialect and cultures while others often practice that it should not be tolerated and should be corrected. These arguments that Martin brings up about black modes of discourse, along with the Wheeler & Swords article about codeswitching are articles that could bring up some great discussion with Bronx Masquerade. This topic is very important to discuss because many TE 448 students are in or will be in urban schools and they need to be prepared with how they plan on meeting students needs regarding the BEV.

Insider or Outsider?

After reading Native Americans in Children’s Literature by Debbie Reese, I learned a lot about the insider and outsider debate. Reese argues that a Native person who has grown up and lived within a tribal society will not falsely portray Native Americans as mythical individuals or very heroic like non-Native authors who believe Native Americans are more honest and brave than anyone else. It is also important because “outsiders” cannot draw upon their past expierences, emotions and feelings to accurately portray the Native American culture. Additionally, Reese asserts that “outsiders” draw upon Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans for their past experiences.

I have mixed opinions on the insider/outsider debate. I definitely agree with Reese’s arguments about why the “insider” is the ideal author of a Native American book. I also believe that “outsiders” could be effective writers for Native American books because they have not had as intense of experiences as “insiders” have, so they are able to write simple, basic books for children that are accurate of a specific tribe. I think that if an “outsider” were to put in the effort to get to know the rituals and traditions of a tribe, they could write an authentic book. Reese mentioned that 98.5 percent of books are written by “outsiders” and I am sure that there are some great books that accurately represent the culture. Overall, I think that is should not matter whether an author is an “insider” or an “outsider”, but rather if they accurately and authentically portray a given population group.

Next week in class, I do not specifically have any questions. Rather, I would like to explore different books with the author unknown, and then decide whether they are authentic books to use in the classroom. Then I would like to look back and see if all of the authentic books were written by “insiders” or “outsiders.”

Heart of a Chief

This week in class we read numerous articles regarding children's literature by and about Native Americans. These articles were an eye-opening experience for me because after reading these articles I realized how much that Native American's are unfairly represented in today's society.What is even more important is that this attitude of oppression toward Native American's is fostered in our society through the media and even in the classroom such as students only learning about Indians around Thanksgiving, playing cowboys and Indians, or dressing up as Indians as a Halloween Costume.





Another important topic we covered in class was watching a movie about Native American's as mascots such as Indians, Red Skins, Chippewas, and Chiefs. If you were to ask me my opinion before I watched the movie I would have said that as long as the team name was appropriate such as "Cleveland Indians," I would think that it was a nice honor to the history of Native Americans. My reasoning behind this is that other mascot names such as Norsemen, Spartans, and Yankees, all honors a population group, but is not considered offensive. However, after watching the movie in class, regarding the struggle at the University of Illinois and their "Chief," I realized and fully support the fact that these mascot names are very offensive to Native Americans. The mock their rituals, dress and image.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I am a Senior at MSU majoring in Education with a focus in social studies. I am currently in the course TE 448- Issues of Diversity in Children's and Adolescent Literature. During this course, we will explore and discuss literature that represents groups that are often underrepresented in children's literature.


I have a passion for teaching and am very excited to start in my own classroom in the next few years. While growing up, the teachers I had and the things I learned in their classrooms greatly affected the rest of my life and education. As a future teacher, I have a huge responsibility to my students to give them the best education that I can. To do this, I wanted to take TE 448 because I believe that is it is necessary to include diverse literature that represents different groups so students can learn about different groups or even to feel like they are represented in the books that are read. I also wanted to take this course to learn as much as I can about different groups that way I will be able to handle all issues, and controversies that this type of literature could bring in the classroom.


Please check back throughout this next semester as I blog about my experiences throughout this course exploring diversity in children's literature! Feel free to visit our class blog.