Focus on Critical Literacy:
Recommended Reading

Books

Click on a title to find a detailed description, and to browse contents and sample chapters.

Critical Literacy and Writer’s Workshop: Bringing Purpose and Passion to Student Writing, by Lee Heffernan

Developing Critical Awareness at the Middle Level: Using Texts as Tools for Critique and Pleasure, by Holly Johnson and Lauren Freedman

Getting Beyond “I Like the Book”: Creating Space for Critical Literacy in K–6 Classrooms, by Vivian Vasquez

Puzzle Them First!: Motivating Adolescent Readers With Question-Finding, by A. Vincent Ciardiello  

Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English, by Renee Hobbs

Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies: Changing Times, Changing Literacies, by Michèle Anstey and Geoff Bull

Trading Cards to Comic Strips: Popular Culture Texts and Literacy Learning in Grades K–8, by Shelley Hong Xu  NEW!

Articles

Following are selections from recent issues of the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy:

“Constructing Anne Frank: Critical literacy and the Holocaust in eighth-grade English,” by Karen Spector and Stephanie Jones (Sept. 2007; vol. 51, no. 1)

“Reading Woman: Book club pedagogies and the literary imagination,” by Sarah Twomey (Feb. 2007; vol. 50, no. 5)

“Girl power in a digital world: Considering the complexity of gender, literacy, and technology,” by Bronwyn T. Williams (Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007; vol. 50, no. 4)

“Stirring up justice: Adolescents reading, writing, and changing the world,” by Jessica Singer and Ruth Shagoury (Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006; vol. 49, no. 4)

“Critical literacy in democratic education: Responding to sociopolitical tensions in U.S. schools,” by Elaine J. O’Quinn (Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006; vol. 49, no. 4)

From Reading Research Quarterly:

“Differences and tensions in implementing a pedagogy of critical literacy with adolescent girls,” by Rosary Lalik and Kimberly L. Oliver (Jan./Feb./March 2007; vol. 42, no. 1)

“Racial literacy in a second-grade classroom: Critical race theory, whiteness studies, and literacy research,” by Rebecca Rogers and Melissa Mosley (Oct./Nov./Dec. 2006; vol. 41, no. 4)

“Reading representations of themselves: Urban youth use culture and African American textual features to develop literary understandings,” by Wanda Brooks (July/Aug./Sept. 2006; vol. 41, no. 3)

Selections from The Reading Teacher, IRA’s journal for those working with children from preschool to age 12:

“Rewriting Goldilocks in the urban, multicultural elementary school,” by Heather Lotherington (Nov. 2006; vol. 60, no. 3)

“SEARCHing for an answer: The critical role of new literacies while reading on the Internet,” by Laurie A. Henry (April 2006; vol. 57, no. 7)

From Reading Today, IRA’s membership newspaper:

“Global literacy: Vital but not a panacea” (June/July 2007)  FREE!