Access to Children's Literature

Reading is important because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything. (dePaola, 2010) These words from well-known children's author Tomie dePaola are important. Having access to books, and knowing how to read those books, opens up a world of possibilities for children. Unfortunately, not all children around the world have access to books, and access to books varies greatly according to the neighborhoods in which children live. There is a disparity in access to print for those children who live in poverty (Neuman & Moland, 2019), with high-poverty neighborhoods primarily composed of minority groups having the least access to books (Bischoff & Reardon, 2014), which limits their opportunities in school and beyond. Likewise, across our world, access to books matters. Children's books also provide important moral messages in educating young readers: to be kind to others, to value friendship, and to help others, to name a few. In The Inside Track for this issue, Andrea Mei-Ying Wu, a scholar at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, discusses why access to books matters in Taiwan and across the globe. She considers the implications that an emphasis on children's access to books has on their lives and on the formation of global citizenship. Wu introduces the Editorial Task Force for Children's Books and discusses its mission and the implications of its launch in the 1960s, and she explains that examining the history of this campaign in Taiwan can help teachers consider why access to books matters for students in today's world. We hope readers will find something new in this issue's five feature articles. First, Pletcher, Hudson, John, and Scott describe how to balance the hybrid role of the literacy coach and reading interventionist. Hoch, McCarty, Gurvitz, and Sitkoski examine guided inquiry in the digital age and explain how it requires instructional moves that differ from traditional methods. Rawlins and Invernizzi reconceptualize sight words and note the importance of building early reading vocabulary, and Coakley-Fields describes how a fourth-grade teacher cultivated an inclusive classroom while weaving fiction discussions into classroom instruction. Last, McVicker studies the preferences of readers, whether they prefer to be plugged or unplugged. There are also five teaching tips in this issue. Kibler and Chapman provide tips on using culturally relevant texts to improve reading outcomes. Mikita, Rodgers, Berenbon, and Winkler show the importance of targeted prompts when used with scaffolding word solving during guided reading. Beach and Bolden note how word painting supports vocabulary development. Nash, Panther, and Elson provide a description of student-created book basket labels as a culturally sustaining literacy practice in the classroom, and Thomas shows the importance of building literacy environments to motivate African American boys to read by providing texts in which they can see reflections of themselves in print. This issue's Voices From the Classroom essay was written by Rebecca Benjamin, a literacy specialist in the Schenectady City School District, New York. She discusses simple steps toward enhancing engagement in the classroom using poetry. In the two departments in this issue, Literacy Across Disciplines and Digital Literacy, Fisher and Frey offer a description of literacy stations and how they can be used in content area learning, and Gallagher, Di Cesare, and Rowsell provide an intriguing description of their work with newcomer families, the families’ digital lives, and digital literacy. Returning to the words of dePaola, “Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything.” Access to books is the first step in combating illiteracy worldwide, but we must also remember the disparity in communities that live in poverty and that access to books is a greater challenge for children in poverty than for their middle class peers.