Literature as Mirror: Analyzing the Oral, Written, and Artistic Responses of Young Mexican -Origin Children to Mexican American -Themed Picture Storybooks
Data consisted of oral, written, and artistic responses to the oral readings in Spanish of four focal texts, as well as family interviews. Coding and analysis of students' responses revealed cultural connections across Sipe's (2000) five response categories: analytical, personal, transparent, performative, and intertextual. It was demonstrated that when children found some familiar cultural aspect in the focal books, and were provided a supportive group for sharing ideas, their responses in all modalities included high levels of aesthetic and critical thought as they used their cultural backgrounds and experiences to read/listen to the word (Freire & Macedo, 1993). Children's responses also pointed to several problematic textual areas: unknown vocabulary and sociohistorical concepts, unfamiliar settings, incongruence with protagonists' motivations/experiences, and unrealistic illustrations. Despite the distorted images perceived in some of the texts, the cultural specificity of content and illustrations created a sagittal dimension of space in which children could step into and out of story worlds, and rearrange literary elements from within to create images better reflective of their cultural realities.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign