Children's literature plays an essential role in the literacy development of children. This department column focuses on the teaching and use of children's literature and provides educators with information about a wide range of books across multiple genres that are representative of the diverse world in which we live. A strong emphasis is placed on the importance of having diverse library collections that take into account numerous factors, such as race, class, disability, and religion. This column also offers innovative approaches for bringing children and books together, as well as content analyses and rich descriptions of titles that share common features (e.g., endpapers, the blending of poetry and nonfiction).

This article provides a review of research on African American children’s literature by synthesizing the growing body of textual and reader response research conducted across the past several decades. The literature presented in this article cuts across the disciplines of education as well as English and library science. Using the selective tradition as a theoretical underpinning, the authors review extant literature through a three-pronged thematic heuristic developed as a result of their analysis. These themes present research findings related to African American children’s literature as (1) contested terrain, (2) cultural artifact, and (3) literary art. The three themes generated to delineate the findings derived from a four-stage iterative process of analysis. By considering collective findings, a more careful and continued institutionalization of this literature can take place in schools, libraries, bookstores, popular media, and within families. The authors also address future implications for educational practice and research related to African American children’s literature.

In this article, we share findings from a content analysis of six picturebooks about hair. The picturebooks selected feature Black female protagonists and are written by African American females. Our content analysis examines the ways in which Black hair is theorized and represented to children (from diverse backgrounds) very early on in their reading trajectory. We present a discussion of the theoretical perspectives informing our analysis, followed by a review of related African American children's literary scholarship. We then provide a description of the methodology that includes data sources, analytic procedures, and trustworthiness. Next, we present the findings, in which we delineate the three main themes identified within the six picturebooks. We conclude with reasons as to why this research is significant.

This article examines the utilization of racial humor in Christopher Paul Curtis' novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963. The theoretical perspectives that inform the analysis include critical race theory and humor theory. The results of the analysis reveal that the use of humor in this book is influenced to a significant degree by race and racism.

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